Communicating in writing

Communicating in Writing

Advisory and high-freedom: the layers below are thinking tools, not a sequence to execute. Work through intent, audience, and structure before drafting prose; craft comes last. Structure determines comprehension more than prose quality does — fix structure before fixing sentences.

Layer 1 — Intent

Establish before writing a word:

• Purpose — what the document must achieve, in one sentence. If there are multiple outcomes, rank them; a document with two equal purposes usually fails both.
• What changes — what the reader should know, believe, feel, or do after reading that they did not before. If you cannot state this, the writing is not ready to begin.
• Call to action — what you are asking the reader to do. Even informational documents have an implicit next step; surface it.
• Audience, document type, constraints — who reads it, what form it takes, what is non-negotiable.

Resolve all of these before drafting. A document begun without a clear purpose cannot be edited into shape — it needs rewriting once purpose is found.

Layer 2 — Audience

• Identify the primary reader (the decision-maker) and any secondary readers. For each: what do they know, what do they care about, what will they resist?
• Working memory holds roughly four new chunks at once. One idea per paragraph, lists of seven or fewer items, complex arguments broken into discrete steps.
• Prior knowledge determines structure, not just vocabulary. Experts tolerate dense sections and domain compression; non-experts need the same content in more sections, with scaffolding, analogy, and explicit transitions. Calibrate density to the reader, not to what feels natural to you as the expert.
• Mismatch signals: jargon the reader does not know, assumed context they do not have, detail level misaligned (too granular for an executive; too high-level for an implementer).

Layer 3 — Structure

• Lead with the answer. Conclusion or recommendation first, then reasoning and evidence. Exception — deliberate, not default: when the reader needs emotional or contextual preparation (bad news, controversial recommendations), build the case first.
• Each section answers exactly one question; split any section answering two. Headings signal what the section delivers, not its topic — "Three decisions required by Friday", not "Next steps".
• Test the through-line: can you state the document's argument in two or three sentences, in order? If not, the structure has a gap. For persuasive documents: situation → complication → question → answer.
• Persuasive documents work on three levels: sound argument (logos), credibility established early rather than assumed (ethos), connection to what the reader actually values (pathos). Most writing defaults to logic alone — check the other two explicitly.
• Readers remember openings and closings most. Open with the core message; close by reinforcing it or driving the call to action, never with a generic summary.
• For longer documents: summary up front, parallel structure in lists and headings, key terms repeated consistently — variation for style creates confusion, consistency aids navigation.

Layer 4 — Craft

• Active voice by default; passive only when the actor is genuinely unknown or irrelevant.
• Concrete, specific nouns and verbs; replace nominalisations with their verb forms (utilisation → use).
• Sentences of 15–25 words, most important information first; split any sentence the reader would re-read.
• One idea per paragraph, opening with the topic sentence. Paragraphs over six lines are doing too much.
• When content has relational, quantitative, or structural dimensions, represent it visually (table, diagram, flowchart) as well as in prose — a second encoding that reinforces the first, not decoration.
• Bullet lists for discrete, parallel items only; causal content needs prose or a numbered sequence.
• Headings, lists, and whitespace make the document scannable — readers scan before they read.
• Trust variable-width containers (email, web, chat) to wrap text — no hard line breaks; only when you control the rendering, aim for 60–80 characters per line.
• Conversational tone is more effective in most professional contexts; formal when the reader expects it (legal, regulatory, academic). Cut hedging unless the uncertainty is substantive.

Self-check

Evaluate, fix, then re-check:

• Buried lead — is the most important point in the first third? Can the reader state the main point after the first paragraph?
• Audience mismatch — any unfamiliar vocabulary, assumed context, or misaligned detail level?
• Overload — any section introducing more than four new concepts without a break? Paragraphs over six lines? Lists over seven items?
• Structure — a single logical thread from open to close? One question per section? Headings that signal, not label?
• Purpose — stated or implied in the first paragraph? A clear next step at the end? If the reader asks "what do you want me to do?", does the document answer immediately?
• Coherence — do the opening and closing frame the same document? Can a time-pressed reader get the essentials from headings and topic sentences alone?

Edge cases

• Mixed audience (experts and non-experts): layer the document — executive summary up front, technical detail in appendices or clearly labelled sub-sections. One body trying to serve both audiences equally serves neither.
• Brevity vs completeness: ask which failure costs more here. In most professional writing, burdening the reader is more common and more damaging than omission — cut to the reader's need, not to your thoroughness.
• Conclusions-first vs narrative logic in tension (the conclusion needs context to be understood): lead with a one-sentence orientation ("This is a recommendation to change our pricing model"), provide the context, then state and develop the conclusion.