KiwiStreet. Greater clarity. More style.

‘Gradually, as the time invested by the average writer and the average reader in the average sentence falls, society’s ability to communicate in writing decays.’ – David Gelernter

In my first ‘proper’ writing job I was lucky enough to have two mentors.

One, Don, had studied economics and had begun his working life as a Chartered Secretary.  He wrote his copy in longhand on pages from a lined foolscap pad.  Whenever possible, he started writing at the earliest possible opportunity and then put the draft to one side, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a few days.  Later, he would take it out and spend about as long polishing it as he had spent on writing it.

My other mentor, David, had begun his career as a reporter on a daily newspaper.  He typed his copy on an old manual typewriter.  And he wrote it at what always seemed like the last possible moment.

Both men were experienced writers.  Both answered the brief they were given.  Both met their deadlines.

As a junior, I found it easier to adopt Don’s method of working: starting early; letting time do its work; and then polishing, polishing, polishing.  But I also looked forward to the day when I would be able to match David’s daring high-wire act: dashing off a few hundred ready-to-publish words in less time than it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

Alas, I never did manage to acquire David’s apparent facility.  And, looking back a few years later, I realised that neither did he.  Yes, his pieces met the brief.  But there was hardly one that could not have been improved considerably by a fresh eye and a vigorous polish.

I think that David would have loved modern technology.  He could have produced even more words in even less time.  In fact, like many other people, he probably would have felt obliged to do so.

But as technology helps more and more writers to produce and publish more and more words faster and faster – and helps readers to ‘read’ those words faster and faster – written communication risks becoming less and less effective.

Sometimes a little slower is a lot better all ‘round.

The beginning of a new year is a time when many people resolve to make changes.  For some people, this might include resolving to become a more effective writer, writing with greater clarity and with more style.

If you are someone who resolves to become a more effective writer in 2013, here are seven tips from the team at KiwiStreet.

One: Think before you write.  If you don’t have a clear idea of what you want to say, the chances of you saying anything useful are slim at best.

Two: Have a clear picture of your reader in mind before you start.  What does your reader already know, think, and feel about what you are about to write?

Three: Write enough to say what you want to say, but no more.  Brevity is one of the hallmarks of effective writing.

Four: Allow plenty of time to tweak and polish what you have written.  An hour’s writing usually deserves an hour’s revising.

Five: Reward your reader.  Your reader is investing her time and attention.  Make sure that your words leave her feeling informed, motivated, or entertained.  And if you can leave her feeling informed and motivated and entertained, so much the better.

Six: Use words that your reader will understand immediately.  It’s easy enough for readers to ‘look up’ words they don’t understand; but they seldom do.

Seven: When you think that you have finished, make sure that what you have said is, indeed, what you set out to say.

Good luck and good writing.

According to a recent news report, the owners and managers of a number of businesses have been having difficulty understanding the credit agreements they have entered into with their bank.  Their lawyers and accountants have also found the agreements difficult (or impossible) to understand.

Apparently, one of the business owners approached his local bank manager and asked for a plain English explanation.  The bank manager was unable to provide one.  It seems that he didn’t know what the agreement said either.  But he did offer to get ‘an expert from head office’ to make a presentation.

The expert duly arrived and dazzled the business owner with his graphs and tables and scenarios, but, at the end of it all, the business owner was none the wiser.

Time was of the essence, and so, still not quite sure to what he was agreeing, the business owner signed the document.  Unwise?  Perhaps.  But if you can’t trust your bank manager, who can you trust?

But then, a few months on, it became evident that the deal to which the business owner had agreed – the deal which he hadn’t really understood – was not at all what he needed.  However, when he tried to get out of the agreement, he found that he could only do so by paying a substantial break fee.

According to the news report, the break fee was in the region of $4 million.  And notification of this was buried right there in the small print of the agreement that hardly anyone had been able to understand.

Many legally-binding agreements are both complicated and clunky.  But they don’t need to be.

I will be the first to acknowledge that news reports are sometimes wrong and often exaggerated.  But even if this one is half right, the bank has, intentionally or unintentionally, made a real hash of things.  There is no (good) reason to have an agreement that cannot be easily understood by both parties.  As Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said:

‘Anything and everything that can be said, can be said clearly.’

A few years ago, I was approached to edit a report prepared by what turned out to be a decidedly dodgy investment company.

‘At the moment, it’s too easy to understand,’ the CEO told me.  ‘It needs to be more weighty, more, umm, opaque.’

I declined the opportunity to contribute to the ignorance of his ‘investors’.  But it did confirm something which I had long suspected: some writers simply do not want their readers to understand what they are saying.  (If you have ever begun to read the Agreement to which you must agree before you can load a piece of software, you will know what I mean.)

Effective written communication is not just about the writer’s writing.  It also involves the reader’s reading.  If the reader doesn’t take out what the writer thinks he or she has put in, the attempted communication has failed.

And, as much as some writers might like to think otherwise, the responsibility for the communication rests squarely with the writer.  If the intended reader can’t follow what the writer has written – or can’t be bothered reading what the writer has written – it is usually not the fault of the reader.  There is little point in saying ‘Well, it was all in the document’ if the reader finds the document unreadable.

In a recent online discussion, a reader who had had his fingers badly burned by a dodgy fund manager asked ‘the expert’ what he could have done to avoid this happening.  In reply, the expert said that ‘notwithstanding the relevant statutory compliance on the part of the fund manager or any person acting as a duly authorised agent of the fund manager, it is beholden on a person with investible funds ….’

And there was more too.  But, by then, I had fallen asleep.

For at least the past 250 years, the English language has had a handful of words which are not considered appropriate for use in polite company.  Vulgar is a term that dictionaries sometimes use to describe these words.  Coarse is another.  And there are even a few words that dictionaries describe as ‘highly taboo’.

Interestingly, with the exception of one or two recently coined compound words, none of these words started out as ‘vulgar’ or ‘highly taboo’.  They started out as pretty ordinary – and useful – nouns and verbs.  But then, for some reason, they found their way onto the ‘naughty’ list.

Of course, people at both ends of the social scale continued to use the naughty words, but, throughout the 18th, 19th and much of the 20th century, it was unusual to see them in print.

As recently as ten years ago, a newspaper to which I occasionally contributed had a list of about a dozen words that were absolutely forbidden.  It also had another list – of about 30 words – that were ‘to be avoided wherever possible’.  And where (in the interests of journalistic integrity) it was not possible to avoid one or more of them, ‘the judicious use of asterisks’ was recommended.

And so the accused was alleged to have called the shopkeeper an a***hole.  And Councillor X said that The Mayor was talking bulls**t.  Of course, despite the asterisks, the journal’s readers – even the journal’s most sensitive readers – were in absolutely no doubt what the accused and Councillor X had actually said.  If anything, the asterisks simply drew added attention to the so-called vulgar words.

Recently, I have noticed that Readers’ Comments in online versions of some of the major newspapers are increasingly peppered with asterisks.  ‘The world is a mess because of greedy b******* like you,’ for example.  And … ‘You guys just don’t give sh*t do you.’

If you feel happy calling the columnist a greedy bastard, then do so.  If you don’t, then don’t.  But enough with the asterisks.  They are doing my head in.