Take this fictional, yet typical, opening sentence of a press release:

“Anycompany, a leading developer of best-in-class hardware solutions for business-to-business supply-chain optimisation, today announced a strategic partnership with leading retail systems integration consultancy Anyconsultancy to provide tailored supply-chain solutions for the retail sector.”

At 39 words, it far exceeds the ‘easy readability’ threshold for sentence length. Who wants all those words? The reader? No. the writer of the release wants to make sure that their favourite ‘corporate descriptors’ are included. So they do. All in one sentence.

It doesn’t have to be like this. The minimalist approach removes the unnecessary descriptors — the jargon — or hides them at the end of the release where they can do no harm. Instead, it highlights the most interesting part of story, grabbing the reader’s attention in one short sentence:

“Anycompany has signed a deal with Anyconsultancy to provide retailers with new ways to manage their supply chain.”

It is ironic that the stuff we most want our potential customers to understand — new business letters, brochures, press releases — are the things they least want to read. Keeping sentences short makes your writing more effective.

Although many think it so, there is no qualitative difference between American English and British English. There are, however, big differences in vocabulary and usage between the two, not just the odd spelling quirk. For example, the UK vocabulary of the motor car — bonnet, bumper, boot — means different things to most Americans, who prefer hood, fender and trunk.

In writing for a US audience, therefore, British companies should swallow their national pride and learn to spell the American way. Otherwise, readers will at best find the materials weird and quirky; and at worst incomprehensible in parts.

The reverse applies, of course!

On the web, everyone can read your stuff. So what should you do?

Write for the majority of your audience. If you’re a UK company whose site is used mainly by UK and European readers, use British English.

• Spelling mistakes – Although spellcheckers should never be relied on as the sole way of checking documents, their ubiquity means there is really no excuse for basic spelling errors. Despite this, at the time of writing Google produces nearly 40,000 results for the word ‘inforamtion’
• Grammar (see also Punctuation) – Grammatical errors often end up in documents because of over-reliance on spellcheckers (which ignore an error-ridden sentence like ‘It’s new features empowers the user’. Check grammar and punctuation yourself
• Links and dates – The pesky internet means that online material needs constant attention as time, and other documents, change. This means, for example, checking that links work (either manually or with link-checking software) or making sure that pages are not still advertising a conference that has already happened

Simple errors can destroy your document’s credibility in seconds.

When writing for the web, bear in mind the power and the constraints of the medium. Here are five golden rules.

• Use the ‘inverted pyramid’ – web users are unwilling to scroll through articles to get to the point. Summarise your story up front to lead readers to the rest of the article
• Keep it brief – reading lengthy copy onscreen is uncomfortable. Articles should be short — maybe no more than 500 words per screen — to maximise readability
• Make articles ’scannable’ – use highlights and bullets to draw the wandering eye of the web user
• Use the power of hypertext – easy linking is the greatest strength of the web. Links should be used sparingly within text. Well-maintained collections of links and references give people reasons to publicise and revisit documents
• Keep information up-to-date, accurate and consistent – on the web, as with any medium, errors, inconsistencies and out-of-date material damage credibility

“Pedestrians are requested to proceed with caution on these steps during inclement weather”

Perhaps the council’s signwriters, who crafted this example, are paid by the letter. “Slippery when wet” or “These steps may be hazardous in the rain” would be a considerable improvement.

Get to the point.

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter”.
(Seventeenth century philosopher Blaise Pascal)

Concise writing is hard to produce.

The trouble with some words is that they are, basically, overused and unnecessary. To all intents and purposes, they are redundant. The end result of their use is that your copy becomes bloated. Look out for them on a daily basis.

Or perhaps:

Some words are not necessary, even redundant. Use them and your copy becomes bloated. Look for them daily.

English vocabulary is repetitious. Quite simply, too many words mean the same thing. While at best this forms the richness of the language, at worst, it’s turgid.

So many phrases have worked their way into speech that it can be tempting to believe one word can’t exist without the other. In general, it’s good practice to include only those words which are necessary to get over meaning or to entertain. There is no rule which says that a latecomer should arrive ’safe and sound’, for example, rather than ’safely’.

Unnecessary words dilute your message, waste your reader’s time and take up space that could be put to better use.

It’s useful to review your copy for words which, though common, may be repeated too often within a short piece of writing. Find alternative words, or rewrite sections completely.

We’re still unsure if the person who wrote: “I enclose the enclosed enclosure” in a customer letter was having a laugh.

‘X’s core product suite delivers an open, robust, cross-platform scalable solution for the indexing, categorisation and integration of disparate information feeds.’

Someone knows what this means. But the intended reader is unlikely to get the point. Putting the same information in a narrative form, using examples and case studies, is much more effective:

‘X’s technology can manage information from many different sources. It has helped companies to:

• Categorise information effectively (link to brief customer case study)
• Integrate their information where different technology platforms are involved (link to brief example)’

Using a narrative structure — with a beginning, middle, and end– is a powerful way of making complex information easy to interpret.

• Use an agenda – an agenda is the ‘roadmap’ of your presentation. Whether you present it verbally or on a slide, reminding the audience where they are in a speech or presentation will hold their attention
• Tell a story – (see Telling Stories) people like stories – even grown-up business people. Give your presentation a beginning, a middle and an end to boost its effectiveness
• Know your stuff – the hardest presentations to sit through are the ones where the presenter is unsure of their material. Being sure of your subject allows you to present in the conversational, storytelling style that audiences like
• Think minimal - some say that one single idea is the most you can expect your audience to retain from a presentation. Focus on your main message and avoid presenting too many theories and concepts.
• Avoid multimedia trickery - no matter how good your laptop is, if the venue has a tired old projector and tinny speakers, your multimedia presentation won’t impress. By all means use images and props to make your point, but keep them simple and use proven technology. Transparencies are still more reliable than PCs, so you might want to take a back-up!

Whether it’s a new business letter or email, a press release, or a brochure, it’s vital to explain relevant information quickly. Your time-pressured audience may not be reading your copy out of choice. They will swiftly reject anything that seems irrelevant.

So begin promotional documents with a ’scene-setting’ explanation. But go into too much detail too early and the reader will move on, having failed to answer the crucial ‘why is the important to me?’ question. For example:

Bad relevance
In difficult market conditions, businesses are being forced to extract more value from their existing technology infrastructures in order to stay profitable. This means looking for solutions that can make systems work together.

Good relevance
Today’s focus is on making existing technology work harder. X Consultancy has developed five steps to help IT managers do this. They are…

The second example gets the ’scene-setting’ done in one short sentence before explaining exactly what the document is going to talk about.

In constructing a relevant introduction, brevity is best. Tell the story at the top of the page and entice the audience to read further.

If your audience decides not to read further, it’s because they know it’s not relevant to them, and that has nothing to do with your writing. The targeting of your communication may be lacking, but at least your copy can be identified as relevant — or not — very early on.

“Since installing X’s sales management product, we’ve seen a significant increase in orders.”
(A Customer)

A third-party endorsement or reference is the best way to add credibility to promotional materials. Work hard to get a concrete statement like the one above, if you can. If all you can extract from a customer is something bland like:

“X’s sales management product is helping us to manage our sales”

then you’re better off without the endorsement.

Press releases have a grand tradition of the anodyne quotation, serving no purpose other than to massage the egos of the managers involved in the deal. For example:

“We’re delighted to be partnering with X. Our products are a great fit.”

No self-respecting journalist takes any notice of this sort of flimflam. Why not get the managers to say something factual and therefore quotable?

“Our customers can now use X’s product without having to install anything or pay setup fees and that’s a tremendous advantage.”

Finally, only quotations should come in quotation marks. For example: Talking about his new ‘virtual community’, John Blog said: “It’s, like, real”. Don’t use quotation marks just to provide emphasis or make slang respectable. Their purpose is self-defining: to mark a quotation.