Module 1 — Effective
writing: Strategies
and principles
| Course Guide | Module 1 | Module 2a | Module 2b |
Readability issues
"Writing that is not read or only partially read is failed writing." Robert D. Eagleson, Writing in Plain English, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1990. |
Writing is hard work! No one wants to produce documents that discourage targeted readers from reading them. Yet sometimes readers don’t finish the documents they begin. Lack of time is the most often quoted reason for not getting through all the reading required of the job. Yet, it is possible that these same readers are producing more writing for others who also have insufficient time to read it.
In preparation for this course, we spoke to several employees from the ILO at all levels. In these discussions it was abundantly clear that there was a desire for shorter, clearer, and more reader-focused documents.
What are some of the features of documents that are hard and so time consuming to read?
- volume
- dense looking writing that looks hard to read (full of long sentences, long paragraphs and unbroken text)
- no summaries for long documents such as reports
- poor organization and no road map
- gobbledegook — confusing, unnecessarily complex and incomprehensible language
Let's work through some ways of making the task easier and faster for the readers of the documents you write.
Productive strategies are:
- keeping sentences down to size;
- eliminating wordiness (padding, redundancy, pomposity, etc.);
- using active rather than passive constructions;
- taking a verb-based approach.