Write for Results

This autumn I’m launching an online programme, in which the best of my rhetorica® writing techniques will be available to clients for a limited period. The content will take the form of video and/or slide show modules, each no longer than nine minutes. This is nano-byte learning for busy professionals.

I’ll be offering it as a complement to my live workshops, when staff can’t attend due to their location and/or client commitments — when well-intentioned fee-earners are pulled away on a client matter at the last minute. The programme will include a ‘pathfinder’ service, where I recommend which modules to study in which order, based on my analysis of the client’s writing needs. There will also be a series of live calls to help clients apply and embed the new writing behaviours.

I’m giving all my clients the ‘heads-up’ on this before anyone else, with the opportunity to benefit from pre-launch prices. Pls contact me if you’d like to know more.

We can re-discover our mojo through the written word.

Words express ideas, which can arouse us emotionally, intellectually, spiritually — or leave us cold. If ideas have different levels of energy, so do words.

Generally, formal ‘high register’ words — derived from Latin and Greek — have less energy than shorter, mid-register, plain English words which come originally from the Germanic languages (I’m talking roughly 1500 years ago), eg ‘end’ vs ‘terminate’, ‘buy’ vs ‘purchase’, ‘ask’ vs ‘request’.

This came alive for me the other day.

I was running a writing clinic for some lawyers. One of them had written a turgid blog post on a legal development, full of high falutin’ phrases and verbose expressions. She could barely read it. So I asked her to ‘translate’ it into plain English.

What a contrast! Suddenly the imagery was concrete, vibrant and interesting; the turns of phrase were original and varied; there was even some levity in there. She’d found her voice. The piece was transformed. But so was she.

Her whole demeanour had changed. As she skipped out of the room, her face and body beamed with energy, confidence and joy.

This is why I do the work I do.

The only thing in life that’s rocket science…is rocket science. So writing well is not rocket science.

I posted a video yesterday of me riding bumpily to my next meeting in a bicycle taxi on a sweltering afternoon in London. I was on a high: I’d just helped some lawyers transform their writing in one of my rhetorica® workshops. Not only did their writing improve, but their whole demeanour, energy and body language changed. One of them said they’d re-discovered their mojo through the energy of the words they’d used.

You close your document with a neat turn of phrase, tap the full-stop key with a flourish, lift your hands from the keyboard and sit back smugly.

But how do you know that what you’ve written is clear, concise and readable?

You’ve read it back to yourself over and over, it sounds OK, but you’re so close to it you’re not the best judge. The deadline is looming. You need objective feedback on it and now.

Enter the Readability Statistics.

Developed by Dr Rudolf Flesch — a Viennese Jew who fled to the US from Nazi persecution and became a New York sociologist famed for his work on readability — this is a little-known function in every version of Microsoft® Word, Outlook and Apple. Here’s what it looks like:

It not only gives you standard stuff like word and character count; it also gives you four helpful numbers:

ASL (Average Sentence Length)	In the middle (‘Averages’) section, your ‘Words per Sentence’ is the average number of words per sentence, or ASL.Your ASL heavily influences readability, as long sentences contain more ideas and demand more processing power than short ones. (Technique #20 in my book rhetorica® — a toolkit of 21 everyday writing techniques shows you some easy ways to shorten your sentences.)Your ASL target: 15-20 words.
Passive Sentences	In the lower (‘Readability’) section, ‘Passive Sentences’ is the proportion of sentences in the passive voice.Passivitis is a chronic affliction. Writing in the passive voice is longer, less direct and less vigorous than the active voice. The clue’s in the name.Your ‘Passive Sentences’ target: as close to 0% as possible.
Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score	In the same section of the stats, your FRE scores the readability of your text as a percentage, so the higher the better.Dr Flesch used two measures of readability: the average number of words per sentence and average number of syllables per word. In his system, plain English starts at 60% FRE. Authors of technical documents rarely reach those dizzy heights, because technical jargon tends to be polysyllabic, depressing readability. But we should be able to score 45-50% FRE by offsetting techie text with simple supporting language.Your FRE target: at least 45%.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level	This is functional reading age as measured by the US grade school system, i.e. the minimum amount of American education required to understand a piece of writing.To convert Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level into age, add five, i.e. a grade level of 5.0 is roughly an American ten-year old. This means that, at a minimum, an American ten-year old could understand your text. It doesn’t mean you’re targeting that age group!No target for this one, but most of my corporate clients set a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level for their external communications of 10–11. (Recently tested articles from The Economist scored an average Flesch-Kincaid level of 10.3 to 10.8, exploding the myth that The Economist is high-brow and only for college graduates.)

Word of warning: the stats work best on fully punctuated body copy of at least 200 words; they don’t work well on titles, headlines, sub-headings, bullet points and captions. If your document has lots of these, save it as a text-only file and run the stats on that for a truer score.

To find out how to activate the Stats and score your next piece of writing, click here to see the article. And while you’re at it, you might want to download your free rhetorica® chapters

The bottom-line

Assessing a piece of writing — whether yours or someone else’s — can be subjective; the red pen is never far away. But the readability stats make assessment a tad more objective: they show you what is going on with the mechanics of the text. So if you’re defending your word-choice to a fee-earner or giving a junior staff member feedback on their writing, you can now do so with evidence and authority. (And if your version turns out to be more readable than your boss’s, you face an interesting dilemma…)

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If you’d like to go to the heart of the matter and download three chapters of my book, rhetorica® — a toolkit of 21 everyday writing techniques, here’s the link: Download your free rhetorica® chapters

Scott Keyser runs Write for Results, a communications and business development consultancy. Write for Results works with professionals who perform technically complex work (eg lawyers, accountants, engineers), but who sometimes struggle to communicate the value of that work to their market in an engaging way. Scott and his team simply show them how to make their comms — including their bids, tenders, pitches and proposals — clear, concise and compelling.

To book a slot to speak to Scott about your or your team’s writing, click here:

A few months ago I spoke at the annual conference of an international network of accountants and tax advisors. The setting was the 5-star Parco dei Principi hotel in Rome (nothing but the best for The Writing Guy!), which overlooks the Villa Borghese, a beautiful landscaped park.

Facing an audience of professionals in the Eternal City, it seemed fitting to examine the Latin origins of the word ‘profession’.

From profiteri, its original meaning was to ‘take a vow in a religious order’, but it later morphed into the idea of making a public declaration of competence in a particular occupation. And an occupation — like accountancy, medicine or law — demanding a high level of skill, specialist technical knowledge and long periods of study. Being called ‘professional’ is generally a compliment; being described as ‘unprofessional’ is not.

Trouble is, when it comes to writing, the ‘professional’ mindset does not serve us, because it generates three overlapping myths:

Big Fat Myth #1: ‘I must show my expertise’;

Big Fat Myth #2: ‘The cleverer my writing, the more convinced my reader will be’;

Big Fat Myth #3: ‘The more detail I give the reader, the less risk to me and my firm’.

Big Fat Myth #1: ‘I must show my expertise’

When your intention is to show how expert you are in your topic and impress your reader, rather than genuinely communicate with them, you inevitably talk more about yourself and/or your firm than them. You use the words we, us and our more than you and your. It becomes all about us, not them. I call this ‘we-ing’ all over your reader, which is extremely rude. ‘Writer-centric’ might be a politer way of putting it.

Like the party bore who insists on talking only about themselves and shows no interest in others, readers find this a turn-off. And when they’re turned off, the chances of them doing whatever it is we want them to do plummet. As I heard someone say the other day, ‘If you don’t write for your reader, you won’t have any’.

Another facet of this myth is over-doing technical jargon. Why use ‘equitable estoppel’ if you know that your readers won’t understand it? You risk frustrating, confusing or alienating them. And if your readers are a mix of techie and lay, and ‘equitable estoppel’ is precisely the right term for the context, then use it, and explain for the non-techies what it means.

Big Fat Myth #2: ‘The cleverer my writing, the more convinced my reader will be’

Like Myth #1, this one’s also more about impressing the reader than communicating with them, but with the emphasis on style rather than content. This is a seductive myth: as most professionals are highly intelligent, educated and conscientious (is my flattery working yet?), surely their word-choice and syntax should reflect that?

No, they shouldn’t.

Using polysyllabic, fancy words in long, complicated sentences is not good writing. Needlessly complicating the simple to show how clever or educated you are…is not clever; it’s infuriating. It makes the reader work much harder than they want to to get your meaning, which will likely alienate them from you than endear them to you.

And this links to another mini-myth: that professional writing must be formal.

So rather than saying buy, the writer says purchase. Instead of pay, they say remuneration. Rather than use or apply, they plump for utilise, and so on. We call this high-register language, where ‘register’ is a scale of the formality of your writing. High-register, formal language is solemn, serious, cold, unfriendly and hard to relate to; it fails to build rapport with the reader.

Big Fat Myth #3: ‘The more detail I give the reader, the less risk to me and my firm’

This is A Major Myth, ‘cos professionals tend to be detail people; they’re more at home in the minutiae of a matter than in the big picture. More insidious, perhaps, is the unconscious belief that by maximising the detail, the reader can’t criticise them for lack of information, protecting their firm from client complaints. This smacks of a defensive, unconfident CYA (Cover Your Arse) mindset — not a recipe for clear, concise or compelling communication.

This myth produces ‘brain-dumps’, documents that are dense, unstructured slabs of text, like this:

And that’s only a snippet of the original email! The recipient, a good friend, remarked: “I asked them a simple question. If they think I’m going to read all that, they’re deluded!”

In my book, this is lazy writing. The author is dumping everything they know on the reader with the words ‘There you go. You work it out. I can’t be bothered.’

How do we explode the three Myths?

Turn Big Fat Myth #1 on its head.

Rather than showing off your expertise (or your boss’s, if you’re writing for them), show off your understanding of the reader. Get to know them so well you can write as easily about them as yourself; place them front and centre of your writing. I call this being ‘reader-centric’ and it’s the single biggest challenge in B2B writing. But crack it and you’re on your way to being a great writer.

So, how can you get to know your reader?

If they’re internal, ie they work in the same firm as you, go and speak to them; build a relationship with them. If they’re a client, like a GC or a CEO, ask your boss about them; speak to everyone in your firm who knows them; read their blog; Google them; look them up (and follow them) on LinkedIn; go to an exhibition/conference they’re attending or speaking at. (Just don’t hang around outside their home at night: that’s stalking.)

If they’re still as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel, then you must use one of the writer’s key skills — your imagination.

Have an imaginary conversation with them:

• ‘What sex are you?’
• ‘How old are you?’
• ‘What do you do?’
• ‘What do you want more of/less of?’
• ‘What are your values? What motivates you, gets you out of bed in the morning?’
• ‘What are your fears, hopes, dreams and aspirations?’
• ‘What are your pain points?’
• ‘What information is critical to you?’

1. Your goal here is to think your way into their heads, walk a mile in their shoes, see the world from their perspective, understand what makes them tick. By building a pen-portrait of them (referred to in content marketing circles as their avatar or persona), you can write in a way that engages them and makes them receptive to your message. And if you have several reader-types, then create an avatar for each type.

When we shift focus from ourselves to the reader, something magical happens. We start using the personal words you and your. They cast a spell over the reader, because they make them feel as if we are talking to them, and only them. They satisfy a basic human need to be heard and feel special. Try using you and your three times as often as I, we or us.

Personalised writing is about being so tuned into the reader that they recognise themselves and their agenda in your words. It’s empathic. E rmpathy creates connection. And connection persuades.

As for Big Fat Myth #2 (‘my writing must be clever, and formal’), if you’ve nailed Myth #1, you should be on your way to conquering this one. Long, fancy words in labyrinthine sentences lose the reader and tax their brain much more than short, simple words in short, simple sentences. If you get that, you probably won’t do it. This is about using mid-register, plain English, ie neither formal nor slang. So instead of terminate say end or kill; rather than in respect of/in relation to say about or on; don’t say in order to achieve our goal when you just mean to achieve our goal.

Finally, let’s annihilate Big Fat Myth #3 (‘more detail = less risk’).

Your choice of detail should be a function of the reader’s needs, not yours. So, if you must include lots of detail to explain a complex matter, that’s fine. Just make sure it’s so clearly structured, laid out and sign-posted that the reader will joyfully find the information they need. That includes but isn’t limited to contents lists, sub-headings, topic sentences, pull quotes, tabbed dividers, colour-coded sections and varied fonts.

Structure is more important than language. Inductive logic (ie leading with the main message, followed by the evidence) means front-loading your communication in service of the reader. In other words, lead with what most matters to them, eg your summary advice or the benefit to them of following that advice; your conclusion or recommendation, or the action you want them to take. They can then dive into the ensuing detail if they wish.

Make navigating your document easy-peasy.

What’s the bottom-line?

Top writers understand that persuasive writing is all about the reader. It’s about shifting intention and focus from themselves to their reader(s). Good writing is less about intellect, language or word-choice, and much more about emotional intelligence.

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If you’d like to go to the heart of the matter and download three chapters of my book, rhetorica® — a toolkit of 21 everyday writing techniques, here’s the link: Download rhetorica® Chapters

Scott Keyser runs Write for Results, a communications and business development consultancy. Write for Results works with professionals who perform technically complex work (eg lawyers, accountants, engineers), but who sometimes struggle to communicate the value of that work to their market in an engaging way. Scott and his team simply show them how to make their comms — including their bids, tenders, pitches and proposals — clear, concise and compelling.

To book a slot to speak to Scott about your or your team’s writing, click here:

Speed-read

Here are the five mistakes:

1. Vague objective
2. Waffle and wind
3. Poor structure
4. Formal language
5. Passivitis (over-use of the passive voice)

As this article is Season 1, Episode 1, we’re just dealing with the first mistake here — otherwise it would be an extremely long article and you probably wouldn’t read it! Coming soon to a screen near you, Episodes 2 to 5 will handle the other four mistakes.

MISTAKE NUMERO UNO: Vague Objective

Have you ever read an article or blog that meandered from subject to subject, that didn’t seem to know where it was going? Chances are, the author didn’t either.

This is often because the author didn’t take the time to plan, and part of planning is nailing your objective or purpose. This is your magnetic north, the Pole Star of your writing.

If writers do consider their objective, it’s often in terms of what they want to say to the reader, ie their main message. They’re focusing on the communication transmission. The best writers turn that on its head and focus instead on the reception, ie how they want the reader’s behaviour to change as a result of receiving the words. It’s a subtle shift, but it’ll cause a sea-change in your writing.

How to nail your objective

I recommend using an acronym, F.F.A. — Facts. Feelings. Action. In other words, what you want your reader to know, feel and do. I’m going to address the triad in the order of Facts, Action, Feelings.

Facts: what do you want the reader to know?

This will vary enormously, depending on what you’re writing and for whom.

If you’re writing a pitch for instance, there will be many things you want the client to know, e.g. your understanding of their needs; your proposed solution, approach, team and price; the great benefits they’ll get when they appoint you; your track record with similar organisations or contracts.

The challenge with facts is knowing your reader well enough to judge which ones they need and which ones they don’t. In other words, pitching (excuse the pun) at the right level of information and detail. Too little detail and they’ll feel frustrated; too much and they’ll be overwhelmed or bored.

Action: what do you want the reader to do?

The list is endless. You might want them to respond to your blog or client alert, approve your award submission, give you a pay rise (chance would be a fine thing!), sign off your budget application, register for your training course, send you the document you need. The single action you need from the reader is usually obvious.

Feelings: what do you want the reader to feel?

Where persuasive writing gets interesting — and challenging — is in the emotions department.

Many people think that emotion has no place in business. But we neglect it at our peril.

Think about a recent or live document and list all the emotions you might want your reader to feel when they’re reading or have read your document. Here’s my list, in no particular order:

• Confidence/trust
• Desire
• Inspiration
• Anger, outrage
• Excitement/enthusiasm
• Motivation
• Patriotism
• Fear
• Greed
• Relief/reassurance/comfort
• Self-value, self-esteem

In the professional services environment you work in, I would suggest that the vital emotions are confidence/trust, excitement/enthusiasm, fear and greed.

A client is unlikely to heed your legal advice if they don’t trust you or have confidence in your ability.

If your document is dull, your persuasion is unlikely to work. We don’t bore people into submission, but we can excite them to action. Hint: they will find benefits to them and/or their business pulsatingly exciting.

What might your reader be scared of or anxious about? If falling foul of a new directive could land them in prison, I think you’ll get their attention.

What do they want more of, are greedy for? Not just money. Maybe they want more time, information, control, power, influence, opportunity, a better image or a sounder reputation.

So, what’s the role of feeling and emotion in persuasion? It’s all thanks to this guy…

… the grandfather of rhetoric, a pupil of Plato and tutor to Alexander the Great. None other than Aristotle.

Aristotle identified the three elements of persuasion that are as relevant to us in the 21st century as they were in the fourth century BC:

Ethos: the character, reputation or credibility of the ‘persuader’, i.e. you, the writer.

Logos: ancient Greek for ‘word’, this is about appealing to the reader’s sense of logic and reason.

Pathos: ancient Greek for passion or emotion. Aristotle believed this was the king of the three.

The bottom-line

The reason why Feelings in F.F.A. are so important is this: logic makes people think, but emotion makes them act.

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If you’d like to go to the heart of the matter and download three chapters of my book, rhetorica® — a toolkit of 21 everyday writing techniques, here’s the link: Download rhetorica® Chapters

Scott Keyser runs Write for Results, a communications and business development consultancy. Write for Results works with professionals who perform technically complex work (eg lawyers, accountants, engineers), but who sometimes struggle to communicate the value of that work to their market in an engaging way. Scott and his team simply show them how to make their comms — including their bids, tenders, pitches and proposals — clear, concise and compelling.

To book a slot to speak to Scott about your or your team’s writing, click here:

Now you know what readability is and what the Readability Stats on your screen look like… how do you access them?

To score your readability, follow two steps: 1) activate the stats; 2) run the Spelling & Grammar check. Let’s deal briefly with step 1 in Microsoft® and Apple.

Activating the readability stats in Microsoft^® Word

Click on ‘File’ in the toolbar, ‘Options’ in the left-hand column, then on ‘Proofing’. The dialogue box that appears looks like this:

 

Towards the bottom, under the heading ‘When correcting spelling and grammar in Word’, are two options: ‘Check grammar with spelling’, and ‘Show readability statistics’, which is greyed out. To activate the stats, tick/check the ‘Check grammar with spelling’ option. The ‘Show readability statistics’ option below it should then automatically be ticked/checked; if not, do it manually.

Make sure as well that the drop-down box alongside ‘Writing Style’ says ‘Grammar & Style’ (as above), and not ‘Grammar only’.

Activating the readability stats in Microsoft^® Word for Mac 2011

In the toolbar under ‘Word’, go into ‘Preferences’: under ‘Authoring and Proofing Tools’, click on ‘Spelling and Grammar’. You should then see this screen:

Tick/check the box marked ‘Show readability statistics’ and make sure that the ‘Writing style’ drop-down box says ‘Standard’ or ‘Grammar & Refinements’. Click ‘OK’ and you’ve activated the stats.

How to score your readability in the above programs

Place the cursor at the start of your body copy or highlight the text you want to score. Run the Spelling & Grammar check (‘Tools’, in the toolbar), accepting or rejecting the options as you wish (click on ‘Ignore’, ‘Ignore all’ or ‘Ignore rule’ to get through them quickly). At the end of the S & G check, a dialogue box asks if you wish to check the remainder of the document – click ‘No’ and the readability stats appear.

Trouble-shooting problems in the readability stats feature

If you get odd scores (0% readability doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer!), it may be because…

… your document has lots of graphs, graphics or bullets (the stats work best on body copy/narrative text, i.e. prose of complete, punctuated sentences);

… your word count is too low: the stats struggle with text of fewer than 200 words;

… when you activated the stats in the dialogue box shown above, if you’re on a PC you should have opted for ‘Grammar & Style’ in the ‘Writing Style’ drop-down box, rather than ‘Grammar only’ (otherwise the ‘Show readability statistics’ option may be greyed out).

Word of warning: the stats work best on fully punctuated body copy of at least 200 words; they don’t work well on titles, headlines, subheadings, bullet points and captions. If your document has lots of these, save it as a text-only file and run the stats on that for a truer score.

If you struggle accessing the Stats, ping me an email: scott@writeforresults.com.

Don’t let the tail wag the dog

When I show people on my training courses how to use these readability stats, they run around like frisky puppies editing their work to edge their FRE score over the magic 60% plain English line and beat their colleagues. I like to see healthy competition, but don’t let your new-found toy blind you to its limits. The stats only tell you what’s going on in your writing mechanically; they don’t assess the quality of your content.

You could be writing complete rubbish; you’ll only know it’s readable rubbish!

What I want to cultivate in you, rather, is your writerly judgment, your ability to assess your own writing. If you’re happy with what you’ve written and reckon it hits the spot as far as your reader goes, then whether it scores 59% or 61% is immaterial.

The bottom-line

Get into the habit of scoring your readability, to track how your writing is improving. And show your colleagues how to do it!

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If you’d like to go to the heart of the matter and download three chapters of my book, rhetorica® — a toolkit of 21 everyday writing techniques, here’s the link: Download rhetorica® Chapters

Scott Keyser runs Write for Results, a communications and business development consultancy. Write for Results works with professionals who perform technically complex work (eg lawyers, accountants, engineers), but who sometimes struggle to communicate the value of that work to their market in an engaging way. Scott and his team simply show them how to make their comms — including their bids, tenders, pitches and proposals — clear, concise and compelling.

To book a slot to speak to Scott about your or your team’s writing, click here: