Lucid Writing (2): Principles of Clear Business Writing

Without skipping the preliminaries, it already exists as a factor that messages and information are circulated for the purpose of clear communication.

Before your persuasive fulcrum is perceived, before your potent argument points winged up in the air are brought down to hear, before the accuracy of your research paper is considered, there has to be an understanding that spans across the headings and lapses at the final full stop.

Believe it or not, you are not awarded for the amount of advanced grammar you string in a single sentence, you are not considered as a good writer simply because your punctuations are well-positioned you are painted in that manner based on how well your work is understood, the objective of your piece can never be achieved if the reader has to constantly consult a dictionary and strain his/her eyes trying to read between the lines.

For what it is worth, it is worth knowing that a reader should only drift back a few lines for reference purposes, not for the sake of trying to carve out the meaning of those few sentences. Do you understand?

This article lists possible principles that adhering to such would leave you with a see-through full scalp sheet. Besides these eight principles, which will be disclosed to you, anything outside these shouldn’t be considered as something aiming to help augment the simplicity in your work, because this article contains what every writer requires.

The Principles To Keep In Mind When Writing For Your Business  

The first thing you should keep in mind while writing is that there is a concerning need for precision as well as brevity, so I will begin by telling you;

• Keep sentences short and simple.

Given that you have the elective to point between long sentences or short sentences, always go for short sentences, a total of 15-20 words is considered ideal to compose a sentence, by doing so it is guaranteed that you’d evade boring your readers, your points would be easily attained by readers, knowing that sophisticated wordings are what stretches a sentence.

Making a short sentence would force you, the writer, to adopt simple words that can be easily expressed, and as such, your work would come out clearer and more relatable. Do you now understand the concept behind this? Take for example

•   The man stood outside the window and poised his eyes till they pierced my essence and stared into my soul
• The man stood outside and glared at me

Which of the above sentences is clearer and easier to grasp?

• Prefer the simple to the complex.

This isn’t bastardising the use of sophisticated languages or abolishing it, note: the use of hybrid, compound, and complex forms of languages is an essential part of expression and description.

Most times collective words, which are often seen as complex, should be used in place of wordy phrases and lengthy definitions so far the word describes the sentence, and just for the sake of clarity if there is a simpler substitute for the rather complex word you shouldn’t hesitate to emplace such after all the goal is to express not impress E.g.

• He manoeuvred his body so as to efficiently evade the floating object > he dodged the floating object.
•   Dodge>Avoided
• Utilize>use

Etc… do you understand this?

• Use the familiar

What purpose does using an acronym or slang that is not globally recognised serve? When employing such words that aren’t known by at least 95% of your audience, your work would tend to be more layered and difficult to penetrate, and the number of readers would start declining at large due to how impossible it would be to read your piece.

Instead of inventing grammar structures and slang that are new to readers endeavour to make use of the already existing ones that are well understood by readers, that way you’d be able to effectively pass on your points, buttress them and equally make your work appealing E.g. it’s a clear case of killing two birds with one stone.

• Consider the use of I’m all ears> I’m listening
• Consider the use of I feel you> I understand you
• Consider the use of it’s a piece of cake> it’s easy
• Consider the use of letting the cat out of the bag> let the secret out
• Consider the use of break a leg> good luck

Consider the use of easily understood idioms, acronyms, and slang etc. This promotes readability, which is the end product of a clear piece.

• Avoid unnecessary words

Many fall victim to this; they use words that don’t fit the context. Words are directions, that’s how you get to understand Chimamanda’s a thing around your neck, that’s what unravels the path you’d need to take while writing the reasons why teachers are better than farmers, the moment what isn’t meant to become what “is” the entire sentence takes an irrevocable wrong turn and the topic or subject meant to be expressed is left untouched,

now imagine writing a love letter to my dearest and involving the likes of; “you’re so boring”, “you’ve changed” yes they are very unnecessary and by the manner and order of presentation you have defeated the purpose of that very love letter, for one, the words “you’re so boring” leads to distortion of reasoning, my dearest would become puzzled as to what type of a letter is that.

Likewise, that is how readers perceive non-useful and unnecessary words; they question the motive of your write-up. This wouldn’t in any way interpret your piece as what you envisioned it to be

• Put action in your verb.

In other words, use active verbs, use an active voice, minimise the way you curate with passive sentences, expel sentences like “the door was slammed by Richard” and replace them with “Richard slammed the door”.

• While Richard walked past the door, he slammed it aggressively, right
• The door was slammed aggressively the moment Richard walked past it—wrong

This was stressed in the first instalment of lucid writing—things to avoid, but was there a given reason for this development?

A basic factor for such is to make a sentence short and concise, as seen above, the length of both sentences differs in that more words are used to express a common idea when jotted down passively.

Aside from that, there is a chance that more grammatical errors would be produced while writing in passive voice—you might cause split infinitives, create sentence fragments, and more so spawn a plain, incomprehensible sentence. So, try to use passive voice at a minimum; if possible, try not to use it at all.

• Write the way you talk.

Peculiarity stems from this, you find out that Wole Soyinka style of writing is far apart from Buchi Emecheta’s style of writing, if you are a very keen individual with razor-sharp senses you would be able to distinguish and personify their works to their respective persons even without peaking at the author’s biography or name.

This is because they write as they speak; do you want to produce clear write-ups? Write as you speak, relate with your readers as if you were speaking to them in your own way, you don’t adopt the intonations or speech pattern/method of another person while talking, similarly, do not adopt another writer’s style of writing. Stay unique.

• Use terms your readers can picture

Once more, emphasis is being placed on this; do not blindside your readers; use words that readers’ inference would help them connect with understanding. Avoid bringing to light situations readers can’t picture; this indirectly tells you to describe with vigour.

Is there a situation happening in a house? First start by letting your readers know that there is a house and something is happening in it, use terms like abode, threshold, house, you know, terms that readers can picture, use words that formerly describe an idea to hint, for readers, what is playing out, or what is about to play out. Avoid the use of words like “conditions”, etc., and rather state the reason why such is being referenced.

• Write to express, not impress.

What does this connote? For whatever piece you are writing, be it a story, poem, article, etc.  There is always a theme, that theme can be otherwise seen as an umbrella word that deserves to be opened in content format and expressed till the other person at the end of the table fully understands everything in the garden.

Express the idea; your work is only read so a cent or two can be picked out, the enthralment should come as a result of its clarity, which would require you to engage readers, once more with simple, easy to relate words, for example; what do you think a novice can make out from this.

• The decimation of the entire pivotal curve was a result of a sundry amount of incognito lackadaisicalness and lull in apprehending the novel quagmire that rebounded as a matter of spontaneous happenings.

A novice or the average English student won’t be able to pick much from that, it is already evident from the example that the writer was aiming at impressing rather than expressing, no doubt the words were fine-tuned so that the succeeding agrees with the preceding but while you might marvel at the construction did you really learn anything from it? No, exactly.

Nothing was expressed there; if there was a theme, or rather if there were multiple themes, would you be able to pick one and relay how the above expressed it? No, exactly. When writing, consider how a reader would feel reading your piece first.

• Understand your audience: “I am good at expressing my feelings with idioms and sarcasm. Will this merry band of polite individuals understand what I have written down?
• Assess your sentences and words: “Does the word ‘consider’ really provoke them to think, does it divert their attention to another possible realisation?
• Substitute difficult-to-pronounce words with easy ones.
• Just express yourself, as if you are conversing with familiar faces.

Has the content of this article shown you how to curate a clear piece and write one? If you have any concerns or questions, feel free to drop them in the comment section. We’ll be glad to have them.