This chapter does not offer a comprehensive course in the principles and techniques of effective writing. Instead, it seeks to deal only with those which are basic to the essential writing needs of those headless chickens who wish to become laidback bears. Nor does it contain much grammatical or other ‘technical’ information about language. It aims to increase effectiveness in writing by providing guidance in the use of language and by offering opportunities for the practice of basic principles and techniques. This should do more to help avoid the pointless panic of the headless chickens and replace it with the calm, considered approach of the laidback bears.

Poor and Good Writers Compared

The most important differences between poor (headless chickens) and good (laidback bears) writers are as follows:

Accuracy

The laidback writer must check that whatever he or she writes is accurate. That is to say, the facts should be verifiable, the arguments should be soundly based, the reasoning should be logical, and so on. Nothing should be written down which will misinform, mislead or unfairly persuade a reader. This is particularly true both in academic and industrial writing.

Brevity

Nothing that is written down should be longer than it need be. But brevity should not be achieved at the expense of omitting essential and significant information. The test to apply in achieving this is not ‘Can it be left out?’ but ‘Must it go in?’ Laidback bears never like doing unnecessary work.

Clarity

It is a relatively simple matter for writers to make things clear to their own satisfaction, but they must also make an effort to ensure that readers will understand them as clearly. One way to achieve this is to allow a period of at least 24 hours to elapse between the first draft of material and its revision. This should permit writers to approach the material with a degree of objectivity and ask themselves whether their readers will understand them readily.

Simplicity

It will usually happen that if material is accurate, brief and clear, it will also be as simple as it is possible to make it without distorting the meaning. It is also possible that if a writer can reduce what he or she wishes to communicate to its essentials, this will help to see whether it is accurate, brief and clear or not.

Many of the difficulties that are experienced in communication can be traced to unnecessary complexity in expression. The reason is probably that too many writers overestimate the reading abilities of the people for whom the material is intended. The average reader has a reading speed of about 225 wpm and a comprehension level of no more than 75 per cent for most of the materials they are likely to read in the course of a normal week. They are therefore not capable of tackling things of any great difficulty, especially if they have a limited amount of time available for reading.

Effectiveness

This will emerge from the general effect of a writer’s attention to the specific considerations, such as those discussed above, but the key to effectiveness probably lies in suiting the order and arrangement of what is being communicated to the purposes in writing and to the nature of the material itself. There are basically three ways in which points can be ordered. These are:

• 1.Chronological order..
• 2.The order of ascending importance, in which the main point comes last.
• 3.The order of descending importance, in which the main point comes first.

Before writers begin to plan their material, they should decide which of these arrangements will best meet their requirements. If the material is long, it is quite possible that all three arrangements will be used in different parts.

Purposes in Writing

We have already stressed the importance of defining purposes as clearly as possible before communicating. The point has to be made again here, for unless you know why you are writing - that is, what you hope to achieve by writing - you cannot write effectively. In defining your purposes you need to know:

• 1.The subject you have to write about;
• 2.The form the writing has to take (report, letter, memo etc.);
• 3.Who will read the material;
• 4.The result it is hoped the material will achieve.

You should preferably write this information down, together with any other reasons you have for writing, so that you can refer to it as the need arises when you are writing.

At this point an incubation period of the kind described in Part 1 Chapter 6 should be inserted into the process if at all possible. This will help in performing the tasks involved in the next stage.

Planning

The preparatory work for a piece of writing and the writing itself should be carefully planned. A few people have the ability to write well without forethought, but most of us find that planning helps to make the difficult task of writing a little easier. The main sections of the plan can be lettered (a), (b), (c), etc. and the points to be included in each section should be numbered (i), (ii), (iii), etc., even though these headings may not appear in the final draft (especially, for example, in the case of an article, a letter or an essay).

Collection of information

Whatever the writing task, one pitfall to avoid is the too early selection of information to be presented. The writer’s first task is to collect. On most occasions, it is desirable to collect a good deal more information than will actually be used. This enables some useful distillation to take place so that the final draft contains only relevant and necessary information.

Selection of information

The two questions to ask in selecting the information to go into a piece of writing are:

• 1.Is it relevant to the subject?
• 2.Is it necessary to include it?

If positive answers cannot be provided to both questions, the information should be omitted.

Arrangement of information

If the preparatory work has been carefully planned, this will make the arrangement of the selected information much easier.

The main point that you have to watch is that the chosen arrangement should be both logical and suited to the purpose in writing. It will usually follow the same pattern as that chosen for the preparatory planning, with any amendments made necessary by, for example, an inability to collect certain information or by the need to be more strictly selective because of considerations of time or space.

Writing

Once the information to be presented has progressed through the stages of collection, selection and arrangement, you now come to what most people regard as the most difficult stage of all, the actual writing. However, if the earlier stages have been given proper attention, writing becomes a much easier (and even pleasurable) activity. At this point, another incubation period of the kind described in Part 1 Chapter 6 should be inserted into the process if at all possible. This will help in performing the tasks involved in this stage. Laidback bears are very fond of incubation periods because they produce results without effort.

As a general rule, each point in the arrangement plan or outline will require a separate paragraph. If paragraphs are too long, however, it is desirable to find some means by which they can be condensed or split into two or more paragraphs.

Since the beginning of a paragraph has a certain natural emphasis, this approach will also help you to give proper weight to your important points.

If main points cannot, for stylistic or other reasons, be stated first, the position which has the second greatest amount of natural emphasis is at the end of the paragraph. Important statements which are tucked away deep in the heart of paragraphs may be undervalued or missed altogether by many readers.

The basic sentence pattern is one in which, for example, the subject is stated first, then what the subject is doing and lastly who or what the subject is doing it to (i.e., the object). This can easily become monotonous and usually it is possible to make the same point in a number of ways. An example will make some of the possibilities apparent.

Basic pattern

• The headless chicken switched on the machine without checking it first and received an electric shock.

Alternative patterns

• Because it did not first check the machine, the headless chicken received an electric shock when it switched it on.
• By switching its machine on without checking it first, the headless chicken received an electric shock.
• Having switched its machine on without checking it first, the headless chicken received an electric shock.
• The headless chicken received an electric shock because it had switched its machine on without checking it first.

How many more ways of writing down the above sentence can you find?

Types of Writing

There are four main categories into which most kinds of written materials can be placed. In many materials, more than one type will be present but one will usually dominate the others and set the general tone and style. The principal characteristics of the four types of writing are as follows.

Description

The writer is using words to create a mental picture for the reader. The key words and phrases will be those which describe colour, shape, size, length, appearance and other qualities. Particular attention should be paid to choosing those which most accurately and appropriately give a reader the information necessary to be able to build up the picture in his mind’s eye.

Exposition

Here the aim will be to explain how something works, to give the facts about a situation, or to make an objective and accurate statement of some kind. Particular attention should be paid to organising the material so that it offers a logical progression from stage to stage. Care must be taken that nothing is omitted that the reader will need in order to understand the relationship of one part of the material to another.

Argument

Points supporting an argument should be clearly distinguished from those against. Evidence and reasons should be stated clearly and concisely, and facts distinguished from opinions. If a reader is to be persuaded to agree with your case, the best course is to be as honest as possible with him and to avoid attempts to mislead by concealing information which does not support the case or by using dishonest tricks of argument.

Narrative

Here the writer takes the reader through time and place in order to tell a fictional or factual story. Care needs to be taken that no significant event is overlooked and that minor matters are not given more weight than they deserve and so confuse a reader. Too much detail in a narrative can quickly obscure the essential progress of the story.

Readability

At no time should the search for a style cloud a writer’s essential desire to make life as easy and pleasant as possible for readers. In recent years a number of formulas have been devised to enable a writer to gauge how difficult a reader will find material. Some of these readability or ‘fog’ indexes are themselves complex and difficult to calculate, but a simplified method will give a reasonably reliable indication of readability. There are five simple steps to carry out.

• 1.Select three passages of 100 words each from the material to be assessed.
• 2.Count the number of sentences in each sample of 100 words. Do not count any part sentence as a sentence, unless it contains more than 10 words. Divide 100 by the number of sentences to obtain the average length.
• 3.Count the number of words which contain more than two syllables each. Count each long word each time it occurs if it appears more than once. This gives the percentage of hard words in the passage.
• 4.Add the average sentence length to the percentage of hard words. Multiply by 0.4. Do this for each sample.
• 5.Add the three figures together and divide by three to obtain an average. The higher the resulting figure, the more difficult the material. A figure higher than 12 indicates difficulty in the material. The lower the figure a writer can obtain by shortening his sentences and reducing the number of long words, the better he will please his readers.

The readability level of this section, for instance, is 9.1.

Practical hints to increase readability

• 1.Omit unnecessary words from sentences.
  • The courage and bravery of the bear was admired and praised by the chickens.
  • The courage of the bear was praised by the chickens.
• 2.Use the active statement form wherever possible.
  • The courage of the bear was praised by the chickens. (Passive)
  • The chickens praised the courage of the bear. (Active)
• 3.Omit qualifying phrases unless they are essential to the sense of sentences.
  • The chickens, somewhat enthusiastically in the circumstances, praised highly the courage of the bear.
  • The chickens praised highly the courage of the bear.
• 4.Keep sentences as short as possible.
  • The chickens, who had never had to fight their opponents so fiercely before, praised the courage of the bear.
  • The chickens praised the courage of the bear. They had never had to fight so fiercely before.
• 5.Change long words and phrases to shorter ones where possible.
  • The feathered avians expressed their approbation of the intrepidity of their quadruped adversary.
  • The chickens praised the courage of the bear.
• 6.Make sure you know the exact meanings of the words you use and use them in appropriate contexts.
  • The chickens exalted the courage of the bear.
  • The chickens praised (or extolled) the courage of the bear.
• 7.Preserve the unity of each sentence and each paragraph. In other words, each sentence should have one subject and each paragraph should deal with a single topic.
  • The chickens praised the courage and their cockerels admired the battle strategy of the bear.
  • The chickens praised the courage of the bear. Their cockerels admired its battle strategy.
• 8.Keep the reader in mind all the time when you are writing and try to write in such a way that he or she will understand. Ask yourself: Will this be clear to someone else?

Presentation and layout

The way a piece of writing looks on the page can be nearly as important as what it contains. If material looks unattractive, it will not be read except by those who have to read it. Even then, it will not make so great an impact as it will if it is carefully set out and attractively presented.

Generally speaking:

• The more space that can be allowed the better
• Handwritten material must be clearly legible
• Margins should be generous
• Spacing between paragraphs and sections of the material should be similarly unstinting.

Headings, where used, should be clear and helpful to the reader. There are many occasions, for instance in certain kinds of reports, when lettering or numbering headings can be additionally helpful.

Final Analysis of Written Materials

Before it is regarded as being finally finished, a piece of writing should be checked carefully. The following questions indicate some of the points to be considered in doing this:

• 1.Are there any unnecessary repetitions?
• 2.Is each part of the whole complete in itself?
• 3.Is each part in the right place?
• 4.Is any part irrelevant or in need of rewriting?
• 5.Have any important details been overlooked?
• 6.Is there any ambiguity?
• 7.Has the reader been kept in mind all the time?
• 8.Is the whole arrangement of the material exactly suited to the purpose in writing?
• 9.Does the material read smoothly?
• 10.Is it a complete and well-ordered whole?