One area of writing for government that is often done poorly is the preparation of media releases. In fact, many media releases are written and published with little thought as to the potential damage that they are causing.
Damage?
Well, if you are effectively reducing the credibility of your organisation, it can only be called ‘damage’, can’t it…
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Many people writing in government and business never use first person pronouns – words like ‘you’ and ‘we’.
So instead of writing “We will contact you within two weeks” the writer types “The department will contact you within two weeks”.
So what’s the problem with that? I’ll tell you in a moment.
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Good writing has flow. And the more complex the concepts that you are trying to communicate, the better the flow needs to be.
But what is ‘flow’ – and how can it be achieved?
The good news is that a few simple steps can give your writing much improved flow, allowing readers to more easily understand what you are trying to communicate.
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Many people believe that if the ideas are complex, so too must be the writing used to describe these ideas.
But that is simply not true.
Others believe that the mark of a good writer is one who uses long words and difficult sentence construction.
But that, also, is not true.
Instead, a good writer (especially in business and government writing) is one who can write about complex ideas in readily accessible language. To put this another way, they can write in a manner that is easy to follow – both conceptually and also in the language they have chosen to use.
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In my training sessions on business and government writing I typically spend several hours talking about how, as a writer, you must always address the specific needs of your audience. And that applies whether you are preparing content for a public websites, your intranet, or writing a minute or a brief or a report.
To make the point that writing for the audience is vital, I put up PowerPoint slides saying things like:
At every stage of writing, place yourself in the minds of your audience.
However, after facilitating many groups, I realised that while everyone nodded when these slides went up, many people didn’t really understand what I meant.
So now I use an example. It’s an example so radically different that it makes the point very clearly.
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One thing that it’s important to take on board as a writer in business or government is that, typically, people aren’t hugely interested in reading what you write.
To put that in other ways: readers are often bored, thinking about the upcoming weekend, consciously or subconsciously wondering why they are reading your document, are actually listening to a conversation going on in the office… all that sort of stuff!
All of this sounds rather negative but it’s important to recognise that it is very often the case.
However, you can turn all this to your advantage – and develop a style that allows you to write much more effectively. Read more »
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One of the difficulties that many people experience is in organising their writing – knowing where they are going before they start. In fact, rather than firstly thinking things through, this type of writer tends to start writing and then ‘see how they go’, making changes as the piece progresses. But the trouble in taking that approach is that a lot of editing is needed – a process that slows progress and can also make it difficult to achieve clarity.
So how do you organise formal writing ‘in your head’, so that when the thinking is done, you can just start writing?
One approach is to use ‘mind mapping’.
It’s a term that for some people has connotations of some sort of spiritual awakening, but the way I use mind maps is practicality itself.
Let’s take a look.
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It doesn’t matter if it’s for business, education or just general interest, accurately absorbing written information at high speed will benefit you.
For an opening ‘motherhood’ statement, that one is hard to beat: no one will disagree! But the corollary is that it makes sense for everyone to learn speed reading – to be able to read at a pace faster than they’ve grown accustomed to.
But isn’t ‘speed reading’ just a gimmick? As in, no one actually uses speed reading techniques for real? Not all: it doesn’t matter what you call it – speed reading, accelerated reading or just plain fast reading, in all cases the outcome is a hugely positive step.
The one-day speed reading course that I run for Anne Jenkin and Associates typically sees participants double in their effective reading rate (and that measure includes both speed and comprehension), while in my last course, two participants increased their speed by a mind-boggling seven times!
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At the beginning of each of my training days in writing for government, I go around the room, asking people what they hope to gain from the session.
There’s always a mix of answers.
One person will confide that their writing is always too fluffy – their writing goes on and on when in fact they should get the point across in far fewer words. Others say that they find it hard to plan the writing task until they’re actually doing it – and as a result, they need to do multiple drafts.
But one of the most common answers is that the participant wants to learn to write in the ‘government style’.
They always say this in a slightly hushed tone, because – you know – the government style is such a slippery customer to come to grips with, a complex amalgam of bureaucratic speak and inside government knowledge. And if you’re new to the public service, how on earth do you gain the skills to write in that manner?
Well, the good news is that the required style for writing for government is actually nothing like that.
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I’ve previously written about how most people coming to your website look at a page for less than 10 seconds and then never return. That’s right – a majority of people!
Initially that statistic sounds unlikely but when you think of your own web browsing habits, it makes sense. For example, if you’re searching for information on a topic, your first stop is likely to be Google. Your search spits up several million(!) results and you start clicking on links. If the link doesn’t provide you with what you want, you click backwards – you seldom bother exploring the rest of the site.
And even when you do stay within the site, your glance at each page to see if it is relevant is short – often very short indeed!
So how do you grab people’s attention, stopping them at your page and so having a much better chance of communicating your content?
Here are four key tips.
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