Lead Newsletter Articles

When it comes to writing, there is a deceptively simple formula to follow. It’s called KISS, short for “Keep It Simple, Silly”. This doesn’t mean you should “dumb down” complex, sophisticated material. Rather, it’s a call to write with the kind of clarity that enhances communication and understanding— even when the material is complex.
 
Several years ago The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about computing a writer’s “fog index”—that is, an index that measures just how convoluted, wordy, or unclear writing can be. The formula for identifying “gaseous” writing, according to the Gunning Mueller Clear Writing Institute, is as follows:

1. Find the average number of words per sentence in a writing sample 100 to 200 words long. Treat independent clauses, even in the same sentence, as separate sentences.
2. Calculate the percentage of words having three or more syllables. Don’t count capitalized words or verbs that become three syllables by adding es or ed.
3. Add the average sentence length to the percentage of big (three or more syllables) words. Then multiply the total by .04. The resulting number is the years of schooling needed to understand what you’re reading. The moral of the story? Professional writers write simply. The Catcher in the Rye has a fog index of six, as does most of the material in TV Guide. The Wall Street Journal, Time, and Newsweek each average about 11.

Writing Style
There’s only one writing style for you, one that is singularly yours. Whether you’re writing a commencement speech, an annual report, a news release about the appointment of an executive director, or a feature story on some good work your organization recently accomplished, your style—the process by which you approach the task, your universe of words, and your ability to express yourself— remains distinctively yours. The trick is to adapt it to fit the occasion. Brochure writing requires one approach—reader-friendly prose that aims for clarity. Feature stories and personality profiles require another, and news stories require yet another. (The lead in a news story should include the most important facts within the first 30 words or so. Speech-writing, which requires an approach all its own, is discussed at greater length below.)
 
The following tips, culled from a number of sources and our own experiences, should give you some ideas about how to manage and adapt your writing style to the project at hand.
 
Preparing to Write
It’s not easy to begin writing. In fact, getting started is probably the hardest aspect of writing. If there were a book on how to overcome “writer’s block”, which often takes the form of procrastination—doing anything else but writing—it would be a sure best-seller. But while there is no one cure, there are several ways to deal with the symptoms.
 
Create an outline. Start by outlining your ideas on paper. It will help you organize your thoughts and provide a structure for your creativity.
 
Look “down the tunnel”. Before you start, figure out where you want to finish. Imagine yourself about to enter a tunnel and picture an image at the end of it.
 
Procrastinate. Give in to the feeling, but give in creatively—doodle, concentrate on something else, go to sleep but get up in the middle of the night and try again. The human brain is an extremely logical, methodical, and orderly center for the organization and digestion of information. By focusing on other things, you let your subconscious do most of the work. Even if you’re not consciously concentrating on the task at hand, your mind will continue to consider it. So take your mind off the immediate writing task— but do so only after you’ve reviewed the materials once or twice and given thought to what you’d like the piece to do. Give it time and keep coming back to the task at hand, rejecting your openings until you come up with one you like. It may not be the one you end up with, but it’s a start.
 
Use “mapping”. Marilyn Hanf Buckley, a Berkeley professor, first came up with this idea, which is closer to doodling than outlining. Start by jotting down the story assignment in a circle in the center of a sheet of paper. Then draw lines, or “highways”, radiating out from the circled assignment. Each “highway” should represent a train of thought. Next, relate facts, or “driveways”, to a “highway”, laying them out in sequence until you’ve exhausted that train of thought. You can even create “back roads”—wandering dotted lines that connect different “highways” and “driveways”.
 
Write the way you speak. Well, almost the way you speak. According to Ethel Grodzins Romm’s “Writing Guide” in Editor & Publisher, unedited writing is filled with repetition because we write the way we think. Speakers double back and double up to help their listeners, simply because the spoken word goes through the ear fast and only once. Linguists tell us that 50 percent of spoken English is redundant, filled with phrases such as “future plans”, “past history”, “mental telepathy”, “typical example”, and so on. Write in a conversational style. Writing “conversationally” will steer your language clear of passive phrases, jargon, wordiness, and overblown sentences, all of which are common in professional writing. You don’t talk like that, so why write like that? Careful editing should eliminate the redundancies, the use of the passive voice, and convoluted syntax. Remember, it’s always better to write something and then rewrite it than never to have written it at all.
 
Use words that count. Peter Jacobi, a writing consultant, tells his clients: “Consider the first five to ten words and make them count. Consider the first sentence and make it count. Consider the first paragraph and make it count. Consider the lead so that it counts.”
 
Use “peopling”. Almost every story can be told from an individual’s point of view. Show how people are affected. Describe who is doing the work, what their plans and visions are, what their experience is. Let people speak for themselves. Use dialogue, including quotes and actual bits of conversation. Use third-person narration (i.e., he said this or she did that) for straightforward appeals; use firstperson narration if the piece is anecdotal, if it’s a speech, or if there is humor involved.
 
State the facts. As John Ciardi, a magazine writer, once noted: “Never send an adjective on a noun’s errand.” Public relations professionals have to be careful about editorializing in news releases and most other materials. Except for a little hyperbole in editorials or “Letters to the Editor”, take care to maintain your credibility when communicating with the media. Using charged adjectives and superlatives tends to make editors skeptical and diminishes your credibility. Let the readers draw their own conclusions based on the information presented. Of course, a skilled writer can help shape perceptions by the way he or she frames the information. In other words, if you think your project is exciting, don’t say it’s exciting; describe the program in a way that excites. Show, don’t tell.
 
Attribute. Attribution is never having to say you’re sorry. If someone else said it, be sure to give him or her credit. So many hoaxes have been perpetrated in journalism (leading, in one instance, to an ill-gotten Pulitzer Prize) that it’s difficult to overplay the need to attribute. If you send a story to an editor, you have entered the world of journalism. Play by its rules. You’ll never have to say you’re sorry—to the editor, to your own organization, or to yourself.
 
Use “image” words. Follow the advice of Edward T. Thompson, former editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest, and use first-degree words. These are words that immediately bring an image to mind (face is a first-degree word). A second- or third-degree word has to bring a first-degree word to mind before it can be imagined (visage is a second-degree word, countenance a third-degree word).
 
Be brief. Use short words. Throw unique out the window and watch out for other superlatives as well. Keep your sentences short, your paragraphs short, and your stories only as long as they need to be.
 
Keep a fresh eye on your subject. Writing is an expression of the creativity in each of us; it should not be automatic.
 
Some final tips. Ethel Romm suggests that you observe the following simple rules before you give your work to someone else for a second opinion:

• Get rid of nearly every it, this, that, who, and which.
• Read your piece aloud, paying attention to the copy’s rhythm. Take the naturalness of your normal conversation and put it into the piece.
• Make sure passive phrases need to be passive. Can you activate them?
• Don’t “peter out” at the end of your piece. When you’re done, end it.

Usually you can lop off your closing remarks without sacrificing the effectiveness of your ending. There are only so many times you can say goodbye before your readers/editors will say the same to you.
 
Finally, write about things that interest you. If the subject matter doesn’t interest you, and you don’t write about it in an interesting fashion, it certainly won’t interest your audience.

Diane Fusilli is senior vice president of the Not for Profit Practice of the public relations firm of M Booth & Associates.

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