4 Key Principles for better Writing

How to communicate efficiently and effectively through writing

With the advent of the internet, connectivity has skyrocketed exponentially. With the a click of a button, we can send our messages, emails, texts across to another person on the other side of the world — almost instantly and seamlessly! Technology is also expected to further increase connectivity as new 5G networks are being set-up.

With the increased connectivity, it is ever more important for us to learn how to write effectively and efficiently, and to get the idea across to another person clearly. Before the actual writing begins, we need to know what is the purpose of writing. Why am I writing this email/advert/report? Is it to inform? Or to persuade? Or to inspire? Once we are clear about the objective of writing, we can then adopt the most suitable tone (formal, friendly etc) and write in a cohesive manner with a clear goal in mind.

The 4 key principles of better writing are: Simplicity, Precision, Beauty and Evocativeness. Before we move on, it is imperative to understand that there might be some contradiction in the adoption of the 4 principles. When you try to simplify your writing, your writing might become less beautiful. When you use more sophisticated words to boost the writing’s elegance, some concepts might not be fully captured, resulting in writing that is less precise.

Ultimately, the 4 key principles are general themes for you to refer to and it is up to you to decide how much of each ingredient you would like to use and how you would prepare your writing.

After spending years and years working in a specific occupation, we might tend to converse with our colleagues using technical jargons and terms that only people in the industry would understand. This will be a problem if we use the same terminology when facing the general public — people who are not usually exposed to the words that we use on a daily basis. As a result, there might be miscommunication, less understanding and a general failure to get an idea across.

As such, it is important to break down large, abstract concepts into smaller, digestible pieces of information using simple, fewer words.

When we simplify our writing, we should:

Example: High-quality leadership in the administration is a precondition for the facilitation and enhancement of continued economic growth.

Instead of using so many words which complicate the idea, we can simplify the sentence into:

Strong leadership in the government is needed for sustainable economic growth.

When we communicate a concept to another person, the process is usually:

Sometimes, the original meaning of the concept might be lost in steps 2 and 3, when we do not use the best words to get the idea across. This results in vague, imprecise writing that hinders good writing.

To have precision in writing, we need to:

Example: Economists say that the recent drop in soybean exports resulted in plunging government revenues.

This sentence assumes that the reader is well-versed in economics and can draw the links by himself or herself. However, the reader might not know economics that well so it is important for us to show the step-by-step link as shown below:

Economists say that the recent drop in soybean exports led to soybean producers earning less money. This leads to less tax collected from soybean producers and hence, the government’s revenue is falling.

When our writing is too plain and simple, it is easy for the reader to get bored and lose interest. Therefore, an elegant style of writing to add beauty into writing is essential to sustain the reader’s attention.

When attempting to beautify our prose, we may choose to:

Example: Apple has reported that their revenue was $90 billion in the last quarter, the highest revenue reported in the last three years.

Instead of using the word “revenue”/“reported” many times, we can remove it altogether or replace it with a synonym to avoid repetition and to show the reader that we have a wide range of vocabulary.

Apple has reported that their revenue was $90 billion in the last quarter, the highest in recent years.

A good piece of writing is able to evoke certain emotions, and perhaps galvanise the reader to take a certain action. Evocativeness is what stimulates the writing; it adds flavours to a plain piece of text; it stirs up the reader’s imaginations; it is what makes writing come alive.

To add evocativeness into our writing, we should:

Example: When the examination ended, all writing stopped and the papers needed to be collected.

To give this sentence a personal touch, we can add in people and engage the senses:

When the examination ended, the teacher ensured all students stopped writing before proceeding to collect the papers.

With these 4 key principles, your writing will undoubtedly improve. Writing is an art, and you are the artist. The words you write will be the strokes of paint raining down on a blank piece of canvas. How you write, what tone you use, which of the 4 key principles you choose to focus on… It is completely up to you.

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