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BUSINESS WRITING FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLE

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BUSINESS WRITING FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLEThe most effective ways to get your message acrossCarrie Marshall

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© BCS Learning & Development Ltd 2018

The right of Carrie Marshall to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criti-cism or review, as permitted by the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, no part of this publica-tion may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, except with the prior permission in writing of the publisher, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries for permission to reproduce material outside those terms should be directed to the publisher.

All trade marks, registered names etc. acknowledged in this publication are the property of their respective owners. BCS and the BCS logo are the registered trade marks of the British Computer Society, charity number 292786 (BCS).

Published by BCS Learning & Development Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, First Floor, Block D, North Star House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, SN2 1FA, UK.www.bcs.org

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78017-4457PDF ISBN: 978-1-78017-4426ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78017-4433Kindle ISBN: 978-1-78017-4440

British Cataloguing in Publication Data.A CIP catalogue record for this book is available at the British Library.

Disclaimer:The views expressed in this book are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or BCS Learning & Development Ltd except where explicitly stated as such. Although every care has been taken by the author and BCS Learning & Development Ltd in the preparation of the publica-tion, no warranty is given by the authors or BCS Learning & Development Ltd as publisher as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained within it and neither the authors nor BCS Learning & Development Ltd shall be responsible or liable for any loss or damage whatsoever arising by virtue of such information or any instructions or advice contained within this publication or by any of the aforementioned.

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Publisher’s acknowledgementsReviewers: Oliver Lindberg and Justin RichardsPublisher: Ian BorthwickCommissioning Editor: Rebecca YouéProduction Manager: Florence LeroyProject Manager: Sunrise Setting LtdCover work: Alex WrightPicture credits: Shutterstock/DenisProduction.comTypeset by Lapiz Digital Services, Chennai, India.Buy the complete book: www.bcs.org/books/businesswriting

CONTENTS

About the author viiiPreface ix

1. WHAT IS BUSINESS WRITING? 1Why bad writing is bad news 1

2. LEARNING TO WRITE WITHOUT FEAR 3Take your time 3Borrow bright ideas 4Key takeaways 6

3. THINK BEFORE YOU INK 7Selling the sizzle: an IT example 7Lights, email, action! 10Key takeaways 10

4. CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS 11Know your audience 11Pick your platform 12Hope for the best and plan for the worst 13Take a picture 15Key takeaways 15

5. FIGHT THE FLAB 17Unnecessary expertise 18The passive voice and weak verbs 18Too many words 20Long sentences and endless paragraphs 20Showing off 21Clichés 21Woolly writing 22

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CONTENTS

Take advice from George Orwell 23Key takeaways 23

6. JUNK THE JARGON 24What is jargon? 24Bad buzz 25Why you should banish buzzwords and junk the jargon 27Key takeaways 28

7. MAKE YOUR CASE 29How to win friends and influence people 29Writing presentations 31Three is the magic number 32It’s a shame about ROI 33How to present your business case for a large project 34ROI: plan for the best but try to predict the worst 35Key takeaways 37

8. WRITING FOR ROBOTS: BUSINESS WRITING FOR THE INTERNET 38Writing for Google 38SEO: how to do it the right way 40TL;DR 42What to do about long documents 43Writing for email newsletters 43Someone invented a new way to get readers; you’ll never guess what happens next! 46Key takeaways 48

9. BE YOUR OWN AUDIENCE 49Let go of your ego 49Simplicity 50Brevity 50Accuracy 51Effectiveness 51Key takeaways 53

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CONTENTS

10. COMMUNICATING GOODWILL AND DELIVERING BAD NEWS 54Goodwill hunting 54Now for the bad news 56Key takeaways 61

11. WHAT TO DO WHEN THE WORDS WON’T COME 62Have a deadline 62Break it into bits 62Write an outline 63Don’t start at the start 63Don’t stop 63Forget about perfect 63Have a KitKat 63Go and do something else 64Key takeaways 64

12. THE BUSINESS WRITING HOUSE OF HORRORS 65Aviva accidentally fires its entire workforce 65Elop needs some helop 66Proof that spell checking matters 66Why Damore should have written less 66Why Jack got attacked 67When hashtags go bad 67The worst motivational memo ever 68Key takeaways 69

AFTERWORD 70

References 71Index 73

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carrie Marshall is a journalist, copywriter, ghostwriter and broadcaster from Glasgow. A professional writer for 20 years, she has written thousands of features, columns, reviews and news stories for a huge range of magazines, newspapers, websites and trade publications. As a copywriter she has crafted copy for some of the biggest names in the technology, retail, audio and finance industries, and as a novelist she sold enough copies of her self-published debut to buy a car. Not a great car, but still a car! Under various names, Carrie has written 11 non-fiction books, co-written six more and co-written a six-part Radio 2 documentary series. She blogs at www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com and tweets as @carrieinglasgow.

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PREFACE

This book is for people who know their stuff.

It’s for the programmers and the engineers, the product managers and the analysts, the people who know how things work and how to get things done.

It’s all about communicating what you know to the people who need to know it, and how to do that in the easiest, simplest and best way.

In this book you will discover how to communicate in the most effective way, the resources you will need to get the job done and the tricks that can transform even the most daunting document.

In Chapter 1 you’ll explore what business writing really means, and why bad writing is bad news for everybody.

In Chapter 2 you’ll find out how to learn the tricks of the trade by reading other people’s words.

In Chapter 3 you’ll discover why good business writing is simply about telling a story.

Chapter 4 explains the differences in writing for different kinds of people, and for different kinds of publications.

In Chapter 5 we’ll take our writing to the gym and make it leaner.

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BUSINESS WRITING FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLE

Chapter 6 explores the dangers of jargon, and how clear language makes all the difference to effective communication.

Chapter 7 is your survival guide to making a business case for an investment or other important business change.

In Chapter 8 you’ll discover how to write well for the internet, and to ensure that Google likes what you do.

Chapter 9 focuses on the importance of editing and testing your work.

In Chapter 10 you’ll learn how to deal with the kind of writing everybody dreads: communicating bad news.

Chapter 11 gives you the tools to deal with the dreaded writer’s block, and what to do if the words don’t come.

And in Chapter 12 you can laugh at other people’s mistakes in the Business Writing House of Horrors.

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1 WHAT IS BUSINESS WRITING?

Business writing is something we all do without necessarily thinking about it. It’s the writing we do as part of our day-to-day work: emails, memos, proposals, reports and anything else we use to communicate with our colleagues, clients or customers.

Good business writing matters. We spend a great deal of our working time reading, so waffly writing is a waste of that time. Vague communications don’t inspire trust from colleagues or clients. Proposals that are not persuasive won’t get the green light. Brochures full of buzzwords will leave potential customers cold.

Unfortunately, a lot of the business writing we all receive isn’t as good as it should be. Our inboxes overflow with jargon-heavy reports, emails that take forever to get to the point and memos that need to be read four times to work out what on Earth the writer is on about.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

WHY BAD WRITING IS BAD NEWS

Bad writing is bad for productivity. When Harvard Business Review surveyed 547 business people about their reading habits, it found that they averaged 25.5 hours per week reading at work. That was mostly email. Eight-one per cent of them said that bad writing was a massive waste of their time, because email was often ‘too long, poorly organised, unclear,

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BUSINESS WRITING FOR TECHNICAL PEOPLE

filled with jargon and imprecise’ (Bernoff, 2016). The senders might as well have sent pictures of bears wearing top hats. At least that would be funny.

Business writing gets a bad rap because so much of it is awful. Sometimes that’s deliberate, the corporate equivalent of a politician refusing to answer a straight question. But often it’s because people simply haven’t been given the tools to do it properly.

You wouldn’t sit somebody down in front of a PC and expect them to write code without any training or experience, yet every day businesses do just that with business writing. Just because somebody’s an expert in their field doesn’t mean they have been given the tools they need to communicate their expertise and enthusiasm in the best possible way.

That’s what this book is here for.

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INDEX

accuracy 40–1, 51

acronyms 12, 21, 24–5, 42

active voice 19–20, 52

Adams, Douglas 62

apologies 58, 59

Apple 5, 6, 7–8

Aristotle 31

Arnold, Matthew 70

audience

email 11, 12, 13

infographics 15, 16

interpretation 13–14

knowing 11–12

making a case 29–31

picking your platform 12–13

social media 11, 13, 14

writing for the internet 40, 41

Aviva 65

bad news 54, 56–60

bad writing 1–2

Bank of England 35

BCS 13

‘best in class’ 26

borrowing costs 35

borrowing ideas 4–6

Boyle, Susan 67–8

BP (blood pressure) 25

breaks 63–4

brevity 13, 20, 41, 50–1

bulleted lists 22

‘burning platform’ memo 66

Business Bullshit Bingo 25

buzzwords 1, 4, 24, 25–8, 55

‘call to action’ 10, 44

capitalisation 51

case, making a 29–37

audience 29–31

ROI 33, 34, 35–7

writing presentations 31–2

cash flow calculations 36

clarity 22, 60

clichés 21, 26, 28, 52

clickbait 46–7

cliffhangers 46

Compaq 18

complaints 57–8

context 13

Corporate Bullshit Generator 4

criticism 49, 50

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) 24

cultural differences 11–12

‘curiosity gap’ 46

customer satisfaction 30, 34

‘customer-focused’ 26

Damore, James 66–7

deadlines 62

Design for Real Life 14

Dorsey, Jack 67

Dropbox 43

editing 49–52

effectiveness 51–2

ego 49–50

elevator pitch 30

Elop, Stephen 66

email

audience 11, 12, 13

bad writing 1–2

borrowing ideas 6

‘call to action’ 10, 44

goodwill 54

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intended recipients 65

newsletters 43–6

embedding 43

empathy 60

endless paragraphs 20–1

euphemisms 59

‘exceeding expectations’ 27

excessive text 20–1, 42–3, 50–1, 52, 60

exclamation marks 55–6

executive summary 30, 34

Facebook 11, 14

flab 17–23, 44

excessive text 20–1

passive voice 18–20, 50

weak verbs 18–20

woolly writing 22

floppy disks 12

foreign words 23, 25

formal language 54, 56

Game of Thrones 50

generation gap 12

goodwill 54–6

Google 38–41, 66–7

grammar 51

Greer, David 68–9

Hamblin, James 46–7

Harvard Business Review 1, 30

hashtags 67–8

headlines 47–8

honesty 56, 59

HR departments 59, 65

humour 14, 45–6, 60

IBM 18

infographics 15, 16, 31

informal language 11, 56

interest rates 35–6

internet, writing for 38–48

audience 40, 41

clickbait 46–7

email newsletters 43–6

excessive text 42–3

Google 38–41

headlines 47–8

search engine optimisation 40–1

interpretation 13–14

IoT (Internet of Things) 24

iPhone 5, 6, 7–8

jargon 1, 2, 4, 24–5, 31

buzzwords 1, 4, 24, 25–8, 55

keywords 38–9

large projects 34

LDL (low density lipoproteins) 25

level of knowledge 12

links 10, 41, 43, 44–5

Linn 4–5

long documents 43

long sentences 20–1

Martin, George R. R. 50

memos 1, 50, 66, 67, 68–9

Meyer, Eric 14

Microsoft 12, 18, 66

MoD (Ministry of Defence) 25

momentum 63

Moscow Times 69

needs, identifying 30, 32

newsletters 43–6

Nielsen, Jakob 42–3, 44

Nokia 66

NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) 25

O’Hara, Carolyn 30

offence 14

operating costs 33, 35

Orwell, George 23, 25

outlines 63

passive voice 18–20, 50

Patton, General George S. 68, 69

PDFs 43

perfectionism 63

persuasive writing 1, 5, 29–30

Pichai, Sundar 67

pictures 15, 16

platform, picking your 12–13

‘Politics and the English Language’ 23

positivity 52, 56–7, 60

PowerPoint 15, 31

prediction 33, 35–7

preparation 3

presentations, writing 31–2

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press releases 17, 28

printouts 52

project definition 34

project discount rate 35–7

project organisation 34

promises, keeping 46–7

punchiness 15, 17, 19, 45, 50

punctuation 51

responsibility, taking 59

ROI (return on investment) 27, 33, 34, 35–7

Royal Dutch Shell 68–9

rule of three 31–2

SaaS (Software as a Service) 24, 25

Savard Saucier, Cynthia 14

search engines 38–41

selling 5, 7–9

email newsletters 43–6

making a case 29–32

‘sizzle’ 7–9, 46

a story 8–9, 32

SEO (search engine optimisation) 40–1

Shariat, Jonathan 14

showing off 21

simplicity 23, 41, 42, 50

‘sizzle’ 7–9, 46

smartphones 8, 42, 43, 44

social media 10, 38, 41, 46, 67–8

audience 11, 13, 14

Spartacus 28

spellchecking 51, 66

story, selling a 8–9, 32

Strunk, William 20

subject line 44, 45

Sun 66

Swift, Jonathan 14

talent 3

Technically Wrong 14

The Atlantic 46–7

The Elements of Style 20

The Office 69

time 3, 33

timeliness 54–5

tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) 42–3

Tragic Design 14

Trello 5

trustworthiness 1, 40, 48

‘turnkey solutions’ 27

Twitter 11, 13, 67–8

unconscious bias 14

unnecessary expertise 18

vagueness 1, 22, 23

‘value-added solution provider’ 27, 28

Wachter-Boettcher, Sara 14

waffle 1, 13, 23, 31

weak verbs 18–20

White, E. B. 20

woolly writing 22, 52

writer’s block 62–4

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