Tips for the ‘bureaucratic’ writer

Whether or not you’ve taken our tongue-in-cheek style test, if your writing makes even politicians sound lucid, please read on.

Here’s what our three ‘B’ test sentences look like when put together:

‘To the company’s regret, the issues its clients have been experiencing were due to a quality issue relating to the delivery of the IT-based system that is currently utilised in-house, and a review to identify lessons and learning points is now ongoing. Going forward, cancellation of the agreement can only be delivered upon receipt of written notification of a client’s intention to cancel three days prior to the cancellation. Should any client wish to comment on this issue, feedback submissions can be made via the company’s IT-based communications interface.’

At best you might be seen as injecting a tone of respectful formality, but mostly this style of writing is just pompous and, let’s face it, miserable to read.

So, whether sounding self-important or trying to be obscure is your goal then give yourself a gold star – you’ve cracked it. Conversely, if you’re trying to attract the attention of readers who are in no way obliged to give you it, here are some tips on how to win them over.

Keep it short – Sentences should contain 15 to 20 words on average. Ideally they should vary in length too. Granted, the three above are of different lengths but two of them contain over 20 words. The first alone contains an incredible 42. In fact the entire paragraph consists of 89 words, whereas our model example using the ‘D’ sentences comes to just 53.

Add the personal touch – Be natural and engaging. Don’t hide behind the company but say ‘we’ or ‘I’, ‘us’ and ‘our’. Similarly when addressing your readers, say ‘you’ and ‘your’.

Reveal your verbs – Avoid noun constructions such as a review to, cancellation of, notification of and instead say we are reviewing, in order to cancel, notify us. Otherwise you stifle the action, preventing the flow of words and making the language stodgy.

Be active – Active verbs make it clear who is doing the acting. Passive verbs make you sound impersonal and aloof. So say we currently use instead of is currently used; and you can make submissions instead of submissions can be made. (See *Blame others below for one example of when to be passive.)

Ditch jargon, clichés and business-speak – Examples here include issues, quality issue, the delivery of, utilise, ongoing, going forward, feedback, interface. Using hackneyed terms like these makes writers sound shallow and lazy.

Use the right word – An IT-based system is just our IT; the IT-based communications interface is simply email; quality can be excellent or awful and everything in between – which is it?; issues can be problems, obstacles, topics for discussion or editions of a publication. Help your readers by being precise.

Don’t repeat yourself – Issue/issues; delivery of/delivered; cancellation/ cancel; IT-based. It suggests lazy thinking and makes for dull reading.

Drop redundant words – A lot of our paragraph’s contents could be removed at no detriment to its message, by: i) applying the preceding tips to how it is written; and, ii) removing all other redundant words and phrases – e.g. relating to the delivery of, -based, currently, in-house, now – whose only contribution is to drag it all tediously out.

*Blame others – Taking responsibility when things go wrong, especially when it is not our fault, earns respect. There is, though, a solution where no-one need take the blame and that is by using the depersonalising passive voice – e.g. the breakdown was caused by a fault in the IT system.

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By applying these techniques here’s what our Model Answer (three ‘D’ test sentences) looks like:

‘We apologise for the unfortunate break in service, which was caused by problems with our IT system. Should you wish to cancel the agreement, under our new policy you must inform us in writing three days in advance. Email us now – we would love to hear what you think.’