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Well be starting the

webinar at 3 minutes
after the hour

Clear Writing
Simple steps to make your
communication clear
Sharon Burton
Sharon@sharonburton.c
om
Twitter: sharonburton

Tweet:
#ClearWriting

Clear Writing
Simple steps to make your
communication clear
Sharon Burton
Sharon@sharonburton.c
om
Twitter: sharonburton

DCL Company Overview

30 years of experience providing electronic document
conversion services meeting the needs of technology
today & in the future

More than 1 billion pages converted to date

Transform legacy & future documents
US Based project management team
Global capabilities
Specialize in complex projects
Employ a proven automated process

From Any Format to Any

Format
Audio/video transcription
Composition
Consulting
Content Reuse Analysis
Digital Publishing
Document & image conversion
eBook production
Project set-up/management
Quality Assurance
Translation services
Workflow analysis

Serving a Broad Client Base

Spanning all Industries

Publishers

Heavy and
Industrial
Equipment

Government
Defense
Life sciences
Automotive
Aerospace
Utilities

Financial Services
Manufacturing
Computing
Semiconductors

Telecommunicatio
ns

Webinar Mechanics
How does this thing work?

Welcome!

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Im Sharon Burton
Content Consultant
STC Associate Fellow
Other stuf

Been in the Tech Comm industry for 20 years

Content Strategy Consultant - I help you make
your content work better

Also teach:
Technical Communication to Engineering students at the
University of California, Riverside

Tech Comm certificate program at UCR Extension

Business Writing for University of Redlands

Custom training programs for clients

How this webinar works

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You are muted

If youre talking, hoping wed notice, we cant hear you

Were recording this webinar

None of your information appears in the final webinar
The recording link is provided to you automatically in a
follow up email tomorrow

A short survey is also included

Helps us make the webinars better for you

We should be done by the top of the hour

I know you have a busy day

Supporting role today

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DCL is supporting us today

If you have questions, they will help you in the
questions window

Lets say Thank you to Data Conversion Labs

for hosting this webinar

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Audience and
communicating

Communication

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From Wikipedia:
Communication is the activity of conveying
meaningful information. Communication requires a
sender, a message, and an intended recipient,
although the receiver need not be present or aware
of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of
communication; thus communication can occur
across vast distances in time and space.
Communication requires that the communicating
parties share an area of communicative commonality.
The communication process is complete once the
receiver has understood the message of the sender.

What does this mean?

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Communication is the activity of conveying

meaningful information.

This means that what we need to convey has

to be meaningful

To the point
Clear to our audience
No extra noise

What does it require?

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Communication requires a sender, a message,

and an intended recipient

We are busy people communicating with other

busy people

Our written communications convey the

message for us

Provides a record of our communication

But also think about videos, podcasts, etc.

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People want
communication in the
way they prefer
What does this mean?

Learning styles
One of the most important things we can know about
our readers is their learning styles

This tells us how to design the communication we deliver

4 adult learning styles

Visual
Auditory
Read/write
Kinesthetic (hands on)

Most people have a strong preference 2 or more

Some people are only one
Some rare people are all 4

Visual Learners
Pictures and line drawings
Show concepts in graphics
Flow charts are great
Tables are also graphics
A well designed page is also a graphic
Color is important

Kinesthetic Learners
Hands on stuf
Do instructions
Written words should be very descriptive
Textures, moving things, other feel things

Drawings and photos can work but they have

to show doing or texture or

Read/Writer Learners
More words are better
Lots of written text, following the writing
guidelines

More about the writing guidelines in a few moments

Auditory Learners
Sound is good
Podcasts and webinars and other voice over

Write in a conversational tone

As tho someone is talking

Written content not the best

They read the instructions aloud to provide that
auditory aspect for themselves

Adult learning styles

While people can learn in all 4 modes,
people have preferences for learning

There are no wrong learning styles

Just as there are no wrong eye colors

People are much happier getting

information in the mode they are
comfortable with
People are busy. Why give them information
in a mode that they typically dont like?

Learning preferences and jobs

Learning preferences also attract people to
specific jobs

Visual kinesthetics might be hair dressers, interior

designers, architects, photographers

Read/write auditorys might be song writers, actors,
journalists
Engineers are typically visual kinesthetics

A secret about learning styles

Now that you know a little about
learning styles, heres a secret
You will always want to deliver material that
matches your specific learning style(s)
This may not meet the needs of your
readers but you wont know why
This may also result in terrible
communication issues
They may have diferent learning styles than you
or the users

Clear Writing
Guidelines
How to communicate clearly

Whats in a sentence?
Sentences include:
Subject
Verb
Other stuf

Subject
Actor of the sentence
Bob

Verb
Action of the sentence, performed by the subject
Runs

Predicate and other stuf

Tells what the actor did or where the action happened or many other
things
To the car

Active voice
Active voice is critical to engaging writing
Active voice depends on the subject, the actor
The actor comes first

Passive voice:
The award was won by the writers.

Active voice
The writers won the award.

Always write active voice

Practice with sentences that start You can

Present tense
Only use (simple)
English has 7 or 8
tenses
Other languages
have more or less

We care most
about present
tense
It puts the action
in the sentence in
the now, making is
relevant and
immediate

past or (simple)
future tense when
it really happens
then

Past tense
Bob ran to the car.

Future tense
Bob will run to the
car.

Present tense
Bob runs to the
car.

Second person
He, she, it, they, we, I, you
You is second person
Youre writing to a specific person

Dont use the user

Unless there is really a diferent group of users,
separate from your reader

Second person is also easier to read in English

More familiar and trusted

Reader focused, reader centric

Because we write to people, we need to keep
the focus on the reader

Readers need to care why they need to know this

information
They want to know what they can do or why this is
important to them

For example:
WidgetBlue uses tags to talk to other products.
You can use tags to let WidgetBlue talk to other
products.

Short is good
Short sentences are easier to understand
Fewer ideas in a short sentence
No more than 25 words per sentence

Short paragraphs
Paragraphs are groups of related sentences
No more than 3 to 5 sentences per paragraph

Short sections
Sections are groups of related paragraphs
No more than 3 to 5 paragraphs before a section
heading

Headings
Use headings to break the narrative text into
chunks

Headings visually break up the page

Makes it easier for the reader to find the information s/he is
looking for.

It also makes the information look easy to understand.

Things that look easy to understand are easier to
understand.

Headings show the relationships between ideas or

the parts of ideas

Critical in overview sections where you are introducing the

user to new concepts

Building sentences and paragraphs

Paragraphs start with a topic sentence
Topic sentences explain the point of the
paragraph.

The reader can read just the topic sentence and get the
idea of the entire paragraph

Other sentences in the paragraph amplify and

support the topic sentence

The paragraph can include

an example that illustrates the concept
with a limitation or special case the reader should know
now that they know about the general class

Example
Another challenge is that business

writing follows very specific

formulas in structure. Think about
your resume, for example. Your
writing style, the points you
highlight about your career or
education, and the look and feel
play an important role. A company
uses all of these to decide whether
to ofer you a job.

Parsing the paragraph example

Another challenge is that business writing
follows very specific formulas in structure.

This is the topic sentence

Contains the point to the paragraph

Its a short sentence

12 words

Easy to understand
Short words

Parsing example, cont

Think about your resume, for example.

This is an example
Using you helps you picture your resume
Not some generic resume

Notice how you have a picture in your head

right away

You can relate

Parsing example, cont

Your writing style, the points you highlight
about your career or education, and the look
and feel play an important role.

Now that we have an example, we pull out

important features to think about

We created a picture in our readers head

Its 21 words.
Look how long that looks.

Parsing example, cont

A company uses all of these to decide whether
to offer you a job.

We bring all the ideas to a conclusion

In this case, its the point of the resume: to get hired

No sentence is longer than 25 words.

We have four sentences total

In sum
Think about these concepts for video
scripts, and other communication

To sum up
Cover all 4 learning styles
To learn more and find out your learning styles
www.vark-learn.com
Easy and fast. No wrong answers and select all that
apply

Tight writing
25 words or less per sentence, 3 to 5 sentences per
paragraph, headings every 3 to 5 paragraphs
Active voice, present tense, second person

Reader focused Why does your reader care about

this information?

You will get a link to the recording

tomorrow
Ill upload the slides to SlideShare later
today.

Questions?
sharon@sharonburton.com
Twitter: sharonburton
951-369-8590
www.sharonburton.com