Writing tips

How to improve writing

1. Use fewer nouns and more verbs

Before	After
Operation Philadelphia can only be a success through operational staff involvement such as increased vigilance, reporting and visibility.	Operation Philadelphia will succeed only if operational staff patrol public areas, keep their eyes open and report anything unusual.

Abstract nouns such as 'involvement', 'reporting' and 'visibility' don't describe specific things, so they leave the reader with only a vague idea as to the meaning of the sentence. Replacing abstract nouns with verbs means readers, i.e. the staff, have a clearer idea what they should do.

2. Remove jargon

Before	After
Understanding how to develop strategic innovation competence is a critical success factor for companies.	Companies need to know how to innovate in order to succeed.

There's not enough difference between 'develop strategic innovation competence' and 'innovate' to justify using four words rather than one. We turned the sentence round, replacing the jargony phrases with simple verbs.

3. Be active not passive

Before	After
A mistake was made in calculating your bill.	We made a mistake in calculating your bill.

The passive voice is typically used by writers to avoid responsibility or blame. Whether used deliberately or not, it tends to be less informative than the active voice because it allows the writer to leave out a vital bit of information: who or what did it

4. Punctuate properly

Before	After
I am sorry for the poor response you received when you first complained, please be assured your concerns have been logged.	I am sorry for the poor response you received when you first complained. Please be assured your concerns have been logged.

The comma is too weak a punctuation mark in this case. The first statement makes sense on its own, in other words it is a sentence. So using a full stop, to produce two sentences rather than one, makes the ideas easier for the reader to take in.

5. Avoid dangling modifiers

Before	After
Walking along the cliffs, the waves were crashing against the rocks.	Walking along the cliffs, I saw the waves crashing against the rocks.

The modifier, the phrase before the comma, leads the reader to expect the subject of the sentence to follow, but it wasn't the waves who were walking; it was the writer. It's fairly obvious what the original means, but the reader shouldn't have to work to figure it out.

6. Build a clean sentence

Before	After
Lucozade had a spontaneous, strong and clear image, the brand however was increasingly seen as being for sickness only, for children only, for occasional use.	Although Lucozade had a strong image, it was seen primarily as a tonic for treating sick children.

When writers try to squeeze too many ideas into a sentence - without thinking them through - the construction goes awry and the point is obscured. We encourage people to plan their writing and construct sentences that get their message across clearly.

7. Read it through

Before	After
In 1851, almost one-tenth of the population lived in Paris and its suburbs. By 1911, the rest of the country was occupied by only four-fifths of the population.	Between 1851 and 1911 the proportion of the French population living in Paris and its suburbs doubled from 10% to 20%.

The original is hard enough to understand because the focus, that is the subject of the sentence, changes from 'Paris' in the first sentence to 'the rest of the country' in the second. It is even harder because it uses different fractions that require effort to compare. We used percentages instead, to make the point more clearly.

For more tips on writing, have a look at the Clarity blog.