Chapter Six Improving Readability with Style and Design McGraw-Hill/Irwin Copyright © 2014 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

6-2 Learning Objectives LO6.1 Describe and apply the following principles of writing style that improve ease of reading: completeness, conciseness, and natural processing LO6.2 Explain and use navigational design to improve ease of reading. LO6.3 Describe and apply the components of the reviewing stage, including a FAIR test, proofreading, and feedback.

6-3 Improving Ease of Reading with Completeness You can achieve completeness with three basic strategies: 1. providing all relevant information; 2. being accurate 3. being specific

6-4 Provide All Relevant Information  The key to providing all but only relevant information is to plan, write, and review your message strategically  Repeatedly asking yourself what information is necessary for the purpose of your message will help you accomplish this.

6-5 Be Accurate  Accuracy, like specificity, strongly impacts your readers’ perceptions of your credibility  Just one inaccurate statement can lead readers to dismiss your entire message and lower their trust in your future communications as well.

6-6 Be Specific  The more specific you are, the more likely your readers are to have their questions answered  If you are not specific, your readers may become impatient and begin scanning and skimming for the information they want

6-7 Improving Ease of Reading with Conciseness  Conciseness implies omitting needless words so that readers can rapidly process your main ideas

6-8 Comprehension Rate and Sentence Length Figure 6.2

6-9 Avoid Wordy Prepositional Phrases  Eliminating extra words allows you to get your ideas across as efficiently as possible.  You will often find that you can reduce word count by 30 to 40 percent simply by converting many of your prepositional phrases into single-word verbs.

6-10 Use Action Verbs When Possible  First, find nouns that you can convert to action verbs  Second, find forms of the verb to be (e.g., be verbs such as is, are, am) and convert them into action verbs

6-11 Use Active Voice

6-12 Use Active Voice  The doer-action-object allows for faster processing because most people’s natural thinking occurs in this way  It also emphasizes the business orientation of action  Most important, it specifies the doer

6-13 Use Short and Familiar Words and Phrases  Whenever possible, choose short, conversational, and familiar words  Using longer, less common ones slows processing and can distract from your message.

6-14 Use Parallel Language  Using parallel language means that you apply a consistent grammatical pattern across a sentence or paragraph.  Parallelism is most important when you use series or lists.

6-15 Using Highlight Key Words and Phrases  When you want to highlight ideas or phrases, consider using bold, italics, or underlining to draw and keep your readers’ attention  If you use too much special formatting, your main ideas will not stand out