The CEF recently invited Paul McClure, Senior Communications Officer in the World Bank’s Web Program Office, to create and lead a workshop on written communication.  He provided participants from nine countries with key concepts, rules, and recommendations that can help them write more effectively.  Participants applied these directly to their own writing throughout the highly interactive course. McClure also shared much of the course content with the CEF’s staff.  

We know that written communication is essential for work efficiency. Many of us have to write reports, case studies, and news releases. What is the most important thing to keep in mind when writing documents?

People are looking for reasons to read what is produced: you need to hold the reader's attention and be as direct as possible. Getting main points across is more important than providing a lot of details and background material. The reader quickly figures out if the text is going to be worth reading. There is always an option not to read it if they don’t see anything that pulls their attention into the text.

During the course we covered the concepts of clarity and coherence. Could you please explain the difference between them and give examples?

With clarity we focused on editorial techniques that help people write more effective sentences.  An example is the tendency in English to use complex, abstract nouns that actually derive from verbs.  Once action gets transferred into a noun, the verb becomes uninteresting and the sentence feels more passive even if, from a grammatical standpoint, it is still an active sentence.  

Coherence is more about how sentences fit together to form paragraphs—whether there is a connection between them and a consistent focus across them. During the course where we looked at samples of participants’ writing and editing and saw cases where, across a paragraph, the grammatical subject or topic kept shifting from sentence to sentence, making the text harder to follow. We looked at samples not only to fit sentences together well but to keep the focus on a single topic, or a clear evolution of the topic across the paragraph.

What do you mean by editorial consistency?

It centers less on formal rules and more on deciding how specific terms are going to be presented when there is more than one acceptable way to do it. An example we talked about is whether the term “web site” is one or two words.  People write it either way, or even with a hyphen, but an organization needs to choose one approach and use it consistently. The key thing is to determine how such terms are going to be handled and then create a style guide or list that staff can refer to easily. This can also touch on how an organization brands itself, how the titles of people and names of departments or programs are presented, and how terms are abbreviated.

We also talked about starting documents. Which is the most effective way to do it?

We looked at texts that were perfectly correct in terms of grammar, but that still had challenges to convey  the main message of the piece. I emphasized that when users come to any kind of document they want to know the main messages, whether there is a road map to how the text is organized, and whether is it really worth continuing to read it. As an author, you usually cannot afford to start the document with historical background - you may lose the reader on the way to expressing the main point.  How you start and how you format a document can determine whether you accommodate different levels of readers, including those who just need to see the key information at a glance.

If the writer or editor decides whether to use British or American English, are there big differences?