Listen: I am going to keep telling you about my flash story, “Assistance,” out now in the new sixth edition of The Quiet Reader magazine, until every single one of you has read it. Whoever is holding out on us, please get on it so I can stop plugging the story in here. Everyone else will be so grateful.
In the past I have commented that I have never and will never write an article that’s “for dummies” because Shelf Life has a very intelligent readership, and also, why insult your audience? That’s a terrible idea. The good news is, this is not an article for dummies. This is about how to write for dummies, or, to put a finer point on it, to people who are not going to comprehend and retain the information you are trying to give them—for whatever reason.
My partner requested this article, not only the topic, but all the way down to the title (the subtitle is all me). He asked if I would do a Shelf Life on how to communicate as effectively as possible with people who are not inclined to absorb your information.
This has some applications for fiction writing if you squint: How much information do you tube feed your audience and how much do you let them figure out for themselves, given that you want the maximum number of readers to “get” your text (enough information) but find the read satisfying (there were some things left for them to puzzle out) and definitely not condescending. However, I’m especially talking about writing to impart information in today’s Shelf Life. This is handy information for writing things like:
Process documentation
Instructions
Meeting minutes/notes for distribution
Business correspondence
And probably a lot of other stuff. Those are just off the top of my head the things I use these tricks for every day.
Sometimes people do not absorb the information we give them in the way we chose to offer it, and we might assume it’s because that person was too stupid to understand what we were saying. But there are lots of reasons why people don’t understand the information we give them other than they’re just not “intelligent enough.”
I know for a fact this is not true because the largest single group of people who misinterpret or completely fail to understand my documentation and instructions are authors. And oftentimes these are authors of scholarly and academic texts, people with multiple advanced degrees. These people are anything but stupid. This leads to the number-one publishing joke that we are all telling each other all the time, which I have mentioned in Shelf Life before, which is:
Authors can’t read.
Obviously, they can read. They just choose not to, sometimes. But authors’ ability to read notwithstanding, it’s important to note that reading comprehension does not equal intelligence (although it does make learning easier). Plenty of incredibly intelligent people can’t read. There are many kinds of intelligence.
But back to the point, I suppose it’s possible that sometimes someone’s reading comprehension is poor because they’re just not very intelligent. But much more often the culprit is something else, like:
The reader is busy or otherwise pressed for time
The reader is distracted
The reader does not care about what you are telling or asking them
In these cases, the result is that the reader does not give your writing close attention. They miss key parts of what you wrote, the don’t retain what they read, and they definitely don’t do any critical thinking about what any of it meant.
I can cop to this. Someone I worked with once sent me an email that had the misfortune to reach me first thing in the morning. I didn’t read his email carefully because I was distracted and undercaffeinated and I responded to what I thought he was asking me, but I missed a critical point in his message and my response did not address his question the way I thought it did. This definitely resulted in a case of one of my colleagues on the other side of the internet connection scratching his head like, “Can she not read? I was so clear. How did she misinterpret this?”
My point is that anyone can experience a bout of poor reading comprehension, even if that’s something they’re usually pretty good at.
In my career I have spent a lot of time honing the art of imparting complex instructions to people who are too busy to give my message their complete attention—or too distracted, or too disinterested. So today I am bringing you my top tips for communicating with people who—for whatever reason!—never seem to pick up the information you’re putting down.
Less Is More
When someone doesn’t read your instructions carefully and doesn’t give them careful thought, they’re going to end up coming back to you with questions. Usually questions that were addressed in your original instructions. Count backward from ten slowly and resist the urge to type “per my previous email.”
In response to people coming back with follow-up questions, some of us want to give all the information up front. Just put it all in that instruction booklet, in that process doc, in that task assignment email—one source of information, all in one place, that the reader can’t just print out or bookmark and refer back to as needed. It’s not like they need to memorize the entire thing. It’s a reference for them.
What you do when you overexplain to be comprehensive or stave off follow-ups, you stand chest deep in a swift-moving river with arms akimbo trying to stop the reader’s attention from rushing past you. Telling the water to stop is futile. You gotta do an Ophelia in the bulrushes deal and just . . . succumb. No matter what you try, the reader is only going to give you so much attention. The trick is not to bargain with them for more attention but to fit the information you have into the amount of attention they’re likely to give you.
One page, y’all. If the thing you’re writing goes on to a second page you’re boned.
Lots of things are longer than one page. Shelf Life, for instance, is longer than one page. Things can be longer than one page. Things people are going to read because they have to, even though they don’t want to, should be as short as possible. If your text goes onto the back of the sheet of paper, they’re not going to flip it over. If readers have to scroll to see all of it, some of those readers are simply not going to scroll.
Keep everything critical on one page.
What do you do when your information can’t possibly be condensed into one page? If you have a twelve-page style manual or instruction booklet or process document? Create a cheat sheet, FAQ, or quick tips summary for the first page of the document that contains the most important stuff. Some users are only going to ever look at that first page.
Example: We had a very modest-length style manual at one of my publishers (I’ve seen house style guides go to hundreds of pages but this one was short). However, style stuff was often getting missed because users weren’t reading the whole thing. Since the house style at this publisher followed CMS with some exceptions, we developed a “[Publishing Company’s] House Style Exceptions to CMS” cheat sheet for the first page. This didn’t completely resolve the issue but cut way back on style misses because users could glance at the cheat sheet to see what the most important exceptions to CMS were as a clue that they needed to look this particular style point up in the manual.
Don’t Bury the Lede
The order you put the information in matters. With any text, you lose readers through attrition. Text wears readers down and the more text there is the more readers will give up. Not everyone who begins reading the thing you wrote will make it to the end.
Look to your left. Now look to your right. One of the three of you has already closed your browser and stopped reading today’s Shelf Life because it was too long.
There’s a tendency to want to explain background information first, like:
Why we’re starting this task or project
A summary of the situation so far
Project administration details
Resist this urge. Begin with the things that are most important, which are usually:
The action items;
Who is responsible for what action items;
The deadline(s), if there is one.
If you start with this stuff, readers who stop after 10 percent will have seen what they’re responsible for and can go on to review the background information later in the message or document. If you lead with the background information, the readers who dropped out at 10 percent don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing.
In email correspondence, a great practice I picked up at my current company is to begin email subject lines with “Action Requested” or “FYI Only.” I don’t do this with perfect fidelity but it helps me get tasks back from people and it helps people get tasks back from me.
Think about most instruction booklets or manuals you have seen and how they apply this. Sure, they have 20 pages of information to impart in teeny tiny text, but the first page is usually a quickstart guide to using the item without electrocuting yourself or burning your house down. Whatever information your reader needs to not burn the figurative house down, put that in page one.
Use Visual Cues Liberally
Nobody likes to read a wall of text unless they are reading a novel, or Shelf Life. If you need people to absorb and retain information, a wall of text is not the way. This is why textbooks are full of tables, figures, charts, illustrations, text boxes with key points, and so on. Visual interest helps people retain information.
Not every form of communication works with every type of visual cue. Imparting information visually in the way that is most likely to let the reader absorb it effortlessly is like a whole field of study that is not my specialty. If you’re writing process documentation, you probably have flow charts. If you’re making an instruction manual, you probably have diagrams. But what kind of visual cues work in an email?
Bulleted lists
Are my
Number one
Favorite
If you have any series of important things (eg, a series of action items), put them in a bulleted (or numbered) list. The reader’s eye goes right to that.
Use bold type and underlining when it’s appropriate. These are never appropriate in fiction writing but they are appropriate in email writing.
I have been known to put tables in emails. For instance, consider the following examples:
Here’s the plan: Amanda will draft the RFP and circulate it to the group for review, which we’ll try to finish by mid-October. Once it’s approved, Elizabeth will send it out to the list of potential vendors by early November and collect their responses by November 15. Maria will develop and distribute the scorecard while we’re waiting on the responses so when Elizabeth sends us the proposals we’ll be ready to complete our scores by December 1. Does that sound good?
Versus:
You can still write that whole wordy paragraph if you want to. Just put it after the visualized information. Using the table, each person can quickly see when they have an action item and when it’s due without wasting time reading about what everyone else is going to be doing. Visual information is the ultimate in helping people mind their own business.
In a perfect world, wouldn’t everyone read everything you send them carefully and completely, review the text of your message to see if they can answer their own questions, and make intelligent inferences based on the information within? Yes. Do we live in a perfect world? Not even close.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.