“Rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.”
–Brené Brown
Having empathy means we develop the capacity to consider what it’s like being in the shoes of another person. These days, businesses recognize the importance of teaching their staff to be empathic listeners. This approach helps customer service associates tune into their customer’s needs. As writers, we’ve been doing this without realizing it. We already take an empathic approach to assess our reader’s needs – think of audience analysis in the pre-writing stage. We can consider the reader’s limited attention span, preferred reading level, and how they scan a blog post for information. Aside from creative writing, most types of business writing can benefit from less words and a clearer purpose.
In CMPW we tackle professional writing in various forms, from strategic comms plans, project scopes, creative briefs, and chatbot scripts, to name a few. These types of writing follow a particular structure to organize and filter content. Our writing goals define our levels of empathy for the reader – for example, rewriting an organization’s policy for accessibility requires us to step into our reader’s shoes. Writing a lesson script with the learner’s outcomes in mind helps us to write in a way that would easily explain what we are teaching.
Writing with empathy also helps us connect and engage with our readers. Writers for non-profits will use persuasion to connect with the reader’s emotions. Their goal is to get readers to feel empathy for the organization’s cause. For an organization, writing in a friendly, direct, and engaging tone of voice for internal stakeholders also helps build morale.
While audience analysis is key to help determine the content you write, the purpose of your document informs voice and tone. Are you writing to inform or persuade? As an art history student, I learned to write needlessly wordy artist statements. To make matters worse, the concepts were abstract. Take as an example this sentence, “Artists explore the self-reflexive nature of identity formation.” Based on the substantive editing process, I would rewrite this as, “Artists shape their identity through the process of self-reflection.”
I think wordiness adds a layer of complexity that hinders connection. The use of jargon, long sentences, the passive voice, and too many adjectives alienates our readers. To reach a wide range and diverse group of audiences, we need to adapt our approach ask questions.
It took me years as a self-taught volunteer ESL teacher to grasp how to effectively structure a lesson and teach material students would find engaging. I thought repetition would bore my students, but it was the opposite. My students craved the chance to read aloud sentences and repeat phrases used in conversations. Many students asked to learn useful phrases for visits to the doctor’s office and to better converse with their grandchildren. Whether they are a group of art enthusiasts or ESL students, you need to find out what your learners want to learn. Below, you’ll find helpful tools and editing tips.
Use Readability Analysis and Writing Enhancement Tools
Readable will give your writing a score based on its reading ease – cut and paste your text here to find out. This gauge is based on the Flesch-Kincaid writing ease formula, which counts the number of syllables, words, and sentences you’ve used. Also, I highly recommend you download Grammarly’s AI-powered Writing Assistant, a free app that can assess your writing for clarity, correctness, engagement, and delivery. The free version also helps correct issues with syntax and punctuation. Just copy and paste your text in the editor, and the AI algorithm will do the rest.
Use the Reverse Outline Method for Substantive Editing
Your ideas need some structure for the sake of clarity. A reverse outline can help organize the flow of your writing and analysis. To begin, complete your first draft, then read through and identify each paragraph’s main idea, jotting it down in the margin. You can do this on Microsoft Word’s track changes setting or use Google Docs. This process will enable you to see the flow and progression of your thoughts on the subject. If the paragraphs do not flow into one another, you can rearrange them or add transitions that explicitly state the connection between ideas.
Tips for Style, Voice
Usually, context and audience determine whether a piece of writing sounds academic, creative, personal, or professional. The writer’s attitude about the subject and her/his readers is reflected in the tone. The voice of the text can range from sounding distinct and personal or academic and informative. Tools such as Grammarly can help improve our writing. I checked every paragraph of this blog post using Grammarly’s Writing Assistant. I did not stop editing until the “Delivery” metric changed from “slightly off” to “just right.” It takes a substantive edit and copy edit to get there, and Grammarly’s prodding to develop a confident voice helps, too.