5.1 Introduction
You have finished your piece of writing and you feel a sense of relief. However, just when you think the production of your document is done, the revision process begins. Your document is not complete, and in its current state it could, in fact, do more harm than good. Errors, omissions, and unclear phrases may lurk within your document, waiting to reflect poorly on you when it reaches your audience. Now is not time to let your guard down, prematurely celebrate, or to mentally move on to the next assignment. Think of the revision process as one that hardens and strengthens your document, even though it may require the sacrifice of some hard-earned writing.
General revision requires attention to content, organization, style, and readability. These four main categories should give you a template from which to begin to explore details in depth. This chapter will explore ways to expand your revision efforts to cover the common areas of weakness and error. You may need to take some time away from your document to approach it again with a fresh perspective.
Evaluate Content
Content is only one aspect of your document. Let’s say you were assigned a report on the sales trends for a specific product in a relatively new market. You could produce a one-page chart comparing last year’s results to current figures and call it a day, but would it clearly and concisely deliver content that is useful and correct? Are you supposed to highlight trends? Are you supposed to spotlight factors that contributed to the increase or decrease? Are you supposed to include projections for next year? Our list of questions could continue, but for now let’s focus on content and its relationship to the directions. Have you included the content that corresponds to the given assignment, left any information out that may be necessary to fulfill the expectations, or have you gone beyond the assignment directions? Content will address the central questions of who, what, where, when, why and how within the range and parameters of the assignment.
Use these tips to help with content:
- Do you need to add information readers need to understand your document? Check to see whether certain key information is missing, for example, a critical series of steps from a set of instructions, important background that helps beginners understand the main discussion, or definitions of key terms.
- Do you need to omit information your readers do not need? Unnecessary information can also confuse and frustrate readers. After all, it’s there so they feel obligated to read it.
- Do you need to add examples to help readers understand? Examples are one of the most powerful ways to connect with audiences, particularly in instructions. Even in non-instructional text, for example, when you are trying to explain a technical concept, examples are a major help, analogies in particular.
Evaluate Organization
Organization is another key aspect of any document. Standard formats that include an introduction, body, and conclusion may be part of your document, but did you decide on a direct or indirect approach? Can you tell? A direct approach will announce the main point or purpose at the beginning, while an indirect approach will present an introduction before the main point. Your document may use any of a wide variety of organizing principles, such as chronological, spatial, compare/contrast. Is your organizing principle clear to the reader? Do you have a conclusion? Does your conclusion mirror your introduction and not introduce new material?
Use these tips to help with organization:
- Do you have a strong introduction? Make sure you have a strong introduction to the entire document- one that makes clear the topic, purpose, audience, and contents of that document. And for each major section within your document, use mini-introductions that indicate at least the topic of the section and give an overview of the subtopics to be covered in that section.
- Do you need to change the organization of your information? Sometimes, you can have all the right information but arrange it in the wrong way. For example, there can be too much background information up-front (or too little) such that certain readers get lost. Sometimes, background information needs to be consolidated into the main information. For example, in instructions, it’s sometimes better to feed in chunks of background at the points where they are immediately needed.
- Do you need to strengthen transitions? Readers often have difficulty following a document if the writer makes the common error of failing to make one point relevant to the next, or to illustrate the relationships between the points. Make connections between the main sections of your report, individual paragraphs, and individual sentences much clearer by adding transition words and by echoing keywords more accurately. Words like “therefore,” “for example,” “however” are transition words; they indicate the logic connecting the previous thought to the upcoming thought.
Evaluate Style
Style is created through content and organization, but also involves word choice and grammatical structures. Is your document written in an informal or formal tone, or does it present a blend, a mix, or an awkward mismatch? Does it provide a coherent and unifying voice with a professional tone? If you are collaborating on the project with other writers or contributors, pay special attention to unifying the document across the different authors’ styles of writing. Even if they were all to write in a professional, formal style, the document may lack a consistent voice. Read it out loud. Can you tell who is writing what? If so, that is a clear clue that you need to do more revising in terms of style.
Use these tips to help with style:
- Do you need to change your sentence style? Is the sentence style targeted to the audience? In instructions, for example, using the imperative voice and “you” phrasing is vastly more understandable than the passive voice or third-personal phrasing. Passive, person-less writing is harder to read. Put people and action in your writing! Similarly, go for active verbs as opposed to be verb phrasing. All of this makes your writing more direct and immediate; readers don’t have to dig for it.
- Do you need to break up long sentences? Sentence length matters as well. An average of somewhere between 15 and 25 words per sentence is about right; sentences over 30 words can often be confusing.
- Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does my document have repetitious words?
- Does my document have old expressions and references?
- Does my document have unnecessary fillers (extra unnecessary words)?
- Does my document have slangs and clichés?
- Does my document have parallel construction?
- Does my document have obscured verbs?
Evaluate Readability
Readability refers to the reader’s ability to read and comprehend the document. As a business writer, your goal is to make your writing clear and concise, not complex and challenging. If your document consists of long paragraphs with no breaks, it can make your document difficult to read. The way your document is organized also gives your audience some insight into the kind of business professional you are. Remember that many times the first chance your audience has to meet you is through your writing, so making a good first impression in your writing is key.
Use these tips to help with readability:
- Did you use white space? White space is empty space on a paper. Empty space makes the document appear less cluttered and jumbled. White space doesn’t only mean adding a blank line now and then. Use heading and lists to increase white space. Search your rough drafts for ways to incorporate headings, for example, look for changes in topic or subtopic. Search your writing for listings of things; these can be made into vertical lists. Look for paired listings such as terms and their definitions; these can be made into two-column lists. Of course, be careful not to force this special formatting. Don’t overdo it.
- Did you use effective margins and font styles? Use special typography and work with margins, line length, line spacing, type size, and type style. You can do things like making the lines shorter (bringing in the margins), using larger type sizes, and other such tactics. Certain type styles are believed to be friendlier and more readable than others.