notes

Writing for Busy Readers

(last updated )

cover

description

Writing well is for school. Writing effectively is for life. Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink offer the most valuable practical writing advice today. Building on their own research in behavioral science, they outline cognitive facts about how people actually read and distill them into six principles that will transform the power of your writing: Less is more Make reading easy Design for easy navigation Use enough formatting, but no more Tell readers why they should care Make responding easy Including many real-world examples, a checklist and other tools, this guide will make you a more successful and productive communicator. Rogers and Lasky-Fink bring Strunk and White’s core ideas into the twenty-first century’s attention marketplace. When the influential guides to writing prose were written, the internet hadn’t been invented. Now, the average American adult is inundated with digital messages each day. With all this correspondence, capturing a busy reader’s attention is more challenging than ever. This is how to do it.

Notes

principle 1 : less is more.

principle 2 : make reading easy.

principle 3 : design for easy navigation.

principle 4 : use enough formatting but no more.

1. MATCH FORMATTING TO READERS EXPECTATIONS

  • readers know that bullets are related to each other
    • Sub bullets would be skipped if the main bullet is not interesting
  • readers will likely be drawn to and assume that the content in the bullets is the most important part of the message

2. BOLD, HIGHLIGHTED, UNDERLINED

  • draws readers attention away from everything else.
  • increase the likelihood the reader will read these formatted words
  • Decrease the likelihood that anything else will be read

3. LIMIT YOUR FORMATTING

  • less is more.

principle 5 : tell readers why they should care.

  1. Emphasize what readers value
  2. Emphasize which readers should care

principle 6 : make responding easy.

  1. Simplify the steps required to act
  2. Organize key information needed for action
  3. Minimize the amount of attention required

faq

What if I need to communicate multiple pieces of critical information?

  • Multiple messages or one message, context matters
  • Are the ideas all related?
  • Are the actions all similar / easy enough to be completed at the same time.
    • Similar level of difficulty (easy requests) can be batched together
    • Harder requests best to go in their own email
  • Kristen’s thought - practice the rule of 3. No more than 3 ideas in a single message