Clarity the sixth principle
Clarity comes from presenting the essence of a story in a self-evident way, so that readers’ thinking is galvanised around a lucid and compelling idea. While the groundwork for clarity is laid by applying the previous five principles, it is by editing and asking probing questions that you make clear what matters most.
While language helps us to connect to others and create understanding and empathy, it can never capture the fullness of our inner world. The process of interpreting someone’s words, in turn, is equally ambiguous and is heavily influenced by our personal and cultural background. Because of this, that organisations should strive for clarity in their written materials.
Clarity is not merely a matter of efficiency, or of saying much with few words, but of accurately describing what matters in a way simple and compelling enough for others to act on. Clarity in business is essential, as the environment is ambiguous enough as it is. This is readily reflected in the use of jargon and corporate doublespeak. Clarity is an excellent strategy for dealing with corporate complexity.
But what exactly is clarity? Picture in your mind’s eye a clear photograph that you have once taken: the colours are crisp, the contrast is sharp, and your eyes automatically focus on the subject that matters. Or, listen in your head to the sound of a cello playing a single note: the sound is smooth, pleasing and exactly how it should be. Similar descriptions apply to business writing as well, as clarity of language is characterised by a number of qualities:
- The content is essential and self-evident. This means the words capture the most elementary features and leave no room for interpretation. Clarity comes, first and foremost, from identifying the essence of a story, the core of an idea, by formulating the executive summary of the executive summary. That core might prompt wonder or disagreement, but there can be no doubt as to the meaning when a text is clear.
- The style of writing is simple. Simple in this case means using words or sentences that are easy to understand, particularly when there are more difficult alternatives. Simple doesn’t mean dumb or superficial. On the contrary, simplicity means someone has penetrated the core of an issue and explained it with vision and conviction. Simplicity communicates, complexity confuses.
- The writing is frugal and economic. Few, not many words are used. This makes it easier for readers to follow the thread of your story or the point of your argument. Frugality doesn’t mean writing without flair or a personal style, it means allowing readers to focus and make optimal use of their time and concentration. So rather than inundating people with chit-chat, lengthy anecdotes, and detailed descriptions, keep it short and sweet!
- The text is constructed logically, with each layer supporting the next. This means that paragraphs or chapters function as logical bridges to the next part of your story, in a way that – almost literally – takes your reader through your thoughts step by step. Remember, good structure creates clarity, a bad structure undermines clarity.
- The story flows. This means the sentences and paragraphs have a rhythm. Flow is a quality that is difficult to describe in words, it is almost a physical quality of language that is experienced rather than understood. What you should look for, is whether there is harmony between the flow on the one hand and the content and structure on the other.
Probing your text
One important thing to remember when striving for clarity is that clarity occurs on a deep and fundamental level in the hierarchy of ideas. In other words: clarity comes from digging deep into the fabric of your story, from critically probing projects, targets and plans and identifying the underlying currents and building blocks. Seeking clarity is like peeling an onion: removing layer after layer of issues, ideas and emotions until you get to the core and the essence of an issue.
How do you do that? In some ways seeking clarity is an intuitive process that requires lots of thinking and waiting for the penny to drop. Finding the essence of a story usually leads to a strong feeling of ‘eureka’, when it is obvious the core has been reached. You can use three strategies to aid your intuition: applying the preceding five principles, diligently editing your work and asking questions throughout the process. Let’s consider these in more detail.
Applying the principles of focus, purpose, meaning, substance and structure
To a certain degree, clarity can be achieved by applying the previous five principles:
- Focus creates a lean story with a sense of direction
- Purpose and meaning allow you to express yourself genuinely, while allowing the reader to relate to your writing
- Substance provides proof and evidence
- Structure ensures the end result is presented coherently.
Applying these five principles in unison helps you create a text that is able to touch or teach readers with ease. While working on the basics of your story, make sure you check regularly whether your writing is essential, self-evident, simple, logically structured and flowing naturally. In this phase of the writing process, clarity is not something that is actively sought, but a mental check in the background while focusing on the other principles.
What this preliminary work will achieve is the basic structure of a story, with a rudimentary direction, style, and building blocks. The emphasis here is on ‘basic’, in that the application of the first five principles is effective but not enough. To achieve clarity, you need to roll up your sleeves, check your ego at the door and start editing.
Editing
Editing is like sculpting: you start with a big slab of marble and chip away until the final shape emerges. Editing requires ruthlessness regarding your own work, which can be hard considering all the blood, sweat ands tears you have invested in it. Clarity, however, is achieved by getting rid of everything that is not essential and rewriting your text until you have found the best way to express something.
Clarity is best achieved during the editing phase because of the distance you put between yourself and the text when reviewing and rewriting it. This distance puts your writing in perspective and allows you to critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your work. Clarity should be your guiding principle during the editing process, a litmus test by which you check whether the focus, purpose, meaning, substance and structure are self-evident.
In many ways, writing and editing form a loop, or a process whose outcome is fed back into the same process until the process ceases. During the initial iteration, when applying the five principles for the first time, you will find yourself immersed in a jumble of facts, quotes, ideas and options. While editing, you take a different position, by reviewing what you have written from a distance and evaluating it with a critical, objective and unemotional eye. It is this distance that allows you to focus on whether a text is a really clear, or whether you need to prune it further for the true message to emerge.
It’s difficult to say how many ‘loops’ you need to make, how much time you should spend editing your work, but here are a few practical pointers:
- Edit the text in a couple of iterations, provided you have the luxury of time. Writing a draft in one attempt and editing it in a single attempt could, but usually doesn’t, lead to a great text. Editing is perhaps even more important than writing, so you need to make the effort to rewrite parts your text a number of times.
- Ask others to critically evaluate your work. This might yield unspecific comments such as ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’, but if you dig deeper you are likely to find many useful ways to improve your text.
- Be aware of writing fatigue. When you spend a lot of time writing and even more time editing the same text, your accuracy will suffer. As a result, you will overlook mistakes in grammar, spelling, structure and flow. When fatigue sets in, take a long break (ideally a few days) or ask someone else to review your work.
Probing your text
Open-ended questions cut through flab and get to the core of what you are writing about. Some of the questions you may want to ask are:
About structure and style
- What parts of the text add nothing to what has already been said?
- What is a simpler way of saying this, with fewer or easier words?
- If I could only use half the number of words I have used, what would I say?
About content
- What is this really all about?
- What does it mean, specifically?
- If X were to happen, what would that do for the company/team/me?
- If X were not to happen, what would that do for the company/team/me?
- How does this fit in the bigger picture?
The trick with questions about content is to use the answer as the basis for another round of questioning. Just like editing is a recursive loop, this type of probing questioning can continue for a large number of iterations. By combining stubborn questioning with the regular editing process you have an effective way of making sure that what you end up with matters.
Continue reading or download the book or tell a friend about this site.
Or purchase the print version now!