Business writing: The importance of clarity and conciseness

Shorter, more concise sentences are going to be easier to both write and read than
long, complex ones.

ORIGINAL TEXT:

The Hospital periodically conducts a department-wide check on room utilization, and

takes a serious view against any violations of the regulations on private room booking,
and failure to observe such regulations will result in the imposition of a heavy penalty.
In a more serious sense, these violation records will form the basis of consideration for
future allocation of private and semi-private rooms and ward allocation of beds.

To prevent these undesirable cases from recurring, your attention and co-operation are
of vital importance. Please ensure that if there are to be any changes/cancellations of
private rooms booked, Ada Wong should be notified well in advance so that proper and
timely procedures can be taken.

REVISED TEXT:

A friendly reminder: If you need to change or cancel a booked private room, please
ensure that you tell Ada Wong well in advance, so that she can take the necessary
procedures.

The Hospital regularly checks that booked rooms are in use and imposes heavy
penalties when they are not. This may also affect the future allocation of all rooms.

For this reason, it’s very important that everyone cooperates with this policy.

Thank you.

Use vertical lists and parallel structures

Read the following memo. How could it be rewritten in a way that captures the
reader’s attention more effectively?

Dear all

I had a good meeting with the new Regional Director this morning. It was the first, so
its purpose was for him to get to know us and to see where he could help.

I think Mr. Chan can help us by using his strong network of contacts in commerce,
finance and government to help us set up meetings and events, and advise us about
new industry initiatives. He can also help us to exploit the China market and develop
the market for our services.

We plan to meet again to talk about specifics, but this was a promising start.

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Now compare it with the version below:

Dear all

I had a good meeting with the new Regional Director this morning. It was the first, so
its purpose was for him to get to know us and to see where he could help.

I think Mr. Chan can help us by using his strong network of contacts in commerce,
finance and government to

1 set up meetings and events

2 advise us about new industry initiatives
3 exploit the China market
4 develop the market for our services.

We plan to meet again to talk about specifics, but this was a promising start.

Although the second version takes up more space, it is easier to understand because
the reader can simply scan the text.

You can use vertical lists to do the following:

 Highlight major areas in your writing

 Break complex information into smaller, more manageable parts
 Overview key information quickly
 Review key information quickly.

Using parallel construction means presenting a series of words or phrases in a text

using the same grammatical structure for each item. Using parallel construction can
make your writing easier for your reader(s) to understand by preventing grammatical
inconsistencies.

It also helps your reader quickly digest information because the similarity of the words,
phrases or statements highlights any difference in the information. This might be in
continuous text, or in a vertical list as in these examples:

Example 1

To apply for this position you need a degree in building-related engineering,

experience in project-management and fluency in written and spoken Chinese,
including Putonghua.

Example 2
To better protect yourself against identity theft

 keep your credit card receipts

 beware of phishing emails and websites
 change your passwords regularly
 update your anti-virus and anti-spam software regularly
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