The secret to effective written communication

Whether you’re writing an e-mail, drafting a spec, or making a presentation— remember to keep it simple, short and specific (the 3's).

Your goal, 99% of the time, is to communicate a single message clearly. Let’s look at a few examples.

E-mail

Suppose that you need to let your manager know that your product launch is delayed:

Dear Bob,We lost a few members of our team recently and had to fix some pressing bugs last week. We want to make sure this project is a success so we’re going to take a few extra weeks to finish it if that’s ok.

The above e-mail is short. But it’s not simple because it doesn’t lead with the key message (we need to delay). It also doesn’t specify how long the delay is. The e-mail below is an improvement:

Dear Bob,We need to delay our launch date by two weeks from 4/1 to 4/12. This is because:1. Two members of the team left the company recently.2. We spent last week fixing a production issue that caused videos to not load.

Product Spec

When writing a product spec or any word doc, just assume that most people will only read the first page. Make sure you clearly outline the customer problem, any supporting evidence, and what success looks like in a few paragraphs. Follow that with a simple wireframe before listing specific user stories. This layout makes it easy for execs to skim the overview and the wireframe, while allowing your team to dive into the stories. Keep the core spec to three pages or less and put most of your supporting data and research in appendices.

Presentations

When I was a consultant, I would make 50+ slide presentations filled with information (the thicker the deck, the more value the consultant provides right?). Now, I try to capture the key discussion points in just one slide. For a product review, that slide might include the problem, solution and key ask:

Problem, solution and ask in one slide (an admittedly over simplified example)

I’m not saying that your entire presentation needs to be one slide, but having this summary slide at the beginning encourages active discussion on what you’re trying to accomplish instead of passive listening to your presentation.

My 7th grade English teacher taught me this: Big words and long paragraphs are counter-productive. Keep it simple, short, and specific to get your point across in writing.

The secret to effective written communication was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.