[Notes] HBR Good Writing : It begins with principles

• Have a clear purpose
  • To Explain action taken

    “Given situation of regressions, we have determined to best course of action is to backout all changelist”

  • To influence to take action

    “I hope that our new process guidelines will help reduce regressions analysis time and efforts.”

  • To direct Actions

    “Architect team has to complete and deliver process guidlines by end of week.”

  • To Convey information

    “Architect want all engineers to know process guidelines are available at documentation server”

  • To Good/Bad News

    “Unfortunetly, process guidelines were not part of deliverables”

• Be audience focused
  • Customer Focused analogies
    • udnerstanding customer preferences and attitudes
    • how customer perceives values
    • how they want to be served
    • what gets their attention
  • Factors to consider
    • Relationship with reader authority action vs persuasion actions
    • Information Process Styles Engineering vs Marketing
    • What they know already, no need to repeat
    • Divergent interest
• State your key message clearly
  • Take away message
  • If message is not clear or compact check if includes two unrelated messages, Solution by writing two documents seperate
• Stay on Topic
  • Keep connection to key message
• Observing economy of words
  • Should not contain unnecessary words in sentences
  • No unnecessary sentences in paragraphs
• Using simple sentences
  • eg. “Adam wrote code” vs. “adam wrote code for feature he is working on that was requested by user”
  • make the reader work harder

  • complexity may confuse

  • Making Sentence optimal with “Knowlege of Audience”. eg. “Adam coded for user-requested feature”
  • Make Easy to swallow
  • Break it down into less complexity
• Considering delivery strategy
  • Authorship : From whom communication should come , impacts
  • Timing : Contextual time for writing
  • Format : letter, memo , email or verbal