The Writing System

Although much of today’s corporate product is written, employees often struggle to communicate with clarity and professionalism. This problem is likely due to the very structured — and often technical — elements of business writing. Without proper training and a substantial amount of practice, it is easy for workers to fall into error traps, which not only cost money but also lower customer satisfaction and negatively impact the organization’s reputation. Fortunately, there is an easy solution. Employees at all levels can build essential communication skills by adopting the methodology set forth in The Writing System by Daniel and Judith Graham.

In their best-selling book, the Grahams present a simple 13-step writing process that is divided into three main sections: pre-writing, drafting, and post-writing. The authors also include a variety of writing techniques, useful tips, and real-world examples, which make the book interesting and easy to follow. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief description of each step to give readers an idea of how the system works. As you review the process, try to identify the steps you are already implementing as well as the steps that are missing from your current approach. Once you fully understand the system, it can be implemented to enhance your organization’s written communication and document quality.

The first section of The Writing System is pre-writing, which consists of the first five steps: analyzing purpose, analyzing audience, writing the purpose statement, gathering information, and writing a sentence outline. In this phase, the writer employs his or her analytical skills to help prepare for the draft of the document.

STEP 1: Analyzing Purpose

When analyzing a document’s purpose, you must determine what the audience will do with the information they are provided. The Grahams suggest three techniques for analyzing a document’s purpose. First, identify your purpose (or purposes) for creating the document. Then, determine your audience’s purpose for reading it. Finally, ask yourself the following question: “What does this document do for me or for my organization?”

STEP 2: Analyzing Audience

In this context, the word “audience” means “type of reader.” Your audience may be an individual, a common group, or entirely different groups. Therefore, it is important to consider how many audiences you will be addressing. Focus on the audience by determining what the audience needs to know, if the audience has a high or low level of knowledge on the subject, and if the audience will require supporting evidence. Then, plan how to accommodate your audience or audiences.

STEP 3: Writing the Purpose Statement

The purpose statement is used to set the tone, identify the target audience, and limit the document to what the target audience needs to know. It consists of five parts: the type of document (actor), an explanation of what the document does (action), the recipient (audience), what the audience needs to know (topic), and what the audience is supposed to do with the information (outcome). The purpose statement will eventually become the first sentence in the introduction and will manage the audience’s expectations before they begin reading the content.

STEP 4: Gathering Information

After writing your purpose statement, you may realize that additional information is needed. This could mean conducting research, asking for more details, or collecting your own thoughts. The objective is to gather all the information the audience needs before drafting the document. Be sure to answer who, what, when, where, why, and how.

STEP 5: Writing the Sentence Outline

A sentence outline acts as the “road map” to your document and helps to guarantee that important information does not get left out. To get your points down and to organize them effectively, use short sentences and evaluate each point to eliminate irrelevant information and redundancy. Then, organize points into “major” and “minor” categories. Finally, sequence your points so they can be used to begin the paragraphs of the document.

After all five steps of the pre-writing process have been completed, it is time to move on to the second section of The Writing System: drafting.

STEP 6: Drafting

Before you begin to draft your document, find a quiet, well lit, comfortable environment. Then, start writing the first words that come to mind — disregarding spelling, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Focus on adding details to support each point in your sentence outline. You can always go back and remove any unnecessary information later.

The third and final section of The Writing System, post-writing, consists of the last four steps in the process: revising for content, revising for organization, editing for correctness, editing for coherence, and proofreading.

STEP 7: Revising for Content

Revision focuses only on the content of the document — the facts and supporting details. Do not worry about editing for style at this point. When revising for content, ask yourself three questions:

• “Is the topic focused?”
• “Does the audience care about all the information, or should some of it be cut?
• “Is each point adequately supported?”

STEP 8: Revising for Organization

To ensure that your content is organized in a way that helps the audience to understand and respond, answer the following three questions:

• Does the document contain transitional sentences that help the points and ideas flow smoothly from one to the other?
• Are the points organized in a way that will make sense to the audience?
• Does the document avoid overusing personal pronouns (I, me, mine) and the repetition of “you”?

If you answered, “yes” to all the above, continue to the next step of the writing process. However, if you answered “no” to any of the questions, go back to add transitions, reorder points, and/or make any other organizational changes.

STEP 9: Editing for Coherence

Coherence is about the flow of your document. The goal is to have a deliberate order of clear, logical ideas that make sense to the audience. When editing for coherence, the first sentence should always include the point of the paragraph. Also, make sure key words are repeated instead of replacing them with a variety of synonyms. “Shifting” key words makes the document sound unfocused, which may confuse readers.

STEP 10: Editing for Clarity

When editing for clarity, closely analyze word choice and sentence structure. The document must express the point clearly and give the audience all the information they need to know. Also, ensure modifiers are next to the words they modify; use standard English; simplify tense; and replace vague terms with concrete and specific words.

STEP 11: Editing for Economy

Editing for economy is the process of removing words that add no meaning. Daniel Graham refers to these words as “deadwood.” The goal is to make your writing clearer and more efficient. Cutting deadwood rids the document of empty verbs, unnecessary prepositions, redundancy, implied phrases, and vague modifiers. It also removes regional speech habits and clichés thereby giving business documents a more professional and consistent “voice.”

STEP 12: Editing for Correctness

When editing for correctness, read through the document once more to check standard word choice, grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Then, double check all facts, figures, numbers, and statistics for accuracy. Make sure all quotes are correct and followed by proper citation. Finally, re-read the entire document to ensure that no information is incomplete or missing.

STEP 13: Proofreading

Proofreading is the final step in the writing system and should only be performed after you have edited for coherence, clarity, economy, and correctness. At this point, you want to look for any errors that you missed in previous steps. Common errors include incorrect spacing, mistyped numbers, inconsistent font size, typos, transposed letters, and missing punctuation marks. After proofreading carefully, you should have a polished professional document.

While 13 steps may appear daunting, it is likely that you already apply several of the steps without realizing it. This issue is that most people are guilty of rushing through their drafts and combining the editing and proofreading steps. However, editing and proofreading are not one in the same. Editing focuses on the content and organization of a document while proofreading focuses on small mechanical errors such as spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You should never combine drafting, editing, and proofreading because you will lose focus and overlook crucial errors. In fact, many well-known authors and writing experts recommend taking short breaks between steps, so you can come back and look at the document with fresh eyes.

If you or your organization could benefit from working through the steps of The Writing System, consider enrolling in our course, Business Writing: A Practical Approach to Crafting Professional Documents. Our goal at JH Miles & Associates is to familiarize participants with each step of the writing process as well as a variety of tips and techniques. The course is offered both virtually and face-to-face and is available in one, two, or three-day formats. For more information, contact us by phone at (434) 385-3818 or by email at info@jhmilesandassociates.com. You may also visit our website at www.jhmilesandassociates.com.