Less is more (influential)
/Last week I wrote that perfection comes from including only the essential. Let me explain one way to apply that thinking to an audit report or similar (as taught to me when I worked at a Big Four firm).
Read MoreTo be good at writing you must read a lot
/A common piece of advice for aspiring creative writers is to read as much as you can. I think we can apply that to accountants who want to improve their writing skills. They should read finance reports and documents written by others, inside and outside their organisation, but I would add a qualification ...
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What are the signs that you could improve your writing?
/Allow me to make some suggestions.
First, your boss or mentor or a client tells you so.
I suspect that is quite rare. More subtle is the case where your boss or mentor or client does not tell you outright but asks questions that you thought your document had answered.
Or maybe you receive documents by other finance people and you’re impressed by how well technical material is explained. Or you wonder how they managed to make the text, charts and tables look so good.
If (when?) you identify that there is room for improvement what should you do? Here are some ideas:
Learn some more about grammar, typography and data visualisation
Practice your skills as much as you can
Get a coach to work with you
Hire an editor to refine the documents you write
Hire a ghost writer to write documents for you
I can help you with the last three of these. Contact me by email or go to my page on Calendly and arrange an introductory call with me.
Write first drafts in a text editor
/A minister caused a stir on Wednesday with a hand-written resignation letter.
Writing by hand can help with creativity but realistically I suggest you write the first drafts in a text-editor app rather than with a pen.
Here’s why.
A text editor app is just you and your words. There’s no formatting to play with or other distractions.
The files are very small and can easily be uploaded to a cloud storage service (Google Drive, One Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, wherever you use) and be accessible from other devices including your smartphone. It becomes possible to work on the text in at different times, in different places with different devices.
The text file you create is universal. Once done the text can be copied and pasted into any word processing app, but also could be pasted into the body of an email or a text message or the content management system for a website and so on. As there was no formatting in the text there is no formatting to be screwed up by the transfer.
If you use different devices you can use different apps to edit the text because the text is not in a proprietary format. I happen to use an app called Ulysses because it is available on all my devices. It manages the 140,000 words of my book manuscript just as well as these shorts posts of fewer than 500 words. You may need to do some research to find the best apps to suit you but you can start with the built-in apps: TextEdit app on MacOS and Notepad on Windows.
Perfection is not…
/"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Read MoreUse headlines instead of tables
/If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does a table of data save?
However, a table is a wasted opportunity if the reader skips over it.
I have a tip to make the tables in your documents have more impact?
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