When it comes to technical writing, everyone has their own style, usually crafted during years of previous schooling. Regardless of style, effective technical writing shares a certain charisma which comes off the page. As a reader, this might manifest as a feeling of effortless comprehension, or a feeling that the writer is walking you through their thoughts. While not explicit, it may feel like the author recognizes the presence of you, the reader, and is using cues to guide your attention, similar to a naturally flowing conversation. These subtle cues are what I’d like to talk about in this blog: cues which can make your writing easier to read.
I first came across these tips while reading The Sense of Structure by George Gopen [1], a book about writing from the reader’s perspective. At first they seemed like obvious tips; the whole point of writing is to communicate my thoughts, so of course I should write with the reader in mind. But after finishing the book, I realized that is exactly what made the tips so powerful. They were universal and obvious as a reader, not as a writer. I realized that most writers consider only whether the writing makes sense to them, not to the eventual reader. This was the heart of the problem. To achieve effortless comprehension with my writing, I needed to flip the script, to start with the reader in mind. This change in perspective is the crux behind each of the tips below. So without further ado, three tips to make your writing more effective.
1. Emphasize the end of sentences
The first tip is to put the most important information in a sentence at the most important part of the sentence: the end. Why? Because as readers we tend to automatically emphasize the end of sentences. When we see a period coming up, we associate it with a break in thought, a break from the long sentence we just read, and a chance for us to rest. Hence right before this resting spot is the perfect location to put the most important information of the sentence. This way, as the reader takes a quick mental break before the next sentence, the most important information remains fresh.
This trick is a great, subtle way to control the reader’s attention. Consider these two sentences (adapted from [1]):
Jack has fallen in love with Jill because she completely understands his passion for raising fox terriers.
Because she completely understands his passion for raising fox terriers, Jack has fallen in love with Jill.
Did you notice a difference in meaning? What did you take away from each sentence? To me, the second sentence emphasizes that Jack has fallen in love with Jill, while the first emphasizes that Jill understands his passion for raising fox terriers. While both sentences contain the same information, they seem to highlight different aspects, only due to positioning of the information.
As writers, we can use this to our advantage. For example in paragraphs, emphasizing the end of sentences can really add up to make the writing stronger. Consider this excerpt (adapted from [1]):
Although very rare with modern canning methods, botulism is a possibility. Most other forms of food poisoning seldom do lasting harm to a healthy person. But botulism is almost certainly fatal, and often the first symptom is death. Except for carbonated beverages, all canned goods should contain a slight vacuum and suck air when first punctured. Bulging, rusty, dented cans, and cans that spew when punctured should be avoided, especially when the contents are not very acidic or syrupy.
Was that easy to read? To me the paragraph flows easily, and one reason is the positioning of the important points near the end of sentences:
Although very rare with modern canning methods, botulism is a possibility. Most other forms of food poisoning seldom do lasting harm to a healthy person. But botulism is almost certainly fatal, and often the first symptom is death. Except for carbonated beverages, all canned goods should contain a slight vacuum and suck air when first punctured. Bulging, rusty, dented cans, and cans that spew when punctured should be avoided, especially when the contents are not very acidic or syrupy.
Here the emphasis of each sentence matches with the most important information of that sentence, resulting in a natural reading experience. Hence consciously writing your sentences in this way can help the reader understand your writing the first time they read it. While subtle, placing emphasis at the end of sentences is a great way to guide your reader through the prose.
2. Have an issue and point in each paragraph
You may remember your English teacher telling you that each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence. While this is a good rule of thumb, unfortunately it does not always hold true for complicated technical writing. The reason is that it places a rigid structure on each paragraph, implying a linear progression from the first sentence to the last. In reality, most paragraphs have a fluid structure, guided more by the flow of thought than a logical progression. For example, consider this excerpt (adapted from [2]):
Plants are not known for their ability to move quickly. Nevertheless, rapid plant movements are involved in essential functions such as seed and pollen dispersal, defense, and nutrition. Of these spectacular examples that have long fascinated scientists, the leaves of the Venus fly trap, which snap together in a fraction of second to capture insects, have long been a paradigm for study; however, the mechanisms by which this engine works remain poorly understood.
In this paragraph (as with most paragraphs), the first sentence is not the topic sentence. Rather the first couple sentences introduce the general subject at hand, prepping the reader for the text ahead. This way, when you reach the point of the paragraph, you have adequate information to fully grasp it. Hence instead of the rule of thumb that each paragraph should start with a topic sentence, a better tip is to have both an issue and a point in each paragraph. By issue, I mean an introduction to the story you want to tell, and by point, I mean the key thing you want the reader to remember from the paragraph. As Gopen puts it in his book: “The issue refers to the intellectual geographic boundaries within which the discussion might wander; the point is the interesting pace within those boundaries at which the reader is intended to arrive.”
This is clear in the paragraph above, where the first couple sentences introduce the rapid movement of the Venus fly trap (the issue), followed by the point that its mechanism is not well understood:
Plants are not known for their ability to move quickly. Nevertheless, rapid plant movements are involved in essential functions such as seed and pollen dispersal, defense, and nutrition. Of these spectacular examples that have long fascinated scientists, the leaves of the Venus fly trap, which snap together in a fraction of second to capture insects, have long been a paradigm for study (issue); however, the mechanisms by which this engine works remain poorly understood (point).
Viewing each paragraph with an issue and a point in this way is powerful as it does not impose a rigid structure on the text, instead emphasizing the cohesion and flow within the sentences themselves. By guiding the reader from the issue to the point, you can better highlight the thought process you want them to follow. And what’s more, by placing your point near the end of the paragraph, you can subtly increase its emphasis and ensure it will not be forgotten as your reader moves on.
3. Use topic stringing
The third tip is to use “topic stringing,” or the repetition of subjects from sentence to sentence. The idea here is to improve flow by starting a sentence with the same subject with which you ended the last sentence. Consider this paragraph (adapted from [3]):
There are two key parameters that describe the boiling process: the heat transfer coefficient and the critical heat flux. In materials design, there’s generally a tradeoff between the two, so anything that improves one of these parameters tends to make the other worse. But both are important for the efficiency of the system, and now, after years of work, the team has achieved a way of significantly improving both properties at the same time, through their combination of different textures added to a material’s surface.
While quite technical, to me this paragraph is quite easy to comprehend. One reason is that although it begins with technical information which the reader may not be familiar with, the author keeps the reader interested by repeating the same subject in the next two sentences (i.e., the two key parameters of boiling). This repetition keeps the reader focused on what is important about the two parameters, rather than getting confused on what exactly they mean.
While excessive repetition can become monotonous, when used properly, topic stringing is a powerful tool to hold the reader’s attention for a long time. Consider this example (adapted from [1]):
The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin of the Cherokee and the Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. In short, the frontier is at first too strong for the man.
Here the constant repetition of “the wilderness” as the subject keeps us interested in all it is doing to the colonist. Each sentence adds to the growing portrait of the wilderness and focuses our attention to the story the author is developing. Hence in our own writing, stringing topics in this way can help provide transitions between sentences while also uniting them into one, cohesive story.
Overall, while these three tips are not universal and certainly have exceptions, they are great pointers for improving flow and increasing your reader’s comprehension. At the same time, they are relatively easy to implement and do not require drastic changes to your writing style. Rather they hint at a change in perspective, that of viewing your writing from the reader’s eyes. Adopting this mindset has greatly improved my writing, and I hope you find these tips useful for your own work, too.
References:
[1] The Sense of Structure, George Gopen 2004.
[2] “How the Venus flytrap snaps,” Nature 2005.
[3] “MIT engineers design surfaces that make water boil more efficiently,” MIT News 2022.