As You Write

Identify Key Questions: Anticipate the questions your audience may have about the topic. What will they need to know to have a good understanding of the subject?
Structure Your Draft: Arrange your content based on these questions, following the order in which a reader might logically ask them. If appropriate, you may want to:
1. create headings based on the topic to be addressed in that particular section;
2. adopt a Q&A format, using the questions as headings to guide your audience through the document; or
3. make headings about each topic that form a complete sentence.
4. create an executive summary (for more formal documents) or explainer notes at the beginning of the document that concisely capture the main conclusions, recommendations, or important insights of your project. This allows the reader to understand the key messages quickly.
Ensure Logical Flow: Start with the important conclusions/outcomes of the piece to capture the reader's interest at the beginning. This helps to set the context and importance of the information that follows.

Wordy, dense sentence construction is too often an attribute of government writing. While this kind of sentence construction works for academic writing (to show the writer's expertise and present information in a nuanced manner), it does a disservice to the majority of the public who are not subject matter experts and are not inclined to wade through complex sentences that contain multiple phrases and clauses.

Tips:
1. Set word or page limits for your project and adhere to them - attention spans are short. If this writing project is annual/periodical, try to convey the same amount of information as the last issue in fewer words.
2. Remove unnecessary words. LINK
3. Make your project more readable.
  1. ○ Shorten sentences and paragraphs where possible and vary lengths.
  2. ○ Create white space between paragraphs.
  3. ○ Use bulleted or numbered lists instead of narratives where applicable.
  4. ○ Use bold, italic or underline formatting to emphasize key words or phrases.
  5. ○ Create hyperlinks and change the URL to explanatory text.