Myth #2 - If it’s important, they will read it

This is the second article in a series in which we clear up some common myths about business writing. Here we tackle the widely-held belief that people will read what you write.

Myth — if it’s important, people will read it.

Reality — they might not if it takes too much time and effort.

People don’t read business writing based on its importance (a subjective term anyway), at least not always. There are other things to consider. Is it relevant? How easy is it to get through? Do I have the time?

In today’s digital age of information overload and short attention spans, you have to compete for people’s attention. After all, reading is voluntary. Beyond a certain frustration threshold, people might simply stop.

For example, which newspaper are you more likely to pick up? And ask yourself why.

So never mind the importance; the first step is to make sure that people will actually read your document. This requires two things:

• Make your point upfront, in the subject line (email), report title (document) or as an executive summary. If your reader has not understood the point of your message in the first three lines, you’ve already lost half the battle — and in many cases the whole battle.
• Use a clean, airy layout with lots of white space to make your writing more inviting and accessible. Use descriptive headlines to break your text into logical chunks. Go for short paragraphs. If your document is particularly long, insert images and sidebars.

So now that you’ve given your reader a reason to get into your document, the next step is to make sure it’s understandable. And that means clearing up some more myths, and the next in line is Myth # 3 — readers have to be fully informed.