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Are Appearances All that Count?
Maybe not, but formatting sure can help

by Natalie Canavor and Claire Meirowitz

In today’s business communication world, speed is everything.

Responses to customers and bloggers must be quick, information must be delivered ASAP, web sites must instantly reflect what’s new. And we all have to stay in control of the massive communication flow coming at us from every direction

Unfortunately, our writing strategies haven’t caught up with the need for speed that an overload environment demands. You only have to look through your e-mail inbox to know this. We bet it’s packed with poorly delivered messages that waste your time and invite you to hit delete.

Sadly, major communications are seldom much different. Reports, proposals and business plans present their content with equal inefficiency.

But we won’t whine about how businesspeople should write better in this particular column. We want to talk about a really easy way to make your everyday communications clearer and easier to absorb: Use formatting and graphic approaches.

These techniques are not revolutionary or even new. But we generally don’t see them in media like e-mail and letters, perhaps for several reasons:

1. We tend to undervalue how important visual impact is to the perception of “ordinary” written materials (as opposed to “designed” materials like publications).
2. We haven’t caught up with how contemporary audiences like their information delivered, in short, self-contained chunks.
3. We tend to confine our use of graphic approaches to specific media. We’ll use subheads, bold face and bullets for résumés, for example, but not for e-mails, letters or reports.
4. We don’t want to take the time to think about and use graphic devices for “unimportant” communications like e-mails.

Exploiting the full range of graphic options can be a quick way to make your communications work better. Plus, it’s an easy approach to model. So here’s a repertoire of techniques to draw on for everyday written communication like e-mails, letters and reports. In deciding what to use, consider your final product: Is it a one-paragraph e-mail, a two-page client proposal or a 10-page report? Based on your answer, use the tools that make it easiest for your readers.

Employ them with just a bit of imagination and you’ll get a bonus: Your thinking becomes more organized (or at least appears to), so you come across as competent and decisive.

Ideas from journalism: Headlines, decks, eyebrows, section lead-ins
What do these elements have in common? They’re all meant to attract attention —to grab readers and pull them into the story. They also break up space nicely and make your copy more accessible and inviting.

Headlines (or titles) are essential to a wide range of materials. Often you’ll have to write to fit, but here too, the trend is to go short. Even the best headline writers in the world—who in our opinion work at The Wall Street Journal—are running tighter headlines than in previous decades.

The deck is an extension of the headline that encapsulates the material covered in the letter, article or paper.

An eyebrow is a brief (two or three words) phrase that teases or intrigues the reader, to get the person who’s glancing at it to stop and read the piece. It is usually placed above the headline.

A section lead-in is a topic term, such as best practices, trends or case study, which categorizes the content for the reader.

Here’s how the combinations blend and look in practice, if you wanted to use all of them at once—which you shouldn’t:

Best Practices (section lead-in)

DOUBLE PAYOFF? (eyebrow)

WHAT LOOKS GOOD READS WELL (headline; title)

Savvy formatting gets you read, boosts understanding. (deck)

Using type to make your point
In today’s world of lazy readers, the type font you select can influence not only how readers will perceive what you’ve written—it may determine whether they read it at all.

Serif fonts (with small squiggles on the ends, such as Times New Roman) are usually judged to be more readable; but they look more old-fashioned than sans-serif fonts (Arial and Helvetica, for example).

Many art directors choose sans-serif typefaces for advertisements, high-end magazines, and web sites. But most editors still favor serif fonts because of their readability, especially for long articles or documents.

Myriad other typefaces provide different “feels” for readers. For general business writing, base your decision on what is easiest to read, and unless you’re doing advertising or promotional materials, stay away from anything but the basics.

Choose the size of your type based on readability as well. Usually an 11-point or 12-point type size makes for easy reading of body copy, but if baby boomers and beyond are a significant portion of your audience, you may need to go to 14. Subheads can be the same size as body copy if bolded, or one or two sizes larger.

Avoid extended use of italics (they are hard to read) and bold (which tires the eye). Reversed type—white or very light type on a dark-colored background—is also hard to read in passages longer than a couple of lines. So are most colors except black.

Don’t clutter a document with several different fonts. It’s distracting and makes your words hard to read.

Use subheads, paragraphing and columns to frame
Subheads are extremely useful in e-mails and letters though we rarely see them. They break up long stretches of copy that otherwise present readers with a gray, forbidding mass of words. Place them strategically for best graphic effect.

Paragraphs should be short, to catch and keep the reader’s attention. Short paragraphs look easy to read, and the discipline of keeping them brief helps you organize better. If you’re writing a letter, the “feel” of your material can be affected by whether you indent paragraphs or use a block (straight, not indented) format and skip lines between paragraphs.

A letter that’s indented usually strikes the reader as less formal and friendlier.

Two columns can work

White space is what a lot of these graphic techniques are about. Empty space lets the reader’s eye rest, and contributes mightily to your goal of making a document look like a quick-and-easy read.

Think of white space first as a frame. Leave substantial margins on both sides and on the top and bottom of your page. Next, be sure to build in approaches like subheads, which give you the opportunity to aerate your text. And build white space into your writing by using short words, sentences and paragraphs. How short is short? Research says that based on readability:

• Words should average one to two syllables.
• Sentences should average 14 to 18 words.
• Paragraphs should contain an average of two to three sentences.

Bullets and numbers
To make lists of words, terms or ideas jump off the page or screen and into reader consciousness, use a graphic device such as numbering, bullets, checkmarks or boxes before each item. They are also invaluable for presenting instructions or sequences clearly and would benefit many e-mails hugely. For example:

To check the readability of your writing:

1. Find the Flesch Readability Index on your computer and make sure it’s operational. (In Microsoft Word, look in the Tools menu under Options, and click on the Spelling & Grammar tab. Check the “Show readability statistics” box.)
2. Click “Spelling and Grammar” on your toolbar (or under the Tools menu) and go through that sequence.
3. At the end of the check, the Readability Statistics box will appear.
4. Review your word, sentence and paragraph length, use of the passive tense, and the grade level of what you wrote.
5. If you don’t like the results, edit your copy and recheck the readability index.

Notice you can add some extra air with a little extra space between bulleted or numbered points.

Call to action
Depending on what you’re writing, a call to action may be appropriate. For marketing materials in particular, or even letters and e-mails, a strong sentence—perhaps set in bold type, telling readers what you want them to do, is a no-brainer. You must have it. The sentence may be direct (“To purchase, call…”) or expressed more subtly, if you’re writing a press release or cover letter. Usually the call to action goes at the end. For example: To comment on this column or ask us to cover a specific subject, use one of the e-mail addresses given below. We’d love to hear from you.

Natalie Canavor is a business writer, communication consultant and journalist who formerly edited national magazines and directed a communication department.

Claire Meirowitz is an editor, writer, proofreader and project manager with a background in publishing and university public relations.

Together they own and operate C&M Business Writing Services, which creates publications, e-media, communication models and training programs. Their book, The Truth About Business Writing That Works, will be published in 2009 by Pearson/FT Press.

Natalie and Claire are past presidents of IABC/Long Island (New York). Reach them at or .