Before we talk more on fonts, type color, or pictures let’s talk about words. People use words quite a lot. We use them in talking, writing, reading, listening and thinking.
Here is an example of how not to use words well…
Have you ever been in a class and felt the teacher was droning on and you didn’t understand? I know for me my mind will start to wander after a few minutes. I don’t mean this to happen but when classes or meetings aren’t interacting this is what happens. How much of the lesson do you think am going to remember?
Even when things are written down, they don’t make sense sometimes. The sentence and paragraphs structures aren’t right, or there are a lot of words we don’t understand.
In all our communications throughout life, we are sending or receiving a message from someone else.
We already looked at what happens when someone doesn’t understand. To make this easier our communications should be
- Clear – the message should be easy for the audience to follow.
- Concise – This means being brief and to the point. We do this through keeping our sentences short and splitting different areas into paragraphs.
- Easy to understand – getting its meaning across to others
Here are two examples, one follows these rules so let’s see if you can spot which.
1st) “Due to the supermarket not having what you needed, I couldn’t get your shopping.”
2nd) “They were out of what you need so I couldn’t buy it.”
Which sounds better? (The answer is B)
In summary, remember to
- Use words your readers know,
- keep your message brief & get to the point,
- Make sure the readers understand your meaning.
Tomorrow we are going to talk about active and passive voices.
Beth writes 