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Writing a Readable Business Book Manuscript

I worked in a corporate environment for quite a few years, and one of my roughest chores was reading and trying to understand many of the inter-office memorandums that crossed my desk. Those who wrote such correspondence were not illiterate but had very poor writing styles. They wanted to impress people with their own knowledge and their messages were usually ponderous without being very informative. Because the writers were more concerned with looking highly intelligent, their memos were often full of technical jargon and phrases gleaned from management articles. Verbose and incredibly dry, reading such correspondence was as rough as a day’s march through the Sahara Desert. It was a chore that I really don’t miss. Please don’t get me wrong—the writers were good, honest folk and many were very dedicated workers. Unfortunately, they had forgotten that whatever they wrote would have to be read and comprehended by another person. This failure to effectively communicate resulted in correspondence disasters.

What has been said about poor office memos holds true for business manuscripts. Business authors ought to write material that is both informative and readable. You can do both if you are careful. The trick is to balance the need to be correct with the need to be understood. That can be done if the following basic principles are kept in mind:

1) Don’t write like a bureaucrat. American Book Publishing suggests several possible guides to help you with your writing style. Have you noticed that The Code of Federal Regulations isn’t one of them? Legalese may look important and impressive, but it is really very monotonous and dull. Avoid jargon. Unless you are absolutely certain that your audience knows what an acronym means, either avoid using it or be certain that you have defined it in the text (e.g. Securities and Exchange Commission -> SEC). Try to use sentences that are clear, concise and to the point. You will hold your reader’s attention longer if you consistently use phrasing that doesn’t wander down the corridors of a bureaucratic paragraph.

2) Don’t reinvent the English language. Alexander Haig tried to do just that before a government committee when he said, "Let me caveat that statement." You can imagine the number of English teachers who cringed when they heard those words. The English language is a linguistic treasure. Unlike other languages, this one willingly accepts words from foreign countries and incorporates them into its vocabulary. However, the foreign words brought in are ordinarily ones that are commonly used and not invented for the sake of writing a report. Changing verbs into nouns and vice versa may appear to make things easy for you, but don’t count on that. It is always best to use words that are universally known and understood. If you find yourself at a loss for words, refer to a thesaurus. That writer’s aid is to a mental block as dynamite is to a roadblock: blows it clean away!

3) Be willing to revise your text. American Book Publishing provides you with an editor to help polish your manuscript, but you should go back over your text before it is assigned to an editor. Editing your own work can be a humbling experience, but it is worth the trouble. As you go back over the manuscript, you are able to note areas where your facts may be sketchy or where mistakes have been inadvertently made. You also can see for yourself how the text reads: is it too boring, do the ideas flow well, could a fine-tuning make it more readable? Editing also forces you to answer the question: Would I buy the book that I am presently reading? If after editing and revising the text you can answer, "Yes" to that question, you have a fairly good manuscript.

4) Brevity. You don’t have to write War and Peace to get your point across. Length is not a measure of quality. If you can discuss an idea in a few well-written paragraphs instead of several pages, do so! Keep in mind that your audience is not buying your book for light pleasure reading. Ordinarily, they are very busy people with demands on their time. Granted, you do not want to sacrifice good content for the sake of brevity. However, if by concise writing and careful editing you are able to keep your manuscript to a reasonable length, your effort will be greatly appreciated by your readers.

5) Organize the paragraphs. Business topics are sometimes boring by nature, particularly ones with legal overtones (e.g. contracts, government regulations, etc). The text will be slightly tedious if it is necessary to cite court cases or statutes and that makes for difficult reading. Part of your self-editing is to check the flow of the manuscript’s text. Stiff, technical paragraphs shouldn’t cause the entire work to bog down. What you need to do is pay attention to those parts of the piece that are immediately before and immediately after very technical or legalistic passages. Be certain that they are easy to read and comprehend. Using a judicious choice of words, make sure that the pace is slightly quicker than that of the technical sentences. This will permit the text to flow smoothly over the difficult reading and maintain the reader’s attention. Such fine-tuning may require you to review the content several times and you may even have to read it aloud. You may also find yourself having to adjust the tone of your writing slightly before and after those difficult sections in order to maintain a reader’s interest. If, however, the text can flow easily into a dry topic area, and if you can pick up the pace in the text immediately following, you can cover weighty subjects and still sustain a highly readable style.

A good business manuscript provides a wealth of information and is often worth many times over the cost of the book. If the knowledge you share with others is conveyed in a readable writing style, it adds to your credit and reputation. You don’t need pompous language to impress on others the importance of your topic. The logic of your arguments is far more persuasive. Your choice of words and composition of your material will showcase the value of what it is you have to say. Keep the above points in mind as you put to paper your ideas on how to really succeed in the business world. Your efforts will produce a book that is both readable and informative. That is as important as the advice or insights you wish to give. Indeed, a well-written business manuscript is an oasis of knowledge in the often-arid world of business: a fountain of knowledge that is important and yet refreshing to read.

Harlow Keith is a senior editor for American Book Publishing Copyright 2006 American Book Publishing™ *All other trademarks used by permission. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy and Trademark Use Policy.