See the "big picture" and put conclusions up front.
Begin with judgments or findings and then go on to support them. You are writing for a busy reader who wants to know immediately what your point is.
Organize information.
Present information in a logical and orderly way-to avoid confusing the reader and causing unnecessary reiteration.
Prepare an outline to help you organize your ideas tightly.
Use precise language.
Everyone who reads what you have written should come away with the same message.
Take time to choose the word or expression that conveys exactly what you have in mind.
Crucial test: Not whether you understand what you have written, but whether there is any possibility the reader might misunderstand.
Economize on words.
Your challenge as a writer is to achieve not brevity alone, but also succinctness - to be both brief and concise.
You are writing for busy people who have little time.
You don't want the reader to have to work at reading your piece. To make his or her job easier and to say as much as possible in the available space:
Use clear, familiar, simple terms.
Make each ward count.
Keep sentences short to make the reader's job easier and to enable you to say as much as possible in the available space.
Adopt a conversational tone-write as you would speak to an intelli gent friend.
Avoid redundancy, rhetoric, colloquialisms, technical jargon, and vague abstractions.
Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly-they can weaken your judgments. You sometimes can use long words and sentences, but avoid them if short otter say the same thing.
Achieve clarity of thought.
Writing is thinking on paper.
When the meaning of your writing is not clear, the thoughts behind the words may not be clear.
Make the meaning of something obvious to yourself before you try to make it clear to the reader.
Don't sacrifice clarity for brevity.
Use active, not passive, voice.
The active voice makes your writing more direct, vigorous, and concise-which make it sound more analytic.
Structure your sentences so the subject performs an action that the object receives (John bounced the ball.), not so the subject receives the action of the verb (The ball was bounced by John.).
Use the passive voice when you need to make a particular word the subject of a sentence and can't do so conveniently with the active voice.
Self-edit your writing.
Revising is an essential part of writing. Few writers can produce a perfect fast draft.
Edit all your work before you turn it in.
Know Your Readers - Know the reader's needs.
Look at your message and ask yourself: "So what?"
The reader has to be able to use your message if your good writing also is to be good analysis.
Readers look to analytic writing for insight into situations, balanced judgments that will help them make decisions, and warning about matters that might require them to take action.
Analytic writing serves readers best when it tells them both what they want to know and what they ought to know.
Develop patience.
Your written product is a team effort. All members of the team want it to be as well written and effective as possible.
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