Have you ever taken the time to craft a detailed email to a
colleague, or perhaps a text message to a friend, only to have
them shoot back a one-line response that makes it clear they
didn’t read past the first sentence?
The Gazette interviewed Todd Rogers, a behavioural
scientist, about his book, “Writing for Busy Readers:
Communicate More Effectively in the Real World”.
Gazette: You make a distinction between “effective writing”
and “beautiful writing.” What do you mean by effective
writing?
Rogers: Effective writing is practical writing with the goal of
getting the reader to understand and potentially respond. The
guiding insight for the book is that our readers are not reading
what we write carefully.
Gazette: You discuss experiments that support strategies for
simplifying writing. Could you summarize a few of those tips?
Rogers: First: Less is more: fewer words, fewer ideas, fewer
requests. Omit needless words, so that’s not radical, and it’s
costless. Eliminating somewhat-useful-but-not-necessary
ideas is harder. It’s a balance between getting the point across
and adding too much. Finally, the more actions a message asks
of readers, the less likely readers are to do any one of them.
Second: Add structure. Most people aren’t reading linearly;
they’re jumping around.
Third: Use enough formatting, but no more. We found that
people interpret underline, bold, and highlight as the writer
saying to the reader, “this is the most important content.”
When writers highlight or bold a section in a document or an
email, it dramatically increases the likelihood that people read
that portion, but it decreases the likelihood that they read the
rest of the message.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/10/tips-on-how-to-connect- with-people-who-dont-have-time-to-read. Acesso em: 23/02/2024.
Adaptado
Segundo o texto, uma dificuldade apontada por Todd Rogers,
no que diz respeito à simplificação da escrita, refere-se a
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