Identifying purpose for business documents

In earlier blog posts, I posted some tips for those who have to do some business writing as a subset of their work, but are not professional writers.  My first few posts on this topic gave some insights about where to start out and what to consider when beginning such a writing process.

To quickly review:  I mentioned that a good starting point for writing a business document involved first figuring out the nature of the reader for the document and, in tandem with that, figuring out what that reader [known as “audience” to business writers] needed to get out of the document.  The “what the reader needs” also refers to what professional writers call the rhetorical purpose of the document.  This evaluation then feeds into some form of document planning process, such as an outlining process.

In this blog post, I’m going to follow up with some further information on the kinds of purpose you are likely to find in business documents. 

For the most part, ‘layperson’ writers . . .those who don’t write as a major part, or the entirety of their job . . . will deal with a handful of specific rhetorical purposes in the business documents they are called on to write.

The first and second purposes are probably the most common and are related but not identical.  Those purposes are to inform and to summarize.

The difference between these two is subtle but does exist.  You can think of a document with the purpose of “inform” as one that provides new information, or primarily new information, to the reader(s).  Whereas, a document that has the purpose of summarizing will review material that is already known, or some of it is known, to the readership of the document.

For documents assigned to a professional who will only occasionally get assigned to write a business document on the job, these two rhetorical purposes will probably form the rhetorical purpose for most such documents.

The next three purposes also have subtle associations with each other.  Those purposes generally have the objective of generating some form of response.  Those purposes include to engage, to generate action such as through the issuance of an order, and to persuade.

You will structure your document around the “engage” purpose in an instance when you want to introduce interest in something.  An example of a document with the purpose to engage would involve something along the lines of an informational newsletter.  The nature of generating action such as through an order has an obviousness to it:  this would involve things like written announcements of mandatory training or briefings. 

A document that has the purpose of persuasion also seeks to generate an action.  However, a document that seeks to generate action through persuasion has an objective of convincing the readership that the action taken, often a purchase of some kind, provides a benefit to the individual.  While many persuasion documents seek to incite a “buy” response for a product or service, the rhetorical purpose of persuasion can also extend to a “buy in” response.  A business document may seek to convince management, for instance, to implement, extend, or up-staff a particular project or set of projects.

This second group of rhetorical purposes:  engage, generate action by issuing an order, and persuasion actually transition into the category of business document more often handled by a professional writer than by someone who writes business documents only occasionally.  However, these types of documents may well come up for the ‘layperson’ writer of business documents every so often.  For example, a cover letter has a “persuasion” purpose to it.  On the job, a project leader may need to persuade management about extending a deadline, changing a project direction, or modifying project staffing.  Additionally, even when a dedicated business writer . . . or often a team or business writers and editors . . .handles the writing of the persuasive documentation of a proposals to a potential client, technical personnel may have contributing roles to the final proposal.  It should give such personnel an advantage to understand a little about rhetorical purpose in such a case.

Three other rhetorical purposes factor into those kinds of documents that a ‘layperson’ writer may have an involvement in writing either in entirety or as part of a team:  although most often documents having rhetorical purposes in this third category will fall into the province of the professional business writer. 

Those three purposes involve:  to instruct [such as training materials], to provide a procedure on how to do something, and to give an edict . . . such as dress codes, codes of conduct, and statements on an organization’s business ethics code.

Once you define your readership or audience, the next step in preparing for the planning out of your document involves determining which of these purposes will drive the structuring of your final document.

While this is not an exhaustive coverage of all types of rhetorical purposes that could come about, by far these are the most likely rhetorical purposes for business documentation that the layperson writer of a business document is likely to encounter in their need to write business documentation.

Avoid the pitfall that immobilizes most less experienced writers . . .

I had planned to mix things up a bit in this blog between three general topic areas:  1) things of interest to those who have a creative writing bent [which could be almost anything], 2) the areas I consider my “niche” writing interests, and when possible how they tie in either to business or writing concerns, and 3) useful tips for those who don’t care to write but sometimes must for business purposes.

So far, I have set a structure for this blog that follows that pattern.

However, given that today is technically the legal New Year holiday, and also prompted by the observations of one of my commenters, I thought I would do a kind of a New Year bonus and do two Tip style blog posts in succession.

So, although in a sense this post may be jumping ahead out of sequence on Tips, I thought I’d discuss an area that too many writers get hung up during their writing process.  I even know professionals who get hung up in this way, if through lack of proper instruction they developed a less-than-ideal habit.

To review a bit, the Blog covered that the first step in a good document creation process involves an in-tandem assessment of who the reader . . . or audience . . . is for your document along with what that reader(s) needs are from the document.

Then, the next part of the process involves planning:  as one of my commentors rightly observed, most without a good deal of specialized training will use a traditional outlining process to do that.

Assuming no research involved in the project, or that the research phase came in as a predecessor to the outlining/planning phase, this brings the author to the point where the composing, or writing, process phase of developing the document will actually begin.

Now, we’re going to reverse our perspective, here, from linear steps such as audience assessment to planning to writing.

What I’m going to discuss in this Tip post is:  the portion of the document you should hold off on writing.

Over and over again, I see writers get hung up because they pick up their outline, see “Introduction” . . . and try to write it.

That’s both an unwieldy and an unproductive writing process. 

You will immeasurably improve your writing process . . . and its outcome  . . . if you divest yourself of this routine.

Indeed, when you follow your outline to compose, you should choose one of your content points.  If you feel most comfortable in sequence, you can do that starting at the first content point.  Or, you may wish to tackle the most difficult, least difficult, or one with the greatest data volume and put the rest together like a puzzle.

One way or another, though, you should in your actual writing process dive right into your content points.

In an effective writing process, the writer (usually) puts off writing the Introduction . . . either until the very last piece of the document or to the last piece excepting the Conclusion.  Just skip right over that in your Outline, and come back to it later.

I was fortunate in my very first Technical Writing course, a pilot course and one of the first in the country, that the instructor of that course taught the class a rather logical concept:  “how do you introduce something when you don’t what it is you are trying to introduce?”  (For those who follow comments, this one was at Salem State College.)

Yet, I see even professionals trying to work sequentially starting with the Introduction.  And nearly all non-professional writers make this . . . well, if not an error, it certainly adds several degrees of difficulty to the writing process.

So, when you start to write from your outline . . . skip over the Introduction heading entirely.   [It bears purposeful redundancy on this point.]

Write your content, and come back to that later.  [In some types of documents, the Introduction can become quite clear in the writer’s mind about 3/4s of the way through, and if you suddenly have the light bulb effect at such a time, of course, go for it at that juncture.]

Try this technique if you have gotten hung up starting out with an Introduction section.

I think you’ll find it astounding how much difference this one technique can make both in your productivity and if not enjoyment, at least reduction of aggravation in crafting your documents.

If you have to write something when you don’t prefer to write, or you would if there weren’t so many other duties pressing but there are other duties pressing, wouldn’t you prefer to reduce the stress and frustration of the process by applying this kind of logical technique to your process?