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One of the joys of getting an MLIS degree is learning how to “write academic.” While this serves you well over the course of your program, writing for the non-academic world requires you to shift into an entirely different mindset. The information you present must be clearly and visibly organized, include only as many words as necessary to address the question at hand, and include no extraneous (and distracting) information. Think “just-in-time” information rather than “just-in-case.”
 
Just as I ask my students to “write to the assignment, not around it,” those of us who often write for our client projects must do the same thing. The goal should be to accomplish three things (in addition to simply presenting the appropriate information):
 
  1. 1.Make it easy to locate the information your reader and/or client needs (conclusions, recommendations, forecasts) by “visualizing” your information on the page
  2. 2.Demonstrate your ability to gather, synthesize, and present information in a consistent, well-organized manner
  3. 3.Demonstrate your ability to use your professional judgment in staying focused and “on-point,” including “just-in-time” information rather than “just-in-case” information
 
Visualizing Your Information
 
Whether a student writing to the requirements of an assignment or a professional completing a client project, you’re usually presenting a number of different types of information or ideas, but building this information around several key points. You want to present this information in such a way that your instructor or client can quickly find/identify your core concepts and then move on to your supporting narrative or documentation. Happily, word-processing software gives you some great tools for doing this.
 
Formatting tools. Among the formatting tools you can use to lay out the architectural “skeleton” of your writing are bullet points and numbers; boldface, underline, and italic fonts, and small and large caps.
 
Layout tools. Layout tools can include indentation, line spacing, and tables. For example, when writing an annotated bibliography, you might set off your annotations like this:
 
  1. Boldt, Lawrence G. Zen and the Art of Making a Living. Penguin Books, 1999. 640p. ISBN 0140195998.
  2. First published in 1991, Zen and the Art of Making a Living is the life-changing book that helped revolutionize the career planning field by offering a new vision of work. This new edition has been updated throughout with up-to-the-minute contact information and hundreds of new biographical resources.
 
Or, using tables, you might lay out your information like this:
 
TABLE
 
Organizing Your Information
 
There are a number of ways to organize your information, but your reader benefits for some sort of organizing principle – for example, organizing print resources by publication chronology, most recent first. Other ways of organizing:
 
  1. •From general to specific – list your general or comprehensive resources first, then move to more narrow or specific ones. An example would be if your were providing an annotated list of encyclopedias, you would first list Britannica and World Book, then topic-focused ones under specific headings, such as the Encyclopedia of Islam under a heading of “Religion Encyclopedias.”
  2.  
  3. •By resource type – for example, you would list all print resources (alphabetically, grouping books, periodicals, and articles separately), then all online resources, perhaps further subdividing “Online Resources” by type, e.g., directories, listservs, blogs, communities of interest, etc.
  4.  
  5. •By topic or key concept – as in your first assignment, where you organized your ideas by topics such as “Issues and Trends,” then listed key trends under this heading.
 
Whichever way you organize your information, do it consistently. Faithfully following the same format lets your reader absorb your information quickly rather than having to hunt for it.
 
Staying Focused
 
Whether writing for an instructor or a client, the key thing is to write “to the question.” That means every sentence you write has in some way to speak to your issues. You could be making an assertion, providing narrative that documents that assertion, or drawing a conclusion that relates to the question. What you want to avoid is extraneous sentences, ones that don’t provide information of value to your reader.
 
If you’ve been asked to identify the top five of something, don’t give him/her eight “just in case” they might at some point need more or because you found three other ones that seemed sort of cool; stay on point. Keep in mind that your goal is to pull out just the salient information; that’s your value add.
 
Owning Your Information
 
Don’t be passive or hesitant; use the active voice to take ownership of the ideas you’re presenting and the conclusions you’re drawing. After all, we’re the information experts; the world needs to know what we think!
 
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Writing for the Non-Academic World