How can one reach an audience with great information when people tend to avoid reading? Simple: one “buys” them!

A long time ago, I learned about technical writing – documentation, reports, articles and other pieces that were notorious for being ignored.

“You can write masterpiece after masterpiece,” my manager told me when I complained after finding another report had gone unread, “but people only want to know the report is there if they get into trouble. They’ll then find someway of showing that it was not their fault.”

“But…”

“No buts. People don’t read much. They never have and never will! Get used to it. Writers are either unread or they write fiction. Want to be read? Then write a novel!”

Since those days, I’ve looked at anything dealing with writing and reading. I’ve never quite accepted the coach’s advice. I won’t say that everything I’ve written has been read from start to finish, but I have had many people comment on how easily they understood my reports, manuals and articles.

The secret? It is simple: I try to write the way people read. That way, I buy their time to get them through the whole piece, no matter how long (in words) it was.

How do people read, especially non-fiction?

They read in short bursts. To an observer, the reader seems to “scan” through an article, but what they are doing is reading small parts. If they “buy” into that small part, they read a longer part, which leads them into another section, and so on, until they reach the end.

The funny thing is that they have a very strong comprehension on those parts that “buy” their time.

If they don’t “buy” a segment, then they skim through the rest, at least until they find something else that catches their attention. However, the chances are that, if they have skimmed through the piece, their retention of the article’s facts is extremely small; often they remember practically nothing, except that the writer did not tell them anything and reading was a waste of time.