Effective and Ineffective Repetition

Welcome to WORDS ON THE LINE's 1,110th post in nearly 19 years! There is still a lot to say about writing.

Why is repetition often powerful in political speeches and dramatic writing but usually useless in business and technical writing? 

I wrote about the value of repetition in a 2020 post as if I were a fan of repetitive phrasing. In that post, I explain the value of repetition with two examples from politics (Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and Winston Churchill's "We Shall Fight in the Beaches" speech), and two from fiction (the openings of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities and Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground). 

In this post, I refer to John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner") speech of June 26, 1963 at the Berlin Wall. What remains of the Wall that separated West and East Berlin stands as an outdoor art gallery in a unified country. In the space of only 80 words, Kennedy said, "Let them come to Berlin" four times, or 25% of that part of the speech. Hearing the enthusiastic response of 120,000 people in Rudolph Wilde Platz that day offers sufficient proof that Kennedy's use of repetition was powerful.

Churchill, Kennedy, and King use repetition to inspire their audience. Dickens uses the same technique to establish the settings of London and Paris, and Dostoevsky uses repetition to introduce us to the emotional state of the unnamed main character. All five examples achieve the intended results.

The benefits of repetition are far less for a business writer composing an internal proposal or  instructional message. Good technical writers also avoid repetition when describing an incident or detailing laboratory results. On the other hand, repetition may help an employee write a farewell speech to colleagues. Here is an example of repetition serving two purposes: to demand the writer always remember four coworkers and to remind his audience to always remember them:

I'll always remember Arthur for expressing confidence in my analytical and communication skills when he hired me. I'll always remember Paul for teaching me so much about my craft. I'll always remember Suzanne for seeing my leadership potential when she promoted me to supervisor. I'll always remember Tom for exuding patience with my professional development. 

Using your software's read-aloud feature to listen for repetition or reading aloud yourself will help you detect useless repetitive phrasing. Here's an example from one of my students, who discovered useless repetition in the opening sentence of his proposal only when he read it aloud:

"Since we are experiencing more production errors after losing three key staff members from our unit, we request the hiring of an additional three new analysts to reduce production errors."

Upon hearing the repetition of the beginning and ending, the writer reduced the 30-word sentence to 14:

"Hiring three analysts to replace those who left our unit will reduce production errors."

Read aloud to discover wordiness you might not in a silent reading.

Is 5W&H Too Much? Enough?

Every so often, students tell me they learned early in their business career to use 5W&H (who, what, where, when, why, and how) to attain completeness in a report, email, or slide presentation. I do not object to 5W&H as a guide for capturing and organizing content, especially for journalists and corporate incident reporters, whose readers expect the whole story. Nevertheless, I would admonish business and technical writers to refrain from using this technique as their sole job aid. 5W&H is just not enough in some cases, or it may be too much in others. Think about two exceptions to such a rule. 

1. 5W&H may be too much. You may not always need one or more 5 W/H elements. For example, clients may not want to reveal why they need a product or service from a supplier for at least two reasons. For one, they will use the product or service in top secret operations, such as purchasing spy cameras to surveil a suspected terrorist. For another, the why may be so obvious, such as ordering coffee for the office coffee machine. Also, staff members writing to management about a possible resolution to an ongoing problem because everyone already knows the implementation would be immediate upon approval. I could make this post run 10,000 more words if I reported every imaginable reason we might want to exclude any of the 5W&H elements. Think about it.

2. 5W&H may not be enough. Imagine writing a proposal to the executive team recommending an e-ink tablet for field investigators. You may need a sixth W, which, by including a comparative analysis of several e-ink tablets and a suggestion of which is the best for the investigators. The same goes for other 5W&H elements. In explaining a pressing problem, you may want to mention not only when (now) but since when (the past 20 business days). 

Business and technical writers need to reflect on their ever-changing audience, which varies document by document. Use 5W&H only as a means for getting started. 

Homework Time!

After a day of work, of staring at a computer monitor, of responding to a hundred emails, of reviewing slide decks that teammates presented at virtual meetings, of enduring two 90-minute journeys to and from the office, what's better than watching an episodic period piece on your favorite streaming service? 

How about reading and writing?

To become a better writer, read eclectically and seriously. Read like a writer, comparing varied opinions of thought leaders. Reading a diverse selection of news stories, political or philosophical commentaries, fiction, and even poetry will educate, entertain, and challenge you in several ways, including:

• You will uncover new ideas or, at the least, ways of expressing yourself about yesterday's, today's, or tomorrow's issues. 
• You might stregthen, create, or reverse your opinions on global conflicts or local topics that matter to you. 
• You will discover different writing styles and their value in their given context.  

To become a better writer, write a lot too. Writing should not stop when you enter your home. Find time to write emails to friends and family, greeting cards to people close to you, letters to the editor, notes in your journal, or a chapter for your autobiography. Writing is a process of discovery: your interpretation of a story, your critique of a theatrical performance or work of art, or your reaction to a historical event. You quickly see an improvement in your own style.

The "homework" you do will reward you greatly. Not interested in a reading-writing challenge? Then watch TV and take comfort in the lack of development of your communication skills.

The Right Mode for Feedback?

A critical lesson from a good business writing course should be this: Know when not to put something in writing. Writing can appear evasive to readers, who may believe that the author of a written message is intentionally avoiding face-to-face contact. The option of giving feedback verbally is often unavailable in businesses that require supervisors to write performance reviews. There goes the writer's dilemma: to write or not to write.

A practical look at the better mode for delivering feedback appears in the essay "When to Give Verbal Feedback—and When to Do It in Writing" by Sarah Gershman and Casey Mank for Harvard Business Review. The authors show the strengths of both verbal and written feedback, as well as a third communication mode: the voice memo. Gershman and Mank position their piece toward the ultimate goals of feedback: building trusting relationships and cultivating the employee's skills. For a 10-minute read, the article provides a valuable start for planning to give feedback.

BOOK BRIEF: A Primer for Memoirists

Music Is My Mistress by Duke Ellington. (New York: Doubleday, 1973). 538 pages.

Whenever someone asks me how to start an autobiography, I ask in return, "Do you have a lot of people to thank for making you who you are and getting you to where you are?" I ask these questions because I've read too many self-obsessed autobiographies by people who think they alone are responsible for their achievements and blameless for their failures. How could any of us gotten anywhere without the help of an endless stream of angels?

Now that I have just finished reading Duke Ellington's aptly titled Music Is My Mistress for the second time, one other time long before I started this blog, I feel I should simply ask would-be memoirists, "Have you read Music Is My Mistress?" This book is without question a masterpiece of memoir, as he describes with always with respect and often with humor hundreds of musicians, producers, friends, and family members who influenced his life. He writes with a candor and grace that reflect his legendary oratorical skills. Just listen to any of his talks on YouTube. By pointing to those who helped him, Ellington reveals so much about himself.

I consider Ellington the greatest musical composer, arranger, and bandleader ever. Yes, he had help from collaborators, most notably Billy Strayhorn, but his towering genius is evident, from his jungle sound of the 1920s to his sacred concerts of the 1960s. Scanning the nearly 50 pages at the end of the book detailing his awards and discography (and many more of both surfaced after his death in 1974), leaves one awestruck. How did he manage so much while keeping a band in business for more than a half-century? 

As fot the structure of the book, it is divided by eight "acts" and further separated by great moments of his career, "journals" recounting his numerous foreign tours, and a recurring Dramatis Felidae, in which he praises jazz giants and lesser-known people who extended even the slightest courtesies to him. Ellington's stories are amusing and often hilarious, and his vocabulary uniquely and exquisitely his own. Yes, that's the way to write a memoir.