Effective writing for accountants: purpose, audience, and revision

¶ … G.S. (2012). Effective Writing: A Handbook for Accountants. 9th

Edition. Pearson Prentice Hall: New York.

The chapter draws a comparison between accounting and writing in the overall process required to produce the desired result. In both cases, it is necessary to identify the purpose of the project first, to think critically about the issues, and then analyze the intended audience for the work. The next phases involve gathering and organizing the ideas to be presented, and then producing an initial draft, a working draft, and finally, revising the draft into a final product.

Major Concepts

Getting Started -- Identifying Purpose

The first step in producing effective writing is narrowing down the purpose of the work. Different purposes will require different formats and different content: a legal document meant to define relationships and respective obligations will differ from a project presentation and both with differ substantially from a piece of writing intended to present an argument or advocate for a particular position or to announce or justify a decision.

Thinking Critically about the Issues and Analyzing the Readers

The next step consists of thinking critically about the issues because before one can reduce any analysis or argument to the written form, it is necessary to frame the underling concepts and ideas in a manner conducive to understanding them for the purpose of clearly expressing them. Part of that process involves thinking about the intended audience of the writing, because the audience will substantially dictate many aspects of the piece of writing, from its organization, structure, intellectual complexity, existing beliefs of frames of mind, and level of communication employed.

Getting Your Ideas Together

The next step consists of identifying the specific ideas intended to be expressed and organizing those ideas into possible combinations or groups, or into possible orders of presentation. Many writers consider this to be the outline stage and they will endeavor to produce a skeleton type of outline or a bullet list that will then be used to frame the first draft.

Writer's Block, Pressure, and Help from Colleagues

The final part of the chapter addresses the common problems of "writer's block," pressure to complete the project, and benefitting from the assistance from colleagues. The principal suggested solution to writer's block is breaking the project into smaller component tasks. The main suggestion for dealing with pressure is to stick to the other elements of the plan. The main suggestion about benefitting from the assistance of colleagues is to allow them to function as critical readers who might have suggestions from a fresh point-of-view.

Conclusion

The chapter is intended to help those for whom writing is not yet a strength fid ways to make the task of writing somewhat les intimidating and less difficult. It provides a workable approach to going from the first stages of conceptualization to the actual stages of organization, draft, and revision. It also provides a series of exercises designed to allow the reader to practice each suggestion in isolation and in advance of the first attempt at actually implementing them in writing.