Effective Writing for — the Marine Industry by John Guy FairplayPublished and distributed by Fairplay Publications Ltd 20 Ullswater Crescent Ullswater Business Park Coulsdon Surrey CRS 2HR, UK. Tel: +44 20 8645 2820 Fax: +44 20 8645 2824 Email: sales@fairplay.co.uk ‘Web: www fairplay.co.uk ISBN 1 870093 70 4 Reprinted October 1997 Reprinted May 2000 Copyright © 1994 Fairplay Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information given in this book, the publishers and author do not accept responsibility for errors, omissions or their consequences. Printed by Wednesday Press Limited, Units 2-3 Baron Court, Chandlers Way, Temple Farm Industrial Estate, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, UKThe Book All writing should have a purpose. This book sets out sim- ple guidelines which will help people in the marine indus- try to achieve their purpose when they write. Use this book to sharpen up your writing. Get people to act on your letters, take notice of your reports, understand your manuals and publish your press releases. Every language has plenty of words, and the same ones are available to everyone. But the words that you choose, and the way in which you arrange them, will decide whether or not you get your reader to understand and act on what you have written. English, the international maritime language, is a powerful tool. This book will help you harness the power of that tool. The Author John Guy is deputy editor of Fairplay International Ship- ping Weekly, the best-read and most talked-about maga- zine serving the international shipping industry. He was a seafarer for sixteen years and holds an Extra Master cer- tificate. He has worked as a surveyor, consultant, expert witness and journalist, in many countries and many lan- guages. His previous book, Marine Surveying and Consul- tancy, is a standard text for surveyors and users of survey- ors.Contents Chapter One 1 Introduction Why you need effective writing. What makes the marine industry special. Types of writing. Common needs. Chapter Two 12 Tools Gathering information. Advantages and disadvantages of paper notes, dictaphone, typewriter, word processor. Stor- ing information. Reproducing information. Choosing and using word processors. Choosing and using printers. Ap- pearance. Value of pictures and graphics. Chapter Three 29 Preparation Focusing on purpose. Clarifying objectives. Format. Im- portance of target audience. Collecting facts, data, other information. Organising information. Central idea/theme. Time planning. Chapter Four 45 Structure Layout. Logical order. Signposts. Titles, pagination, con- tents, index. Referencing. Summary. Chapter Five 54 Style Elements of style. Length, readability. Choosing words. Accuracy. Courtesy. Sentence structure, punctuation. Draft- ing and editing.Chapter Six 80 Writing for business Letters and memos. Types of letters, positive letters, nega- tive letters, persuasive letters. Minutes of meetings. Chapter Seven 101 Writing reports Types of report Incidents, survey, technical, investigation, expert testimony. Chapter Eight 137 Writing for training and examination Manuals. Exams. Chapter Nine 149 Writing for publication Newspaper and magazine articles. Knowing the market. Targeting. Content. Style. Format. Payment. Press releases, plugging a company. Writing books. Chapter Ten 175 The effective writer’s checklistChapter One — Introduction Why you need effective writing All writing should have a purpose. You may want to record some facts. You may want someone else to do something. You may want a job. You may want to instruct or persuade someone or to pass an exam. You may want to sell what you write. There is always a purpose. To achieve your purpose, you have to make the intended reader look at and under- stand what you have written and why you have written it. More, you have to impress the reader, by both the style and the presentation of what you write. And you have to make sure ‘that neither the target reader nor anyone else misun- derstands what you have written. Effective writing is writ- ing that achieves the purpose of the writer. There is a lot of writing about, but not much of it is effec- tive. There is too much writing that is long-winded, ungrammatical, incoherent, badly presented or wrongly tar- geted. Much of the writing in the marine industry is straight- forward technical reporting or business letter writing. Many writers assume that, if the facts are correct, the way they are presented is not important. That is wrong. Facts are only useful if they can be communicated to others. Technical and business writing needs to be effective, but it will not be ef- fective if writers do not pay attention to how they write. The process of communicating through writing is fraught with problems. The thought in the head of the writer and the action taken by the reader are separated by a series of processes, each of which distorts the original thought. The writer only has control over the first part of the process, which is the turning of the thought into a document. If the document is to have the desired effect, it is vital that the 1writer does everything possible to ensure that the opportu- nities for misunderstanding, misinterpretation or simple in- action are minimised. Effective writing means making hap- pen what you want to happen, and it covers a number of processes which go beyond simply turning your thoughts into words. Before looking at the tools and techniques needed, it is use- ful to visualise the process of communication. Imagine you are standing face-to-face with a person whom you wish to do something for you. You know each other. You both speak the same mother language. You have plenty of time, you like each other and the task is simple and familiar. The rea- sons for doing it are known to both of you. You are in au- thority over the other person, and that person accepts that authority. You give an order, using technical words you are both familiar with. You can speak the order, and emphasise its importance with your tone of voice and body language. ‘You can also sign with your hands to point to something. This communication process should be guaranteed to suc- ceed. It often doesn’t, and all of us can think of times when we have had to clarify verbal orders in similar situations. This situation could describe a chief officer on a ship tell- ing the duty officer where he wants some cargo stowed. Any chief officer reading this will know that he has to go and check that the cargo has been stowed as he wished, and most will remember cases when it wasn’t. Very often the reason will be, “I thought you said put it in No 2 hatch, not No 3!” Now visualise the opposite situation. You have to get some- one else to do something for you. They are in another coun- try, and will not get your request until some time in the fu- ture. They do not know you, and you do not know them. You do not share a common language, and you must both use English to communicate, although neither of you is a 2native English speaker. There are some differences of opin- jon and emphasis between your employers and theirs. You have no authority over them, and you are asking them to do something which is technically difficult. The reasons for doing it are complex, and not known to them. You can only communicate in writing, with no possibility of verbal ex- planation. You are a technical person, the reader is not. This describes a typical communication process in the interna tional marine industry, and it is a miracle that anything is ever done properly, given the scope for confusion in this sort of situation. Imagine what can go wrong. Writers may not have the facts correct, and may not fully understand why they are writing the request or report in the first place. The document may be lost in the post, lost on the desk of the reader, or simply ignored because it is not in the right format, i.e., the format expected by the reader. If it is read, the reader may only read part of it, and miss the significance of the important part, which is not where he expects to find it. Writers may not convert the request that they visualise into the right tech- nical terms, nor into correct English: Readers may mistranslate from English into their own tongue, and mis- understand the technical terms. Even if the reader reads and understands what is written, the written word will be fil- tered through the perceptions, likes, dislikes and stereotypes in the reader’s head. These filters alter the emphasis and meaning of even the simplest request, and significantly change the sense of importance which the writer originally intended to be conveyed by the words. The end result is that the writer wants something done, but the reader either doesn’t realise that,.or doesn’t want to do it, or does something different. Everyone reading this book will be able to recall something like that happening. So ef- fective writing is nothing to do with composing arty prose, nor does it require any great talent. It is a series of checks 3and techniques which are intended to make sure that thoughts in the head of the writer become the desired action by the reader. It means visualising the series of barriers which stand in the way of effective communication, and applying tech- niques which will get through those barriers. The examples already given go some way to explaining why, in an age of mass communication, with endless ways of conveying the written word instantly from place to place, people dealing with each other on anything other than a casual basis still like to travel to meet each other. Knowing how someone thinks and acts makes effective communica- tion simpler. So however good this book is, you will still need to talk to people. But even when you know someone, you still need to apply effective writing techniques to get the message across. Knowing them, you can apply the tech- niques more effectively, but the barriers are still there, and the same rules apply. What makes the marine industry special? The marine industry has all the problems of communica- tion found in any other industry, then some special ones of its own. First and foremost, it is a very international indus- try. Ships are moveable assets, and can be owned in one country, financed in another, registered in a third, crewed by as many nationalities as there are people on board, man- aged from an offshore centre unconnected to any of the fore- going, trade anywhere in the world, and have accidents or needs almost anywhere. The people involved in the whole operation of moving a cargo from one place to another by ship may well have nothing in common, culturally or lin- guistically, and may not even know the nationality and Ian- guage of the person they will be dealing with. The industry gets around that by using English as the stand- ard language of communication. As there are less English 4people in shipping now than ever before, that means that the great bulk of communication in the marine industry is carried out in English between people who do not speak it as a mother tongue. That double translation, into and out of English at each end of the process, is special to shipping. That is just the language. Imagine the cultural barriers to understanding which are hidden behind the mutual incomprehension of each other’s language. More special still is the vocabulary of shipping. It has its own jargon and special words, many of which are confus- ing. Why are upright frames in a double bottom tank called “floors”? Why are there so many ways of referring to hatches, holds, coamings, hatchways, cargo spaces, hatchcovers, pontoons, accesses, and the hole in the deck where you put the cargo? Why, if the floor holds a tank together, should we call the top of a cabin or space the “deckhead”’? If this vocabulary was fixed, it could be Jearnt like any other language or code. But there are different uses and different words for many things in shipping, which of- ten have to be communicated to non-technical people. A slight confusion over which piece of the ship the sur- veyor is describing would not matter, were it not for the large distances and periods of time that separate writer and reader. Small confusions cannot be cleared up by a quick telephone call if the reader is in London and the writer was in Jakarta eighteen months ago when the document was written and might be anywhere now. Most reports in ship- ping are acted on a long way from the place where they were written, by people who cannot visualise the place or time when the report originated. Nor can they recreate the circumstances. That would not make shipping so special were it not for the vast sums of money involved. Shipowners entrust very ex- pensive ships to managers whom they barely know, who 5employ masters they have never employed before to load very expensive cargoes on behalf of charterers who don’t know anyone in the chain. The result, especially if there is an accident, is that a $100m ship with a $200m cargo can do $3bn of pollution damage, and everyone has a lot of ef- fective writing to do. Ships are big and expensive, so are the things they bump into, and cargoes are normally worth more than the ship. In shore industry, decisions involving millions of dollars can be made in committee, after careful thought, and by people who know each other. Decisions costing millions of dollars are relatively frequent in ship- ping, and taken under less controlled circumstances. Last, but not least, the marine industry presents particular problems of communication because of the need to pass information between specialists who share very different backgrounds. Shipbrokers rarely know anything about ships, and seafarers repay the compliment by knowing nothing about shipbrokers. Company managers, often financially trained, know little or nothing about seafaring and ships. They may employ technical managers who know little of finance or shipbroking. They all deal with lawyers and in- surance brokers, who often appear only to be able to write bills and read cheques. To be effective in those circum- stances, the same basic set of facts and needs must be writ- ten and presented in a different way for each reader group. Otherwise, they will all see something different in it. In summary, the marine industry is special because it de- pends on communication, which may involve large sums of money, between people of different cultural, technical and linguistic backgrounds, with different priorities, over large distances and long periods of time. More than any other industry, shipping needs effective writing.Types of writing While the barriers of incomprehension, ignorance and preju- dice are common to all attempts to communicate in writing, not all types of writing are the same. The principles behind effective writing always apply. The application changes with the particular purpose and situation. Think of writing, and you may think of magazine articles, or technical reports, or perhaps business letters. There are a variety of types of writ- ing in shipping. Each is different. Start at the beginning. You write to a company for a job. This is a letter, but not a letter between businesses. It has only one purpose, and that is to get the company to inter- view you for the job. You enclose a short cv. That.backs up the letter, but must have a very different style, content and layout. Once taken on, you must pass your professional exams. Writing exam answers is a test of effective writing. You have a short and finite space of time to convince someone that you know the answer to the question they think they have set. A list of facts won’t do, and neither will waffle. When you have the qualifications, your first job is to help management by dealing with the ships. You have to write letters to suppliers of equipment, to shipmasters and chief engineers, to seafarers and their families and to government and other bodies on a variety of topics. Clarity of thought and a good writing style will help to make these letters more effective. As you progress up the ladder, you become involved in writ- ing standing orders, company policy, instructions and circulars to masters, and other items of official paperwork that the company thinks it needs to function properly. Spar- ing, unambiguous prose is required. 7Before going to higher management, you spend some time on the road, having to write up reports of special projects, or of incidents, which will form part of evidence in court, or support for a financial presentation. What and how you write may be vital to the company’s interests. On the edge of top management, you sit on a variety of committees. You take responsibility for the minutes, and tealise how the person who writes the minutes wields a great deal of power over the decisions that the committee thought it had made. Your company makes a major acquisition, buying a tanker operator, and you are made responsible for press relations. You learn the hard way about the need for avoiding misun- derstandings in press releases. Then tanker rates plummet, you get the blame for buying the ships in the first place, and you find yourself reading a redundancy notice. You set up as a consultant, knowing that the work you will get depends on the punch which your reports carry. You try to supplement your income by writ- ing for the press, or writing a book. You find that there is a whole new way of writing in the commercial world that you had not realised existed. So you end up writing another letter of application, backed by another, longer cv. And you hope that what you have learnt about writing will get the company to interview you for the job. Common needs Although the application and format will vary, the elements of effective writing are always the same. These are content, clarity, style, presentation, language, vocabulary and gram- mar. The importance of each of these elements varies with 8the task in hand, but it is almost always true that getting the content right is the single most important thing. And not slavishly following rules of grammar will not necessarily make your writing ineffective. Between these extremes, clarity, style, presentation, language and vocabulary must be adjusted to suit the target audience. Content is always important. If the writer is not sure what to include, the reader may get more information than is needed, and become bored or confused or sidetracked. Or the reader may get less than is needed, and miss the point of the exercise. If the writer is not sure of the facts, or purpose, of what is being written, then effective writing is impossi- ble. Clarity is vital. The main issues must stand out, and not be buried in a sea of sloppy text. Saying what you mean, and only what you mean, is fundamental to effective writing. Style describes the manner of writing. It is made up of the level of formality adopted, the sentence length, the choice of vocabulary, the word order and the tone of the writing. The writer’s style determines the readability of the docu- ment. The style needed for an expert witness report for a big firm of lawyers will be very different from the style needed for a letter of congratulations to a Filipino seafarer who has been promoted. A different style again is needed for aletter from management to a shipmaster, and vice versa. Some companies or professions set styles, either by custom or by edict. But even within these rules there is always scope for getting it wrong. And style is of primary importance because, if readers find the style offensive, or uncomfort- able to read, they won’t read it. Presentation has a key role to play in communicating effec- tively in writing. Just as most people will be less receptive 9face-to-face with a scruffy, incoherent drunk than they would be with someone smartly dressed and on the ball, so the appearance of a document sets the level of acceptance in the mind of the reader. The first problem writers have is to get the reader to actually look at what they have written. Good outward presentation is half the battle, and good in this sense means adopting the format which the reader ex- pects to see. The second problem for writers is putting the important piece of information, the action part, in the place where readers will find it and keeping the readers’ attention Jong enough to make sure they see it. A lot of that is a mat- ter of presentation and format. Language is important. First of all, the writer must choose a language the reader can understand. It is no use writing in Greek for an Egyptian. Translating always destroys good writing, especially as most translators are ignorant of ma- rine matters, and many of them seem to be ignorant of at least one of the languages they are translating from or to. So the choice of language is important, and for marine busi- ness it is usually English. But within the great sweep of the English language there are many dialects, and many differ- ent ways of saying things. There is little in common be- tween the language of a Los Angeles stevedore foreman and that used daily by a worker in a steel plant in Glasgow. Yet both speak English, and both may have something to say, or read, about the same steel cargo. Their languages will differ over the meaning of some words (would you call a happy person “gay”?), the emphasis put on other words, and the approach taken to emphasis. Language and culture are bound together, and effective writers must know the courtesies and taboos of the people they write for. Vocabulary is a part of language. It is important for effec- tive writing for two reasons. Firstly, if long and unnecessar- ily complicated words are used when short, simple ones will do, the reader will get irritated and stop reading. Secondly, 10it is important to be precise about the meaning of words which name things, and to stick to the same word for the same object throughout. If you are writing about bulkheads, then write about them and do not refer to the hold bounda- ties, the retention plates, the vertical structural divisions or whatever. Such references are irritating for a reader who is used to the language, and impossible for a reader who is not, who has to keep going back to the dictionary. Grammar is the book of rules about how a language should be used. Without it, it would be difficult to express meaning precisely. But grammar is a living thing, and constantly adapting to changes in the use of language in society. There are plenty of good textbooks on grammar, but most people can write effectively without worrying too much about the differences between adverbs and adjectives, or when to use the subjunctive, or even that favourite of grammatical ped- ants, the split infinitive. Consistent and outrageous bad gram- mar will spoil any writing, but the best grammar in the world will not help a report which has the wrong content, is un- clear, is poorly presented, is inconsistent in its use of lan- guage and vocabulary and is written without style, or in the wrong style. Conversely, a well-thought- out report, clearly written in consistent language and the right style, in a good format, will do its job, despite lapses over the more arcane tules of grammar. And in many cases, bending those rules deliberately and selectively will give the report more punch. qlChapter Two Tools The tools which a writer uses to collect and store informa- tion and to prepare a document can make a big difference to the finished product. Appropriate tools save time, effort and lost information. They make the difference between good and bad presentation. And they make a big difference to the time which the writer can spend on thinking and writing, as opposed to doing back-up tasks. Practised effective writers can produce effective documents without the best tools, but will produce better ones with them. Less able, or less prac- tised writers can give themselves a lot more time and a bet- ter chance of producing an effective document by getting the right tools for the job. The right tools means simply the tools the writer feels most comfortable with for the job in hand. Different tools are appropriate for different tasks, and technology is constantly adapting to provide even more tools. This chapter discusses the pros and cons of some of the tools available to writers. Gathering information There are a variety of ways of gathering and handling the information needed for preparing a document. The most readily available tool is a pair of ears, and a memory be- tween them. Most writers have them already. They are port- able, simple to use and always to hand. But they suffer from a number of defects. The main defect of memory is that it has a selective and low retention factor. It also tends to modify the information held in it, and to dump existing information to make room for new inputs. Effective writers need to have correct informa- tion to refer to when they prepare their document. So, for 12anything other than a short memo, some form of informa- tion-gathering and storage system is required. Assume we are preparing a report or a long article. Some information will be gathered from written sources, some by observation and measurement, some by question and answer. It must be recorded or, for written material, its location must be recorded, at the time it is found. Then, for a long report with a lot of information, it must be stored in an accessible fashion. There are only three ways of recording the information at site. One is on paper, another is on tape, with some form of dictaphone, and the third, less obvious, is by photography. Paper has the advantages of being cheap, easy to find, easy to use, and permanent. A notebook can be kept as a record, in case it is needed to back up a statement made later. It cannot break down, nor run out of tape or batteries. It is often less intimidating for someone answering questions than is a tape recorder, which can seem very formal and forbid- ding. Best of all, it makes notes easy to read back and refer to. There is no need to go through hours of tape to find a particular fact or statement, and it is quick to flip notebook pages and find the facts as recorded, which are always ar- ranged in a different order in the report. The disadvantages of the notebook are that it requires the use of two hands, it means that the person taking notes must be selective if recording speech, it is not irrefutable proof of what someone said if they later change their mind, and there is never time to write everything down. Notebooks are not much good in the rain. Nor can they simply be left for a secretary to write up into a report, because the writer’s scrawls will usually be difficult to decipher for anyone ex- cept the writer. One way around the last disadvantage is to use printed forms for gathering information for surveys or other jobs performed. 13regularly. The form fulfils a double function. It records in- formation in a format which can be turned into a report by someone else, and it reminds the person doing the record- ing of the information they should be looking for. With a little care, report forms can save time, mistakes and final processing. Dictaphones are fun, and look professional. But they are not the real answer for most information-gathering exer- cises. The advantages are that they are easy to use with one hand, they are irrefutable evidence of who said what and when, and they can be very useful for someone like a sur- veyor who is doing many reports in a regular format which must be processed by secretarial staff. Surveyors learn the simple techniques of tape-speak, instructing the typist as they go along, and recording information, such as that used. in an on-hire survey, in a regular manner. They then pass the tape to the typist and go off to the next job. There are disadvantages. To find any information quickly, the tape must be played back to that point. Batteries can run out. The machines can fail and, much worse, they gather in too much useless information if used wrongly. Recording an interview or meeting, for example, may seem like a good idea. But when you come to write the minutes of the meet- ing, or write up the interview, or simply extract the facts from either, you must play and listen through what seems like hours of greetings, pauses, coughs and other verbal clut- ter to get to the point. The person with the notebook has only recorded the facts, decisions and necessary quotes, and all are accessible quickly. Remember, if it takes an hour to record, it takes an hour to play back. The place of photography may not be immediately obvious in a book about writing. But any report is enhanced by pic- tures, especially if it deals with factual matters. A picture can save an enormous amount of description and can greatly idimprove the appearance and effectiveness of a report. Even if photos are not used in the final document, it is useful during information-gathering to take pictures. They are easy to store and contain a wealth of information which may not have been apparent at the time. There is no excuse for do- ing this on the cheap. A good-quality 35mm compact cam- era with a zoom lens, auto exposure and built-in flash costs less than one hour of a lawyer’s time, or two hours for a surveyor. Modern compacts occupy little space, ate reliable and give excellent results. So before thinking about dicta- phones or other gadgets, get a good camera if the writing you are to do involves any form of information-gathering. Storing information On tape or paper, the information must be stored and read back before it is turned into a report. For most purposes, it can be stored in the format it was collected in, either in a notebook, on a form, in files for written information and photos, or on tapes. But major reports can involve amass- ing large amounts of data, which must be stored in such a way that it can be found and referred to via some form of index or reference system. The oldest way is simply to pile everything up in a file or files, remember - by some form of tactile or mental hook - where the documents or facts are, and blow the dust off them when you need them. A lot of good writers use this method. A better way is to use a filing system, with sensible file titles, to keep the data, and a one-sheet index of information which tells the writer what has been stored, and where, for a particular report. A refinement on this is to use a card index system, which allows notes to be made and referenced under different head- ings. Itis time-consuming to pass information from the gath- Isering stage to the storage stage, and it should only be done if the information is needed in the future or if there is good clerical help and a need for cross-referencing later. This brings us to the computer. If you have any sort of rea- sonable pe, it will be able to store information. The infor- mation can be typed into the word processing package in a rough manner, and stored that way. But it is better, if there is a lot of information and a need for cross-reference, to use a specific database program. This is simply a card index inside the computer. There are a number of databases avail- able. Fairplay Information Systems sells one specifically for manipulating data on ships and owners, for instance. The cheapest general access ones run on IBM pes and can handle volumes of information which can be accessed and read back in a number of ways, or printed out if required. The drawbacks are that information needs to be typed or scanned in, mistakes can be made typing it in, more will be made by the scanner, and a copy on a disk or of the original must always be stored away from the computer, just in case it gets a bug or otherwise loses the information held elec- tronically. Also, because the information is held electroni- cally, it will not be retrievable unless you know what you are looking for, and can name it correctly. Whereas the pa- per-piler can ruffle through the paper looking for an idea, or a half-remembered fact or other piece of information, database browsing is less rewarding and less satisfying. That said, a tidy mind which puts information into the computer will also get it out, and more efficiently than if it was left in a pile of paper. Computer databases are powerful and use- ful but, like much other electronic equipment, they cannot make up for human deficiencies. Computers can also access, via disk, cd-rom or modem, enormous sources of data which are available commercially. If someone has already done the research and written on 16this topic, you should be ready to use it. Computers can help you. Most big national newspapers are on disk or are on line on such services as Lexus. Think about how com- puters can help you access, as well as store, information. Reproducing information There are various ways of producing documents. The sim- plest is to write something by hand. Next comes the type- writer, followed by its big brother, the word processor, Last comes commercial printing, which must usually be preceded by typing or word processing. Writing by hand is quick, cheap, available and almost use- less. It can only contribute to effective writing when the document to be produced is a very short memo or letter to someone who will value the informal and personal touch. Normally, it is difficult to read, takes up too much space and makes documents look unprofessional. Save it for notes of thanks, and perhaps your resignation. Exam answers are a special case, with the trick being to seek legibility under pressure, and to make the answer look as professional as you can. ‘Typing is still the mainstay of document production. Writ- ers may type documents themselves, or have them typed. The typewriter has a lot of advantages, and a lot of disad- vantages. The biggest disadvantage is that, once you have used a good word processor, it is very difficult to go back to using a typewriter. The advantages of the manual typewriter are that it can be cheap, portable, robust and self-contained. Slightly more money gets you an electric or electronic typewriter. These are halfway to a word processor, and may include some of the features of a word processor. They need power, are less robust and portable, but they are still self-contained. If you are going for the cheapest way of producing a typed docu- 17ment, buy a manual portable. It won’t let you down, but it will never do anything very pretty either. An electric type- writer gives a better finish, and for one-off letters it is just as good as a word processor. It is also cheaper. But it will be heavy on consumables, so watch for the price of ribbon car- tridges and error-correcting tapes. They are often only avail- able at the manufacturer’s price, and that hurts if you doa lot of work. From a writer’s point of view, a typewriter exercises a great discipline. You must think straight and clear and get the sentence right the first time, because if you want to go back and correct something, you must either use up a lot of error- correcting tape, or fluid, and probably make a mess, or you must retype the document. Most professional writers today learnt their craft on a typewriter. I wrote a book on one, but I would hate to do another. If you have clerical help, it seems sensible to draft a long- hand or dictated version of what you are to write. You can then be handed a typed draft, correct that, and have the typ- ist make a final copy. The typist must also make carbons or photocopies for file and distribution. If you think about that clearly, typists use up a lot of time and money which, if they are employed by you, might be better spent elsewhere. And you are not saving your own time, because you must draft, read, correct, re-read, maybe re-correct, and finally approve the document. Do it yourself on a word processor, and you save a lot of time, and get a better result. Word processors are not just a way of making the life of a typist easier. They are machines to replace typists, and are increasingly doing so in offices all over the world, at all levels. It may be that having a sec- tetary has some status attached to it, and it is very useful in most jobs to have some administrative and clerical help. But using a good secretary as a typist is a waste. 18What is a word processor? It is two things. It is either a machine built specifically as an intelligent typewriter, or it is a program which runs on a computer which allows the production of documents. The intelligent typewriter word processor is also a computer, but it is built to do just the job of producing documents. A computer can do that, and more. So the only advantage of buying a specially configured word processor would be some savings on cost. If you are short of money, buy a manual typewriter, and save up for a proper desktop computer and printer. The best kind of word processor is a piece of software which allows you to use your computer as a typewriter which can do fancy tricks. There are lots of different types of compu- ter on people’s desks, and more in the shops. The price of computer power is falling all the time, and the range of pro- grams is growing. But at the time of writing this, there are really only two kinds of personal computer suitable for of- fice work. One is the Apple Macintosh, and the other is the IBM-compatible pc. Apple Mac is easy to use, but less adapt- able, and there is less software available for it. The IBM- compatible is really the industry standard, and it is the most sensible to buy. You can get a desktop model, with a monitor screen or a portable. And, if you are not too ambitious, you will not pay much more than you would for an electronic typewriter. But you must buy a compatible printer separately, and that can add a lot to the cost. The notebook computers are very tempting, but do suffer from cramped keyboards. The bet- ter ones have a port for coupling up a full-size keyboard for use at base. The portable will cost more, power for power, and more still if you go for an external monitor and key- board. So only buy that if you mean to write on the road. Whatever you buy, try the keyboard for feel. Some are squidgy and horrible to use. Some can’t keep up with a good typist, and they vary a lot. 19Portable or desktop, you need at least one floppy disk drive, and 3.5 inch is becoming the standard size. That is the means by which you will save material away from the computer, and transfer it to other computers. You also need a reason- able hard disk in the machine, and 40Mb is really the mini- mum for a decent machine nowadays. You don’t need all that for working on documents, which occupy very little space. But you will soon use the computer for all sorts of other things you can’t imagine now. And that needs space. The other two points to think about are power and memory. The IBM-compatibles are measured in power steps by the chip size. The slowest available now is the 286, then 386, then 486, with some variants on these. Memory is meas- ured in Mb of RAM, random access memory. The more powerful the chip, and the more RAM you have, the more you can do, and quicker. For simple word processing, you need only a 286 with IMb ram. A portable with that will run good word processing packages and store a lot of documents on the hard disk. But, with the price of computers coming down, if you are buy- ing now, it is worth buying more, to allow for running page make-up and scanner software. To run a page make-up, or desktop publishing programme, you need a minimum 386 computer with 4Mb RAM. A big hard disk helps too. Dur- ing the time I have been writing this book, on a new 386 machine, the 286 and 386 machines have almost disappeared from the shops. The entry level is now a 486 machine with an 80Mb hard disk. That sounds too much but, as software writers develop newer and more powerful word processing programmes, they need the power and space. The price stays the same, but you get more computer and more gadgets in the software every day. So buy the best you can afford. And get a colour monitor. Mono monitors are only for the sim- plest applications and will quickly drive you mad if used for page make-up systems. 20With the hardware, you need the program. There are hun- dreds of word processing software packages available. They are all intended to do similar things. They allow you to type, and to see the words on the screen. You can check the spell- ing automatically, edit and correct what is on the screen, change the document format, see what it looks like, and then save it on the hard or soft disks, and print out as many copies as you need. Some programs are more comfortable to use than others, and some have more facilities than others. What is impor- tant, for the effective writer, is that the program has a good spell-checker, is easy to use and is compatible with the sys- tems used by other people you may want to swap work with. For instance, Fairplay staff use a program called Word Per- fect 5.1. Itis probably the most commonly used package in industry. So when freelance journalists or other authors send us work, we like to get it on a disk, and we like it to have been prepared in Word Perfect 5.1. That way, we have less to do, and errors are avoided. Word Perfect is a very power- ful program, and can be used not only for typing but also for incorporating diagrams and charts and for doing quite sophisticated lay-outs. It is not quite a full desktop publish- ing outfit, but almost. That sort of capability is very useful for the small office that doesn’t want to buy a powerful com- puter and a desktop publishing programme, but which wants to produce professional-looking documents. All effective writers want that. Other well-known word processing programs are Word, Wordstar and Lotus Ami Pro. For each of these programs there are a host of writers who will swear that the one they use is the best. There is a new version of Word Perfect out now, WP 6.0 for Windows. It can do almost anything a page make-up system can do. You just have to look, and try and get used to one of them. Less well-known ones may be just as good, and if you are the only person using the machine 21and are never going to send anyone a disk with copy on, then fine. But if you are going to share the machine, or hire staff to use it, or send documents on disk, you need a well- known program to avoid problems of incompatibility with other machines, or other people’s training. If you buy a new machine today, it is usually possible to bargain the supplier into selling you a good word process- ing program at the same time, for very little cost. This is the opportunity to buy a good industrial package. Using the word processing package is largely a matter of working through the instructions, and simple practice. You don’t need to know anything at all about computers, except where to turn them on. But there are some practical tips. Firstly, computers can lose work, both while it is in progress, and while the computer is turned off. So it is important to save work as you go along. When working on a long docu- ment, it should be saved regularly on to the hard disk. That way, if there is a power surge, if the monitor goes pop, or if someone spills coffee into the keyboard, or down your back, the work you have done won’tbe lost. And before you leave the computer, all the work you have done should be downloaded onto a floppy disk. That disk should be stored away from the computer. If there is a fire or whatever, you still have the effective writing you have done, and it can be read by any compatible machine. There is a school of thought which says that word proces- sors encourage verbosity and sloppy writing. If they do, it is not the fault of the machine, but of the writer. Word proc- essors make life simpler, because the writer doesn’t need to get things right first time. The work can be edited and re- edited. Misspelling and literals can be picked up by the spell- checker, so typing speeds go up as there is no worry over simple mistakes. But the same rules of simple, clear writing apply, and people who are going to overuse the thesaurus in 22their word processor would do the same working on a type- writer, and doubly so if someone else was doing the typing for them. If you are going to do anything more than very limited writing, buy the best computer and word processing package you can afford. You won’t regret it. Before discussing printers, there is one extension to word processing which is worth mentioning. That is desktop pub- lishing. This is a general-use term for any software package which can be used for laying out pages, combining diagrams and pictures and text, and preparing the whole lot for print- ing. There are a lot of DTP programs available, and they are coming down in price. They are quick and easy to learn, at least for the essentials. They can make documents look very professional and, for any business that depends on produc- ing its output as written documents, they are well worth considering. The three best-known at the time of writing are Aldus Pagemaker, Ventura and Quark Express. Each has its devo- tees, and many people in the publishing industry swear by one or the other, in combination with an Apple Mac com- puter. But that is old hat, and Pagemaker or Ventura willrun on IBM-compatible pes. The differences between the pro- grams are marginal. Fairplay uses Pagemaker for setting the magazine, for setting books, for setting advertisements, for designing leaflets and other printed material. It can be used just as easily and effectively for setting the local squash club newsletter, or church weekly, or whatever. The output from the programs can be used to drive simple printers, or can be used to drive a full-scale industrial linotronic type- setter for commercial printing. Tt is no use buying a DTP program if the computer is not powerful enough to run it, or if the printer is unable to re- produce the document laid out on the screen. So before go- ing for a DTP program, first be sure you need the high qual- 23ity and flexibility it gives you, then check that you are buy- ing, or have, a machine that can run it. Pagemaker needs at least a 386 machine with 4Mb RAM and about 8Mb free hard disk space to run effectively. Its output can be loaded onto a disk which can then be printed commercially, if the number of documents justifies that. But if it is to be printed in the office, the printer itself must be up to scratch. Up to scratch for a printer means that it is compatible with the computer, can produce a clear finish and is flexible and powerful enough to cope with the demands of the word proc- essor or DTP package in use - all that while being small, quick, silent and economical. There are a number of different types of printer available. Each has advantages for specific applications and, in gen- eral, the more you pay, the better the printer you get. But it is not quite as simple as that. There are four main types of printer on the market. One, the rarest, is the daisy wheel printer. This is based on an electronic typewriter and is usu- ally only found as part of a dedicated word processor ma- chine, i.e., an intelligent typewriter. The advantage is that the finish is crisp and clear, the disadvantage is that only one fontis available, with no graphics. If you are stuck with one, fine, but don’t go out and buy one. If you are buying a printer to go with a new computer sys- tem, the first thing to look at is your budget. If you have plenty of cash, you don’t need to read past this paragraph. Just go out and buy a postscript compatible laser printer. At 1994 prices, that will cost about half as much again as the original computer system. But it will produce the very best finish, equal to commercial printing, will cope with any graphics or special symbols, and will allow you to use all the facilities of the most powerful DTP and word process- ing packages. Cost per page on plain paper will be moder- ate. The cost is in the original purchase. 24There are cheaper laser printers, but the very cheapest will still cost as much as a reasonable computer, and can only really be justified for an office turning out volumes of high- quality work. Apart from the quality and flexibility available, the laser printer also scores on speed and on being almost silent. It is a real blessing to be able to print a long report silently and quickly while getting on with something else. At the other end of the budget, the cheapest printers avail- able work on the dot-matrix principle. They use a set of pins to prod out the pattern of the letters or graphics on a carbon tape similar to a typewriter ribbon. The early dot- matrix printers used nine pins and were fed with continu- ous strips of paper with holes down the side. The faint and dotty finish and the ragged-edge paper looks very cheap, and its use would be a serious mistake for any form of docu- ment which you want people to take seriously. Dot-matrix technology has moved on, and modern printers have 24 or more pins which produce a better finish. They can handle both plain and tractor feed paper and may have coloured ribbons to provide colour copy. The best dot-ma- trix printers produce a Letter Quality (LQ) script, a Near LQ script and a draft script, the difference being in the number of times the pins strike the ribbon. The disadvan- tage is that, the better the quality of finish, the more the pin strikes, which means the slower the printer and the more the noise. Noise is the single biggest problem with dot-ma- trix printers, and the ability of these machines to drive you crazy should not be underestimated. Also, the better-qual- ity machines are not cheap. It is only the simplest machines that are really cheap. The unit cost of documents is cheap, as the only consumable is the ribbon. But who wants a noisy office and cheap-looking documents? There is a compromise. Between the laser and the dot-ma- trix comes the bubble-jet or ink-jet family of printers. These 25work by squirting tiny jets of ink onto the paper to make the pattern of letter or graphics the computer wants. The finish this gives is almost as good as that of a laser printer, and the best ink-jets are probably better than the low-end lasers. The system is usually more costly to buy than dot-matrix, is dropping in price as it becomes more popular, and costs slightly more to run, copy for copy. A typical ink-jet printer will cost about a third more than an equivalent dot-matrix, but less than half an equivalent laser. The printer is almost silent in use and very quick. It is also flexible, and can cope with most things a laser can do, including clever graphics. At the time of writing, bubble-jet printers were the best so- lution to cost-effective production of one-off high-quality documents. Whatever technology the printer uses, you should check that it is compatible with both your computer and your word processing software. Not all printers can produce all fonts, so if you have a choice of fonts in programs you use, make sure the printer can handle them. You may need a special program that runs in the background, called a Type Man- ager. In summary, you can write effectively with anything. Butif you have plenty of money and will produce a lot, then it is worth investing in a powerful 486 pc, an industry-standard word processing package, a DIP package anda laser printer. The computer can also run a database and serve as a fax. For an individual with limited resources but who needs to produce effective reports, it is worth getting a mid-level computer, say a 386 pc, an industry standard word process- ing package such as Word Perfect 5.1, and a bubble-jet printer. For occasional business letters only, buy an elec- tronic typewriter which will give a nice finish to the docu- ment. Chuck out the manual typewriter and the dotty old printer. They will do more harm than good in an age when appearance is as important as content. 26Appearance The idea that appearance is as important as content may seem out of place in a manual on effective writing. But it is true. A large part of the effectiveness of writing is deter- mined by the level of reception which the reader gives to it. At worst, if a document is scruffy, or unfamiliar, the reader won’t look at it at all, which makes it completely ineffective. Even if readers look at it, they will be predisposed to give it more attention if they like the look of it, and will have their barriers to understanding up if they don’t. So it is worth spending time and money on the appearance of your work. The first point on appearance is to use a decent printer. Nothing will help work which is done on an old typewriter, with jumpy letters and visible corrections. For reports with a wider circulation, or documents which may make the difference between success and failure, such as a tender document, it is worth considering professional printing. The output from a commercial typesetter and a printing press should look professional, and lend weight to the document. But in-house laser printers can produce work almost as good, and commer- cial printing is only really worthwhile for large print runs. The second point is to use a decent photocopier. Nothing spoils a document more than shoddy copying. If the copies are lopsided, or smudged, or unclear, it makes them look cheap. There are plenty of good copiers on the market, and bureaux where they can be used, so use them. When you have nice crisp-looking text and balanced head- lines, you are halfway there. The next big step is to get as many diagrams, graphics, and photographs into the docu- ment as possible, consistent with not giving irrelevant in- formation. Nothing enhances a document more than good graphics. These can be photos, or graphs produced by the computer, or diagrams which are scanned or photocopied 27in. The tools of the trade are a good camera, a good photo- copier, a spreadsheet and/or graphics program for the com- puter, a scanner if you are going for a lot of work, and some- one who knows how to work it all. A word on colour. Modern technology allows the use of colour in a variety of ways. Sparing use of colour to high- light graphs and diagrams, or to signpost a series of pages, will make a report look impressive. But it is easy to get carried away, and colour used for the sake of it looks just that. It is also expensive, and may make the document look less professional than if it had been produced in a simple black and white format. So if you have colour printing fa- cilities, use them sparingly. Last but not least comes collating and binding. Having pro- duced a good document, it is silly to spoil it by getting it, or allowing the reader to get it, in the wrong order, or to lose pages. So give some thought to binding. Offices producing large volumes of reports may find a cheap binding machine worthwhile. Others can buy in binders or covers of differ- ent materials. The important points to note are that the binder should be strong and should hold and protect the document while at the same time allowing it to be read easily. Test the binder to see if its contents can be photocopied without breaking it or taking pages out. If you write a good report on anything, people will want to photocopy it. They should be able to do that easily. If they can’t, they will mess the report up, then pass it on to the next reader, who will be that much less impressed. But they won’t blame the first reader. They will subconsciously blame the writer, and so be less receptive to the message of the report. Select the colour, texture and appearance of the binder to appeal to the target reader, and make sure you can label it clearly on the outside. An unread document is never effec- tive. 28Chapter Three Preparation The key to effective writing is effective preparation. Good writers can appear to dash off a piece of prose to suit any situation, but it will not be really effective unless the writer is thoroughly prepared. In any case, good writers who so effortlessly dash off the prose you envy will have done an element of the preparation detailed in this chapter. Because of their skill and practice, they will have done it quickly” and mentally, but they will still have done it. Preparation means much more than rounding up some in- formation and switching on the word processor. It means teally thinking about what you are going to write, and why you are going to write it. If the writer is not clear about the purpose of the document, you can be certain the reader won’t be either. Purpose The most important part of preparation is focusing on the purpose of what you are going to write. Before you start, you have to be clear why you are writing. Are you record- ing facts for someone else? Are you setting out to persuade someone of something? Are you informing your employ- ees of something that affects them, or are you an employee informing your managers of something that affects them? Do you want the reader to act on what you write? Are you asking for something important, or difficult? Are you writ- ing something as part of a discipline process? Is there a le- gal need or legal aspect to what you write? Are you writing for sale, or because you have to, or because you believe in what you are saying? Are you writing to please someone else, or because it really needs doing? 29These are the questions you should ask yourself before you put finger to keyboard. If you have the purpose of the docu- ment clear in your mind throughout the process, then it will help get the tone and content of the document right. If you are not sure what you want, then it will show in the final result. There are a number of broad categories into which purpose can be divided, but there are four main purposes which you should bear in mind. These are, in ascending order of diffi- culty, to record, to inform, to direct and to persuade. Itis relatively easy to record something, especially if a fixed formatis in use. There are no immediate consequences hang- ing on what you write, and probably no indication of the type of reader. It is a little more difficult to inform some- body of something correctly. To be effective, the document must not only contain the information you want the reader to be informed about, but it must also be written and pre- sented in a way that will be attractive enough to be read, and clear enough to be understood. Directing someone is more difficult. It implies a measure of authority on the part of the writer, but that doesn’t mean that sloppy writing will do the job just because the reader is a subordinate. The subordinate will either misunderstand or misinterpret the directive if it is at all ambiguous, and will carry out the task unwillingly if the tone is wrong. If the document is really ineffective, it will get the reader to do the wrong task unwillingly. Persuasion is the most difficult of all, by a long way. Unfor- tunately, almost all the writing we are faced with in the marine business is an exercise in persuasion. Reports, memo- randa, submissions, tenders, proposals, exam answers and letters all have to persuade the reader. To achieve that pur- pose they have to have be read, to contain the right content, 30to be unambiguous and to be in the right style, as for all other purposes. But they must also contain that subtle extra punch which a well-written document brings to the art of persuasion. The power behind the punch is generated from attention to a number of points, but it starts with writers being very clear about the purpose of what they are writing. Objectives If you are clear about the broad purpose of what you are writing, you can focus in more tightly on specific objec- tives. This means asking yourself questions about the target readers, and about the exact task you have been set, or which you have set yourself. The objective may be very simple. “I want the company to offer me a job.” Or it may be very complex. “I want to in- form environmental organisations about the hard work the tanker industry is putting into protecting the marine envi- ronment so that they will be more receptive to suggestions from industry bodies that they focus their lobbying on get- ting governments to enforce existing IMO conventions.” The objective may be closely targeted. “I want the crew to wear hard hats on deck.” Or it may be very broad. “I want to use the media to influence public opinion about traffic separation schemes.” The objective may not be directly related to the task in hand. “{ want to sell an article to Fairplay to help pay my daugh- ter’s school fees.” Or, more likely, “I want to make a good job of this voyage report because I want to be promoted to chief engineer.” There may be negative objectives. “I have to write to the charterers about this problem, and I want them to act on it, but I do not want to upset my relations with them and so 31lose future employment.” Or, more uncomfortable, “I have to tell the company the truth about my actions in this dam- age report, but I don’t want them to think I am incompetent and give me the sack.” Before starting work, the writer should think about all the possible objectives of the work, and try to write them down in one or two short sentences. If you can’t summarise your objectives in writing, then what you write will either not achieve what you think you want, or it will achieve some- thing completely different, or both. It is vital to know both the overall purpose of the document and the specific objec- tives before starting work. If the purpose and the objectives are fuzzy, the document will be fuzzy too. Format In most cases, writers will know the format of the docu- ment they must produce. If you are asked for a report, then write a report. But if you are not asked for a report, you may be faced with a choice of formats. If you are a ship master and you want to tell head office that the grabs on the new class of bulk carriers are a pain in the neck and need modi- fying, what is the best format to use? You could make a phone call to the superintendent. You could send a short memo to one of the managers. You could include a com- ment in your voyage report. You could send a formal letter about that specific problem to the ship manager, or the fleet technical director. Or you could produce a detailed report of the specific problems, with suggestions for the work needed to rectify them. You have a choice of format, and the format you choose will influence the effectiveness of the document. There is no set answer to what format suits which occasion. But it is worth thinking about the format carefully before you set to work. The purpose and objectives which you have 32clarified for yourself give you one side-of the picture. An understanding of your target readers will provide the other side. A major proposal to replace a full outfit of expensive grabs needs to be put in a formal way, and backed up with some very persuasive evidence, in the form of a full report. A simple suggestion that other ships in the fleet should be informed of the problems of using the grabs in a particular way, and the way to avoid problems, may be best put in a single letter. Different companies, cultures and areas of the industry have different conventions which guide the choice of document. These conventions must not only be followed, they must be used to help the purpose of the writer. For example, in the major oil company which employs you, all technical reports go to the technical department, whereas letters to the shipmanager only go there if the manager decides to pass them on. So if you know that the decision you want is made in the technical department, you must write a tech- nical report. If you are not specifically told the type of document re- quired, try to decide which format will give you the best chance of achieving your objectives. The format must be able to contain all the information you think is necessary, it must go to the right people, and it must set the right tone - not too serious in some cases, formal and technical in oth- ers. And it must be within your capabilities. If you are a busy ship master who has problems with the grabs on board, you may have neither the time nor the technical and finan- cial knowledge to produce an effective report into what is wrong and what should be done. So instead of producing a bad report, which gives half the answers, produce a good letter which will make management understand all the prob- Jems. Then wait for a more suitable opportunity to suggest the answers. 33The readers If writing is going to be effective, it must have readers. But the readers are not under the control of the writer. All the writer can do is make sure the document is tailored to suit the intended readers, while ensuring that it will have no adverse consequences on unintended readers. Effective writers write for a specific target reader. They have thought about how the target readers will treat their docu- ment, about their knowledge and expectations, and about the limitations under which they are working. First think about the target readers and their knowledge of the subject in hand. What do they know already? What do they think they want to know? What do they need to know for you to achieve your purpose? What do you want them to know? The answers to all these questions are usually dif- ferent, but they give you a scheme for the amount of know]- edge that must be contained in the document, and the level of difficulty at which you can pitch it. It is a common mis- take among experts to assume too much background knowl- edge on the part of the reader, which makes the report im- possible to understand in context. It is an equally common fault to assume that the reader knows nothing about the sub- ject which is so dear to your heart, and then to incorporate so much background and factual information that the es- sence of the report gets lost. Next think about how the readers will treat your document. Although I am writing about readers, most of the people who will see whatever you write are not readers. They will only read part of what you write, and may read it out of context. The recipients of a major report rarely wade through it from start to finish. They will usually read the introduction, the conclusions and then any bits and pieces which catch their eye and tend to reinforce any preju- 34dices or conclusions they have already made about the re- port. Readers of shorter documents, such as letters or articles in the press, are just as fickle. They will glance through the document, home in on anything which they strongly agree or disagree with, and miss most of the rest. They will be distracted by their children’s illness, the new secretary, in- digestion, a phone call or simply a stereotyped viewpoint which colours everything they read. Alleffective writers can do is to understand and predict the sort of reception their work will get, and try to tailor its format and content in such a way that it catches the atten- tion of the target reader. That depends on being clear as to who the target readers are and, if possible, understanding how they work. The expectations and limitations of the target reader are important. People are predisposed to see what they expect to see. So if they are expecting a complex report which they don’t expect to be able to understand, they will see just that. The writer has to make it very clear and simple to get them to read it. On the other hand, if readers are expecting a fully developed academic thesis, they will react badly to some- thing which seems lightweight. The limitations which the target reader is working under are important. The reader may be busy, or stupid, or ambi- tious but frustrated, or may not have the authority or means to perform the action you want the document to result in. The latter is very often the case with a report. The initial recipient cannot act on it alone, but can use the report to get someone else to act, or to persuade the board that some- thing should be done. So the content must be tailored not so much to convince the initial recipient, but to convince the people you expect the report to be passed on to. 35A good example of that happens frequently in the world of ship finance. Shipping bankers may know enough about ships to sensibly assess an application for a loan on a new vessel. But the application and supporting documents must be cleared by a credit committee, which knows nothing of shipping. So the application must be tailored to the needs and limitations of the credit committee, rather than to those of the shipping department manager who is the initial target of the application. If the reader is stupid, the document must spell out what you want, and repeat it. Scope for misunderstanding must be minimised. If the reader is busy, the document must be short, and have the action part up front, near the beginning where busy people can find it before they put the document down and go on to the next item, If the reader is vain, then flatter him. If he is formal, be formal. If she thinks about money, deal with things in a financial sense. If she thinks about safety, refer to safety angles. Be aware of the preju- dices of the readers and do not be afraid to play on them to your advantage, while always being careful to avoid offence. There is no quicker way to ensure that the good part of your work is lost than to upset readers before they get to the bit that matters. For example, a lot of shipowners have a real mania about the ITF. They see the ITF as the devil incarnate, trying to snatch bread from their mouths by greedily exhorting ex- cessive wages for seafarers. If you are writing a report about ship manning and crewing for a shipowner, it would be silly to write about the ITF in a positive way, however much you may believe that it is doing a necessary job. If you want to propose a deal with the ITF over crewing of some new ves- sels, you can describe the deal in terms of a sensible ar- rangement with some well-meaning and honest union offi- cials, or as a commercially viable albeit unpalatable neces- sity which will bring some benefit to the company. It is the 36same deal, but if your shipowner hates the ITF, the second. way of putting the deal across has a lot more chance of g0- ing through than the first. Whatever the subject and format of the document, there are a number of ways of treating it. The way you choose must be tailored to what you think will most appeal to the reader, which means you must have a clear idea before you start who you are writing for. Language and culture are important. You should know whether your target audience is English-speaking, of Eng- lish mother tongue and, if not, where they come from and what languages they do speak. Writing in English for peo- ple who are not native English speakers requires special attention to clarity and accessibility. It means avoiding all slang, sticking to a simple vocabulary, and taking care to avoid long, complicated sentences like this one. Also, lan- guage and culture are bound together, and different parts of the world have different conventions for written communi- cation. The more you know about the target readers, and the more you know about their conventions, the better you can tailor the document to suit what they expect to see, and the easier you will find it to avoid offending them. Tailoring the document to the reader you want to convince or serve is fundamental. But what about the other people who will read the document? Once you write something, anyone can read it. A report for the technical manager may be passed to the financial manager. A letter to the personnel officer may be passed to the shipmanager. A report for your lawyers may find itself being challenged in court by the opposing side, who have legally demanded a copy. Worse, one of the readers may leave a copy of the document for unauthorised people to see, or simply file something away which will be read later by someone for whom it was never intended. A lot of damage can be done in this way. 37Writers cannot, even in the best-run companies, predict ex- actly who will see what they write. So in addition to tailor- ing the document to the reader, it must be tailored to pre- vent misunderstanding if it is read by someone else. Before you start writing, think carefully about who might read the document, and what the consequences might be. Collecting information By this time, you should have a clear idea of what sort of document you have to produce, why you are producing it and who it is for. Now you need something to produce it from. You need information. At the simplest level, the information will be in your head. You have seen or heard something, or had an idea, and you are passing it on to someone else for action. But beyond that, for almost any sort of effective report, proposal or arti- cle, you will need to gather information. Some thought about what you are doing at this stage can save time and improve the result. The first point to bear in mind is that there is no shortage of information in the world. There is an excess of it. There are libraries and databases all over the world which will either give you or sell you the enormous amount of information they have. So before starting on any direct collection of raw data, go to the reference books and think about where you might find background or other information that you need. For example, if you are writing areport about Swedish ports, you could start by consulting the various port guides which are available. Fairplay publishes one annually, as does Lloyd’s of London Press and a number of other sources. Those guides will give you a lot of basic information which does not need to be chased up, although with any reference material it is wise to check the date of collection of the data, 38the date of publishing and the likely accuracy of what is written. Similarly, if you are writing a report about the market value of product tankers, you can buy computerised information from the databases at Fairplay or Lloyd's of London which will list all the ships of the type you are interested in, with supporting information. And don’t forget non-nautical sup- pliers of information, such as libraries and encyclopedias. People learn to use libraries when they are students but, for some reason, when they have to produce a report in adult life, the last place they think of looking for information is in a library. Libraries are useful and so are librarians, but it does pay to get the right library. It is little use researching shipping in the local library in a small inland town. But ship- ping colleges and institutions have their own, specific li- braries, which are usually open to non-students. Think about periodicals and newspapers. They produce ar- ticles on all sorts of topics, which can save a lot of informa- tion-searching. Most of them are now available in a compu- terised format, to make searching easy. Journalists are help- ful people, as long as enquirers are willing to be patient and to explain why they want information. They don’t much welcome a brusque phone call asking for “everything you have written on cement carriers in the last three years, by lunchtime.” This is especially true if enquirers are unwill- ing to say why they need the information or who they are. But journalists live by knowing where to find information, so they are useful people to cultivate when you too are look- ing for some. Collecting published reference material and background articles on a topic will help to focus your mind on what you need to find out. There may be some gaps in the published. knowledge, or you may need something specific to a par- ticular case. So you have to look for it. At the specific level, 39there is nothing more efficient than making an appointment, taking a notebook and camera, and going to look at and talk to the people around the object of your interest. For many report writers, such as surveyors, that will be the only way they gather information. Before you do that, think how you might save some time and money for all concerned. Can you send a standard se- Ties of questions by fax or letter to a number of people? Can you get the information you need by a phone call? Be aware that there is generally a slow and low response to written queries, and phone queries are open to misunderstanding. But both have a common need. They will be more efficient if you think carefully about the questions before you send them off or pick up the phone. The questions needed for gathering data efficiently must be thoughtthrough ascarefully as the writing of the final document. Otherwise, the people answering you will answer what they think you are asking, or what-they think you want to hear, or what they think they want you to hear, when all you wanted was the truth. If good preparation is vital to written and phone queries, it is doubly so when it comes to face-to-face work. People hate having their time wasted by someone who isn’t pre- pared, and, when you are questioning someone, their an- swers make you forget the next question. So before you start asking questions, know the background to both what you are asking about, and the person you are asking. Make sure they know who you are, and why you are there. Then have a list of questions, and ask all of them. That doesn’t stop you asking things which you think of as a result of the answers you are given, but it does mean you won’t forget a vital point. For repetitive jobs, draw up a checklist, and use it, or have some sort of form to fill in. It is not an admission of lack of capability, it is evidence of a careful and tidy approach to collecting information. 40Organising information At this stage, you have a mass of information. It will consist of books, magazines, photocopies, letters, disks, tapes, note- books, faxes and a veriety of other documents. You have to organise it so that you don’t miss something vital and, at the same time, don’t overload the finished document. The place to start organising is in your own head. Get out the paper where you have written down the specific objec- tives of the document you are about to start on. Think about the information you have gathered, and relate it to the ob- jectives and the target reader. You should be able to pin down a central theme, some key points and some secondary themes. Write these down, and you are ready to start organ- ising the information. Look through the information, and separate it into catego- ries. Is it vital hard data which must be included? Is it nice to know but not vital? Or is it background, to help you but not to be included? This sort of sifting gets the raw infor- mation sorted into three priorities. While you’re doing this, make notes about each document, with a brief idea - per- haps just a key word - of its contents. If the material is in a database, or on tape, it is not readily visible, which means that a better note is required, just so that you remember where itis and what it is about. These notes may be in lists, under the three headings of vital, nice to know and background. Or they may be just one long list. Or you can use spider diagrams. Lists are use- ful, but suffer from a couple of drawbacks. The list-maker tends to see the stuff at the top of the list as more important than that lower down, and it is difficult connecting ideas which appear at different places on the list. But I use lists, because they suit me. I make one long rough one, look for connections betweer items of information, make another 41list with the connected items together, then look at them again and make yet another list, or lists, with the items in some sort of order of priority. Spider diagrams are supposed to get around the problems of lists. The idea is to break the format and constraint of the list to allow a better association of ideas. Start with the pa- per sideways, so that there is no temptation to write lists on lines. Write a central idea in the middle of the paper, then write down other ideas or facts around it. The notes should form clusters of related facts or ideas, linked with lines to show connections with other clusters. It might look messy, but it is a good way of sorting out the mass of information which is in your head and on your desk. Tf you are reporting on an incident, it is a good idea to draw up a chronological skeleton on which to hang the flesh of the information. By organising information in time sequence, it becomes obvious if there are gaps in your knowledge, or if there are conflicting reports of when something happened. Information can also be organised by location, or by sub- ject. If you have time, and the matter is complex, the infor- mation can be organised in a number of different ways, by time, place, subject, importance and source. That is time- consuming, and complex cross-referencing is needed if things are not to get lost, but it is a thorough way of seeing all the information in context. One last thing on information. Don’t throw it away. Half- way through the document, you will remember something you saw earlier, which you thought was unimportant but which now holds the key to what you want to say. And after you have completed the document, somebody, somewhere, will question what you have written. It is as well to have your sources to hand when that happens. 42Time There is never enough time. That makes it all the more vital that you use your time well. A good report or other docu- ment cannot be written in a hurry. And hurried work always contains mistakes, albeit unimportant ones, which irritate the reader and decrease the effectiveness of the document. It is vital to plan so that you allow enough time for each stage of the work. You need some thinking time, to sort out the purpose, objectives and readership of the document. Then you need to gather the information. Remember that other people do not have the same priorities as you do. You may have to produce a report for the management on hatchcovers by next week, but the hatchcover makers do not. So they will answer your queries according to their own priorities. That means you must allow more time than you expect for getting answers to direct queries. Organising information takes time. Drawing up a time sched- ule for a major incident can take hours, as can sifting through a mass of background material trying to get a picture for yourself of what is going on. If this stage is badly done, then the final document will lack some vital piece of infor- mation. So far, nothing has been written. But the need to prepare and organise thoroughly must not blind you to the need to get writing carly. There is a lot to be done between first writing the document and actually sending it to the reader. Writing itself takes time. A skilled writer can churn out two thousand words an hour if the deadline is staring him in the face. But very few people can write sensibly and accurately at that speed. Allow two hundred an hour and-you will be on safer ground. 43Then allow time for spell-checking, reading, editing, and re-drafting. Ideally, writers should prepare a draft, look at it carefully, then pass it to someone they trust to look at and comment on. Then, ideally not the same day, have a look at the draft and suggested corrections and type up a final draft. That takes time. So does getting someone pedantic, not the author, to sub-edit and copy-edit the work. The sub-editor searches out spelling and grammatical errors, clumsy sen- tences and word orders, areas that don’t make sense and incompatibilities between facts or assertions in different parts of the text. The copy editor is looking for consistency in numbering styles, headlines, subheads, titles, labelling and referencing, and all the little layout details, such as whether paragraphs are indented throughout or not, which make the difference between a document that looks good and im- presses, and one that puts the reader off. Finally, actually printing and reproducing the document al- ways takes longer than expected. Making copies on an inkjet printer at home means that a simple twenty-five-page re- port may take up to an hour to actually print out and collate. Even on a large scale, using commercial printers, a lot of time is needed to turn the final text on the word processor into a nice, clean and well-printed document. Extra time is needed for sketches, photos and diagrams. Time-plan by working backwards. Start with the time that the document must get to the reader, allow time for deliv- ery, collating and binding, printing, editing, correcting and drafting, and you have got the time that you need to start writing. Backwards from that takes you through organisa- tion of information and information collection, so you know when you should have started, which is normally last week. 44Chapter Four Structure Whatever the format chosen for your writing, you need to pay attention to the structure of the document. The best writing in the world is no use if readers can’t find it when they want it, or if they overlook it, or are put off by sloppy presentation. Structure covers the order of the information within the document, the way it is laid out, and the way that the reader is signposted around the document. The effec- tiveness of what you write depends heavily on the structure of the document. Layout Whether you choose a letter, memo or full-scale report, spend some time thinking about the layout of the overall docu- ment, and the layout of each page. Taking the page layout first, the golden rule is to use plenty of space. Choose stand- ard sizes of paper, usually A4, and set out the text block so that it is centralised with a large clear margin all around. Make sure there are no widows or orphans, i.e., single lines to finish off or start a page. Leave plenty of room for dia- grams and captions. Choose a clear typeface, and leave plenty of space between lines, and between titles and the text underneath. Above all, avoid producing documents which look cramped. It makes them difficult to read, and it predisposes the reader against the conclusions of the docu- ment, There may be occasions when A4 page size is not the best - perhaps for large artwork or maps, for a document needing printing and wide distribution, or because you feel that an odd size may attract attention. But beware of the practical difficulties of getting the right size paper, of printing it, and 45the fact that if readers can’t get the document into their in- tray or onto their bookshelf, it will be put aside, and may get less attention than it normally would. Logical order Every document needs some form of order. A large report will need several sections, which will range from the con- tents page through the introduction to the conclusions. Each section of the report will have its own heading and will con- tain discrete information. A simple letter will not need dif- ferent headings for each section, but it is just as important to think about the order of presentation as it is for the re- port. In a letter or memo, it is important that the reader knows right at the beginning what you are referring to. So you need areference, or a title. Then you need to tell the reader why you are writing, so you need a short introduction. Then fol- lows the central part of the letter, with the information you want to convey. The conclusion, or executive order, or re- quest, can come at the end, as many people skip quickly to the end of a letter, expecting to find the punchline there. But it may be sensible to put the punchline twice - once briefly after the introduction, then again at the end, where it can be spelled out more forcefully. For specific guidance on different types of letters, look at Chapter Six. In a report, or longer document, readers need more help. First, readers need a set of signposts around the document, and a guide to that. Then they need to know what the docu- ment is about, and what its purpose is. They need the full background, the facts, the conclusions and any recommen- dations. But those recommendations and conclusions could have been summarised at the beginning, to make life easy for the reader. 46A logical order for a report would be as follows: Title page Contents page Summary, including main conclusions and recom- mendations Introduction, including authority, terms of reference and qualifications of writer Background (Known facts which may not be apparent to the reader but which must be known in order to understand the report) Procedure (What the report writer did) Findings (What the writer found out) Conclusions Recommendations References (Any material referred to in report) Bibliography (Background reading) Appendices (Material to supplement main report) The actual headings used should be decided on the basis of the contents of the report. And each main heading will need to be supplemented by subheadings, so that different infor- mation in each main section is separated, and signposted for the reader. 47Signposts Signposts are the way that readers find their way around the document It is the writer’s task to make it easy for readers to find what they want, and to know where they are while reading. The first and simplest point is that all the pages must be numbered. Preferably, they should be numbered in sequence, starting with number one for the title page and going on through. There is no advantage in having separate number- ing for the title and introduction pages or for the appendi- ces. This simply makes it all confusing. The next point is to break the document into sensible sec- tions. It must be divided into main sections, each under a clear and separate heading. Then different items of infor- mation or findings under the main heading should have a subheading, to signpost where that information starts and ends. And, under each subheading, the text should be bro- ken into paragraphs, in such a way that each paragraph deals with a discrete point. Once the document has been broken into sections, each sec- tion must be numbered. The most common, and sensible, numbering method is the decimal system. Under this sys- tem, each main heading is a new whole number. The sub- headings are a decimal of the number, and each paragraph is numbered as a decimal of that. In that way, readers can easily identify specific parts of the text. For example, a re- port into a shipboard fire might go like this: 1.0 Summary and conclusions 2.0 Introduction 3.0 Background 4.0 Procedure 485.0 Findings 6.0 Conclusions 7.0 Recommendations Under conclusions, the subheadings might be: 6.0 Conclusions 6.1 Area of fire 62 Cause of fire 63 Effect of smoke 64 Effectiveness of firefighting efforts Under each subheading, the paragraphs would be numbered: 6.1 Area of fire 6.11 The seat of the main fire was in the galley and..... 6.12 Secondary fires started in the carpenter's store... 6.2 Cause of fire 6.21 The fire was started by the cook dropping apan of hot fat... 6.22 A contributory factor was the heavy rolling at the time... Part of good signposting is to be consistent. So don’t adopt one method of numbering for part of the document, and a different method for another part. And make sure that the same size and type is used for all the headings of a given level of importance, and that if you underline one of them you underline all the others of the same importance. Other- wise, the document feels bitty and readers get lost, or get the wrong signals about the importance of a particular sec- tion. 49For example, use bold capitals for the main section head- ings: 6.0 CONCLUSIONS 7.0 RECOMMENDATIONS Then use a slightly less emphatic style for all the subheadings: 6.1 Area of fire ‘Whatever you choose, stick to it throughout, and check the document carefully to make sure you haven’t changed the system halfway through. At Fairplay we get lots of manu- scripts where the authors have changed their minds more than once during the book as to how to subdivide the docu- ment. The result is that the manuscripts are difficult to read, and need a lot of copy-editing. So be consistent. An important part of signposting is to produce an accurate and comprehensive contents page. If the pages have been numbered, the report broken up into sensible sections and the sections and paragraphs numbered on the decimal system, this should be simple to do. Readers should be able to find their way quickly to the part of the report that interests them. For example: Contents 1.0 Summary 3 2.0 Introduction 5 3.0 Background 7 6.0 Conclusions 44 6.1 Area of fire 45 62 Cause of fire 46 7.0 Recommendations 50 50References 52 Appendix I Radio traffic 54 Appendix 2 SOLAS Regulations a7 The last part of signposting is to consider ways of using page layout to indicate to readers where they are in the docu- ment. In a short letter, this is not necessary, but in a long report it can be a great help. Try starting each main section on a new right-hand page, with a deeper than usual margin at the top. Then put either headers or footers on each page to identify the section. This is very easy to do with a word processor, and substantially improves a long document. For example, in our fire report, each page could be laid out with a header which contained the name of the ship, the section heading, then the page number: Burning Boat/Cause/3 That can be positioned in a number of different places, with the top centre, top right or bottom centre or bottom right the most conventional. There is also scope for inserting the date of the report and other information, as long as it doesn’t get too cluttered. For example, a page from the cause of fire section might have a header like this: January 1993 Burning Boat Causel3 A page in the next section would be as follows: January 1993 Burning Boat Smoke/12 Coloured markers on the lead page of each section, or on the edge of the page, can also be used as a signpost. 51Referencing In most reports, and in some other documents, it will be necessary to refer to other material. This material may be sources which are listed in the reference list or bibliography of the report, or it may be material which is included in the appendices. It is important to make sure that the reader can find that material, and that the referencing is done consist- ently. At the same time, avoid too much referencing, which makes the text difficult to read. Above all, avoid footnotes. Academics and lawyers love references and footnotes. They have either a lot of time or a lot of financial interest in read- ing the text thoroughly, so they will not be put off easily. But most people find frequent references and footnotes un- comfortable. And writing which is uncomfortable to read can never be effective. The most common form of text reference mark is a super- script® but other forms are used. One clear way to indicate a reference is to put the reference number in brackets (9), and a further refinement is to use square or fancy brackets {9} to avoid confusion in a report which may contain math- ematical formulae. The numbers of the references should run sequentially through the document and refer to a refer- ence list at the end. Do not start anew number sequence for each chapter or section, with the references at the end of the section. That is terribly confusing for report-browsers, who miss the fact that they have turned over to the end of the following section, and so cannot match the number in the text to the reference. The reference itself should be explicit, with the author’s name, title, publisher and date. For example: 52TEXT The law requires that all seafarers wear hard hats {9} when... REFERENCE LIST 9. UK DoT. A Guide to Safe Working Practices. HMSO 1986. Where material is included in appendices, then say so. For example: The master sent a telex asking for more foam compound at 2200 on Friday September 23 (Appendix One). Full instructions for the use of the smoke helmet were on board (Appendix 2) but the Chief Officer had never read them. Summary To be effective, your document must be clearly laid out, on a standard paper size and have lots of space. The text must be sensibly divided into relevant sections, which must be subdivided into paragraphs for each point. The whole lot should be numbered on the decimal system, and there should be a clear contents page to show where to find things. Be consistent, and make life easy for the reader. 53Chapter Five Style This is a book about effective writing. Yet you are halfway through it, and so far nothing has been said about how to write. Does that mean that the choice of words and the way you assemble them is simple, or unimportant? Far from it. Getting the right style of writing, which can only be meas- ured in terms of its acceptability to the reader, is not simple. And it is fundamental to making the document effective. Style is not something which can be scientifically meas- ured, nor is there only one good style. There are rules about writing - we call them grammar - but following grammati- cal rules will not produce a good writing style. That is a craft. Like any craft, its elements can be learnt, and, like any craft, there will always be some people who find its easier to combine those elements to produce a better result than others. But everyone can improve their writing style by paying attention to the basic elements. The right style is the one that the target reader likes, be- cause if the target reader finds the document easy and pleas- urable to read, then the document will be effective. But if the target reader finds the document difficult, pompous, ir- ritating or offensive, it is difficult for it to be effective, what- ever the merits of the case it puts. Style depends on the choice of words, the word order, the sentence and paragraph length, the punctuation, the use of grammar and the tone adopted. The same thing can be said in an infinite number of ways. The rhythm and tone of the Janguage are something personal to each writer, and are both formed from and affect the relationship between the writer and the reader. You find some books and magazines easier to read than others, and you buy the newspaper which you 54feel comfortable with. That comfort comes from the style in which the paper is written. Professional writers have to concentrate on achieving a consistent style which appeals to the people they want to sell to. Effective writers should think in the same way. It is worth thinking about the things you like to read, and why you like to read them. Then try to adopt the style used in those publications for your own writ- ing, but only if you think it will also appeal to the reader. Shakespeare is not much help to writers of technical re- ports, and itis no use aping the clarity and style of the Econo- mist if you are writing for an audience which normally pre- fers to read tabloid newspapers or lurid comics. Elements of style Style can be broken down into a number of elements, all of which must be balanced to achieve the right style for the document in hand. Length Effective documents are short, and effective writing is made up of short words, in short sentences and short paragraphs. So think about length all the time. Short documents are more effective than long ones for two reasons. First, short documents are more likely to be read than long ones. Second, if you have to compress what you want to say, then you are more likely to cut down on unnec- essary words and padding, giving the writing a clear edge. Almost any piece of writing can be edited and shortened, and almost always the writing will gain in clarity what it loses in unnecessary words and sentences. So try to say what you want to say as economically as possible, then go back and edit the piece with a firm hand. “Murder your darlings,” is a good motto, and it means that if you have written some 55phrase which you feel particularly proud of, it will almost always be too flowery and better left out. It is good discipline to get someone else to edit your work, and to take a relaxed view of the editing. If you feel protec- tive towards your writing, or take offence because the edi- tor has put a blue pencil through whole chunks of it, then you can’t be an effective writer. If the editor feels the need to clarify what you have written, then the reader will prob- ably feel the same. Try this example: Tsaviliris & Sons, which has its headquarters in Piraeus, Greece, and is one of the leading international companies engaged in providing towage and salvage services to the shipping industry, has expanded its fleet with the purchase of a giant tug from the navy of the ex-Soviet Union. The tug was called the Fotiy Krilov and generates forty thousand horsepower from its main engines. That gives it a bollard pull of more than 250 tons, making it one of the most pow- erful tugs in the world. Tsaviliris has decided to call the ship Tsaviliris Giant. It is 5,250 grt and was built three years ago for a cost of around $45m, but Tsaviliris says that the cost of having a similar tug built today would be about $60m. That story, written by Tsaviliris, is 125 words long. In Fair- play it became a news story like this: Piraeus-based towage and salvage company Tsaviliris & Sons has bought the 40,000 hp tug Fotiy Krilov from the ex-USSR navy. Renamed the Tsaviliris Giant, the 5,259 grt vessel, built three years ago for about $45m, has a bollard pull in excess of 250 tons. Tsaviliris estimates the replace- ment cost of the tug at $60m. 56That is 52 words long, and conveys the same information in a tighter and more easily read manner. Had the news editor been really on the ball, it could have been pared down further without losing anything: Piraeus-based Tsaviliris & Sons has bought the 40,000 hp, 250 ton bollard pull Fotiy Krilov from the ex-USSR navy. Renamed Tsaviliris Giant, the 5,259 grt tug was built three years ago for $45m, but would cost $60m to replace. That is 37 words long, and more likely to be read than the original, which had too many redundant words. It is not just the document that needs to be short, but also the words, sentences and paragraphs. Start with the words. English has a rich vocabulary, and most of it is available in dictionaries and thesauruses for the writer to choose from. It is always tempting to use grand words, or long words, in an effort to make a document seem more important. But the best rule is never to use a long word if a short one will do. That doesn’t mean sacrificing correctness for the sake of brevity. In technical writing, it is important to be specific, and to use the correct word. But don’t do what the naviga- tion lecturer at my pre-sea college did, and refer to squared paper as a recto-linear graticule. A ship is a ship, not a marine vehicle, a motor is a motor, not an electro-mechanical prime mover, and a steel plate is nota planar hotrolled section. Readability studies show that words of more than three syl- lables slow the reader down. The longer the word, the greater the pause needed to take it in. A string of long words makes reading a heavy task. That doesn’t always mean that a short word is the right word, because writing made up entirely of short words would be like a child’s primer, and offensive to the reader for that reason. What it means is that, if you are reporting speech, it is better to write, “He said,” than to 57write, “He affirmed, he confirmed, he asserted, he offered, he replied, he commented.” Unless you want to make a spe- cific point by using one of those ways of describing speech, the simple word is the best. In marine writing, much of which is for non-English read- ets, it is doubly important to keep words short. Long words are difficult for native speakers, and worse for people who have to look them up in a dictionary to find out what they mean. When you have the right words, they have to be assembled into coherent sentences. Sentences are units of thought, which should tell the reader something complete. Sentence length is very important for readability. If all the sentences in a document are too short, readers feel uncomfortable, as if they were reading a children’s book, or a telegram. But at least they will get the information they need out of the docu- ment. The more common fault is to make sentences too long. Long sentences are difficult to understand, as the unit of thought in each one becomes too complicated to assimilate in one go. In a very long sentence, the reader has to pause for thought in the middle, and perhaps go back to re-read the first part, then think about what is being said. That slows down reading, and makes the writing more difficult to un- derstand, less comfortable to read, and so less effective. There is no right sentence length, but an average sentence Jength is about eighteen words. A series of ten-word sen- tences makes jerky reading. Sentences of over thirty words are too long for comfort. A mixture of short, medium and longer sentences makes for comfortable reading, and it is always a good idea to split up long sentences when editing what you have written. 58Look at this example, submitted as part of a news story to Fairplay: The success of the services, however, depends on modifi- cation of India’s elaborate customs procedure, although India’s deputy customs collector, A Sahu, who is a known free-marketeer, recently indicated that a number of these time-consuming procedures would be abandoned. That is a forty-word sentence. It is too long because it con- tains too many conditional ideas, and the writer wants to tell us too much in one go. This is how it appeared in Fair- play: The success of the services, however, depends on modifi- cation of India’s elaborate customs procedure, although India’s deputy customs collector, A Sahu, recently indicated that a number of these time-consuming procedures would be abandoned. That is thirty-four words. It is clearer than the original, be- cause the description of A Sahu asa free-marketeer has been deleted. But it is still clumsy, especially for a magazine aimed. at non-English speakers. The editor could have done this: The success of the services depends on modifying India’s time-consuming customs procedures. India’s deputy cus- toms collector, A Sahu, says a number of procedures will be cut. That is twenty-seven words, and two sentences instead of one. It is much quicker and clearer to read, and so more appropriate in a news story. The words like “however” and “although” might be appropriate in a descriptive article on the same subject, where the reader has more time and needs such words to carry the flow of the argument, but they are redundant in a news story. 59Sentences grow because writers want to qualify what they are saying. Nothing in life is simple, but that doesn’t mean that all the complexity of what you are describing must be contained between two full stops. If you are writing about the reasons for self-heating of a coal cargo, you could say: Coal cargoes heat up because of a number of factors, some of which are under the control of the ship, some which are intrinsic to the coal, and some of which depend on the load- ing method, none of which is sufficient on its own to cause a fire, but which when combined, in a number of different possible scenarios, can set off chemical reactions which produce heat, which if not dissipated, will build up and may, if there is enough oxygen present, lead to combustion. That is a real mouthful. The writer wants to qualify each statement before going on to the next one. But it could be written like this, with the same qualifications, but much more force: Coal cargoes heat up because of a number of factors. Some of the factors are under the control of the ship, some are intrinsic to the coal and some depend on the loading method. None of the factors is sufficient to cause a fire on its own, but the factors can combine in a number of different ways to set off chemical reactions which generate heat. If the heat is not dissipated and there is enough oxygen present, this may lead to combustion. Both paragraphs contain eighty-three words, and use the same words, but the second example is much easier to read and understand than the first. There are four sentences in- stead of one, and the sentences vary in length. The best way of measuring readability in terms of word and sentence length is the Fog Index. This was described by Robert Gunning in his book, The Technique of Clear Writ- 60ing. It is a numerical yardstick which can be used on any writing to determine how comfortable it is to read. It works like this: 1. Take a sample of the document which is made up of com- plete sentences and which is as near as possible 100 words long. Divide the number of words in the sample by the number of sentences to get the average sentence length. 2. Count the number of words in the sample which have three syllables or more. Ignore words which are capitalized, or which are combinations of easy words, such as “hatch- cover”, and words where the third syllable is -ed or -es, such as “created.” 3. Add the average sentence length to the number of hard words, and multiply the total by 0.4. The answer is the Fog Index, and it will always be a number between six and twenty-five. It roughly represents the number of years of full-time education which a person needs if they are to feel. comfortable reading the piece. More im- portantly, it gives a tangible measure of readability for any reader. A Fog Index of twelve is the danger point. Above twelve, the piece will be difficult to read, and people will only stick with it if they are forced to. Above fifteen, and you are in the realms of the impenetrable academic text, which can rarely be described as an effective document. The Fog Index of the first sample above is 0.4 (83 + 9) = 36.8, which is terrible. The Fog Index of the second sample is 0.4(83/4 + 9) = 11.9, which is acceptable. The Fog Index of Fairplay is typically around 12, of Time around 10 and UK tabloid newspapers around 8. The Fog Index of this book is around 12, which is a sensible yardstick for a book aimed at a market of professional people. The Fog Index will not help you write in a more readable manner, but it 61will give you an indication of how readable your work is. If you find the Fog Index too high, then you must go back and split up the sentences, or use simpler words. With the overall document length under control, with short words and short sentences, there is only one other unit to consider. That is the paragraph. A sentence is a unit of thought. A paragraph should be a grouping of sentences sharing a common concept. There are no rules about para- graph length, but shorter paragraphs will always be more effective than longer ones. There are two reasons for this. The first is linked to the appearance of the document. Long paragraphs make impenetrable blocks of text, cut down the open space on the page and are off-putting to the reader. Short paragraphs convey a more open impression and make the document more attractive. The second reason to use short paragraphs is that they give readers more opportunities to group their thoughts. Each paragraph should deal with a separate topic, or cluster of ideas, and the space between paragraphs gives the reader a slight break to absorb that cluster. The break is longer than the full stop which divides sentences, but not long enough to break the flow of the text. So aim to make paragraphs as short as possible, while still ensuring that each one contains a coherent cluster of ideas, and links smoothly to the next. A paragraph break in the wrong place upsets the reader, who expects each paragraph to have a central theme. Mod- ern practice tends towards paragraphs which are too short, often of only one sentence. Such divisions are made for rea- sons of layout and typesetting rather than because of the content of the text. But it should be the ideas in the text which determine where the paragraph break comes. A complex cluster of ideas may justify a long paragraph, but ways can nearly always be found to split the cluster 62into two separate, sequential units. On the other hand, it is always wrong to combine two clusters of ideas into one paragraph. Each cluster deserves a break before and after, even if that means that some paragraphs will be very short. Remember, readability demands that you keep it short. Short words, short sentences, and short paragraphs are the key to catching and retaining the interest of the reader. Choosing words Length is not the only consideration when choosing the right word. The choice of words sets the level of complexity and the level of formality of the piece. Some words are pomp- ous, some are slang, some are friendly, some are ambigu- ous. Some are meaningless, and just pad out the piece. The right word is not always the simplest or plainest, but it usu- ally is. However, there are some circumstances, such as in letters, or instructions to staff, where the choice of a par- ticular word can be the key to making the document effec- tive, by setting just the right tone. The first thing to think about is the reader. If the reader does not have English as a mother tongue, then you must be ex- tra careful in the choice of words. In even the most personal of documents, stick to plain words with clearly defined meanings. And be consistent. Don’t try to use alternative words to say the same thing. There is nothing wrong with writing about hatchcovers if hatchcovers are the subject of your report, even if you have to refer to hatchcovers fre- quently. You do not need to call them pontoons in one sen- tence, hatch lids in another, water-exclusion devices in a third and weather-tight protection in a fourth. If a technical term could be ambiguous, or if you suspect that the reader will not be clear about its meaning, then define it at the beginning of the piece, and stick to the same word through- out. 63In a formal report, it is always a good idea to define techni- cal terms in a separate section. Thus: Definitions: Hatchcover...A set of steel panels of twenty-tonnes each which are linked by chains and used to cover the openings to the holds. But in a less technical document, such a definition could make the piece too formal, or could offend the reader. So include the definition in the text, without labelling it as such. Like this: The vessel had five holds, each of which was covered by a hatchcover. Each hatchcover was a set of steel panels of twenty tonnes each, linked by chains. Once you have defined a word, stick to it, and be careful not to use it out of context, or to mean something else. Think about what you are writing. What tone should you adopt? If you are writing a short memo to staff members, then it is sensible to choose and use words which are used within your company or group, but which may not be used, or have the same meaning, in the wider world. On your ship, what do the crew call the space in which they eat? Do they call ita messroom, a saloon, a canteen, a mess, or a catering facility? Do they call the toilets just that, or do they call them toilet facilities? And if you wanted to send out a note asking people not to smoke in either space, what would you call those spaces? Which is the better choice of words? “Please do not smoke in the toilets or messroom’” or “You are requested not to use smoking materials in the catering and toilet facilities.” The first choice is plain, accessible and has immediate im- 64pact. The second choice is pompous, long-winded and likely to be ignored. Too many people would write it like that though, because when people start writing they feel they should use words which are more formal than those they use in normal speech. They are wrong. There are a lot of words which are redundant, and serve only to clutter the writing. We use them in speech for em- phasis, or to fill a silence, but they are not needed in writ- ing. “Absolutely fatal” is only as dead as plain “fatal”. “Sat- isfactory” is just as good as “quite satisfactory”, “completely terminal” is only as terminal as plain “terminal”. Words such as fairly, rather, and quite should be avoided, as they make the writing vague, and suggest to the reader that the writer is not sure of the subject. Jargon and slang phrases have a nasty habit of creeping into writing. But who wants to read “Ar this moment in time” when the writer means “now”? Try this example: Taking on board the lack of a level playing field, we have no option but to prioritise the implementation of state of the art information handling technology to achieve a timeous upgrade to the interface with our client base. Is this better? We face unfair competition, so we have to install comput- ers to improve our client service. The second example is a lot punchier than the first. “Taking on board the lack of a level playing field” becomes “we face unfair competition”. Taking on board is a long-winded way of saying that you understand something. If you under- stand it, then simply say it. And level playing fields have become a horrible cliche, whereas unfair competition means exactly what it says. “We have no option but to prioritise 65the implementation” becomes “we have to” . “We have no option but...” is a long way of saying you have to do some- thing, so why not just say that? “Prioritise” and “imple- ment” are long and pompous ways of saying that you will start doing something soon, in this case installing some- thing. “State of the art information handling technology” becomes “computers” . You would hardly install something which was not up-to-date, and if you intend to install some- thing more than just computers, such as new methods of communication, then you can spell that out in simple terms without using the jargon of “information handling tech- nology”, which explains nothing. Interface is a technical term, used here to mean the way in which one company deals with its clients. Why not just use client service, or service to clients? There is no room in this book for a complete list of words to avoid, but the rule is to think about each word, and see if there is a plainer way of saying it. If you write “proceed”, could you use “go” instead? Instead of “commence”, write “start”, Instead of “purchase” write “buy”. Keep it simple, and your writing will be more effective. Look out for tag words. These are words like “nature”, “con- dition”, “situation”, which have become vague and are added. unnecessarily to sentences. Thus: The cargo in No 2 hold was of a hygroscopic nature. The stowage situation was unsatisfactory, and the cargo arrived in Durban in a wet condition. That should be written without the tag words, like this: The cargo in No 2 hold was hygroscopic. The stowage was unsatisfactory, and the cargo arrived in Durban wet. 66When you write, you should use the words you would nor- mally use to speak to the reader. But you must remember that you will not be face to face with the reader, so you will not be able to shade the meanings of words by the tone of your voice or your body language. So you must choose plain, unambiguous words, and cut out unnecessary words. which obscure the meaning of what you are saying. Verbally, you can indicate by your voice or gesture which parts of what you are saying are important. When you write something, the reader allocates the emphasis, so you must remove the clutter so that what you want the reader to emphasise is clear. Accuracy Nothing will detract more from the power of a document than obvious inaccuracies. Even if there is only one mis- take in a long document, and even if itis in a section which does not directly affect the main purpose of the document, it will serve to irritate the reader and cast doubt on the rest of the document. The mistake may be mathematical, or geographical, or simply the result of making a sweeping statement which contradicts something else you have stated more precisely elsewhere. But it only takes that one mis- take to detract from the power of your writing. Expert witnesses have to be particularly careful to be accu- rate. Their reports are dissected by lawyers, who will tease out any contradiction or error to use in cross-examination. They only have to sit through one cross-examination to learn to be extra careful to be accurate in what they write. But the same rule applies to everyone. If you make a simple mis- take in addition, or get the dates wrong, or place a port in the wrong country, it will make your writing less effective. Bad spelling falls into the same category. There is no ex- cuse for it, Most computers have spell-checkers, and every writer should have a dictionary to hand. Nothing detracts more from a document than bad spelling. So be careful. 67Courtesy Courtesy means being sensitive to the etiquette that the reader expects from you. If the reader is offended by the use of first names in a document, then use surnames. If the reader has a title, such as Captain, or a qualification, such as PhD, then use it when you address the work. Polite and courteous writing does not need to be flowery or grovel- ling, but it does need to be tailored to what the reader ex- pects to see. Be aware of differences in national practice. Germans love their titles, and if someone has Herr Doktor Willem Kurtz, FICS, on his card, then spell that out in full when you write to him, or the first time your refer to him. Spaniards and South Americans go in for flowery greetings and saluta- tions, North Americans abhor them. Being courteous includes bzing politically correct. Political correctness does not mean adopting a hideous and convo- luted writing style to follow some imagined convention. It simply means not offending your reader. The simplest and most common offences against political correctness are made by writers who forget that half the world’s population is female. Writing to, for and about men, and assuming that only men will perform certain tasks, or read the document, is guaranteed to annoy some of the readers, who will be women. Where possible, you should avoid writing: If the reader sees this, he will be annoyed. Butit is silly to get around the problem of annoying women by overlooking them, only to annoy both men and women by adopting a pedantic and awkward style, like this: If the reader sees this, he/she will be annoyed. 68Using he/she, or she/he, or him/her, or whatever combina- tion, is clumsy, and also overlooks the fact that there are some readers who are neither, or both. So try another way of writing the same thing, which is gender-neutral, like this: If readers see this, they will be annoyed. There are times, however, when writing is rendered ugly, contrived and ineffective by use of a pronoun chosen solely for its inability to offend. The sentence loses its power and the impact which the writer intended to give it. In anything but blatantly prejudiced writing, sparing use of either the masculine or feminine pronoun is accepted by reasonable- minded people as a generic term in which gender is not only unspecified but also immaterial. Itis more difficult to deal with situations which discuss race, colour, religion or physical abnormalities, especially if writ- ing for a US audience, where sensitivity to the use of lan- guage has reached ridiculous levels. But rather than resort to using clumsy language, think sensibly about the teader, and what you need to say. If, for example, you are writing about relations between crews of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds, it is less offensive to speak directly about the problems, and to label people as what they are, than to seek to use fuzzy ways of referring to people. Black people are not ashamed of being black. Filipinos are not ashamed of being Filipi- nos. But both groups will be more sensitive to the way an article is written than would a white anglo-saxon protes- tant, who has an innate sense of superiority. So write about the groups ina straightforward, direct manner, treating them all as equals. Above all, avoid ridiculous extremes, like referring to bald people as follically challenged, fat people as having excess 69body mass, and similar constructions. Stick to the facts, and use short, sparing language. The only exception goes back to knowing the reader. If your target reader is a well- known, radical American black feminist who campaigns for new uses of language, be aware of what that person likes. It may make the document less readable to the aver- age person, or to another target reader, but if it gets your message across, then it is effective writing. Sentence structure There are a lot of rules about sentence structure. They can be found in books on English grammar. This is not a gram- mar book, but here is some simple guidance which should help you avoid common problems. Sentence structure is a matter of word order, choice of verbs and punctuation. These three factors affect the rhythm and tone of the writing, which in turn determines how accept- able itis to the reader. There are rules about grammar, which cover some of these points, but slavishly following them will not make for stylish writing. A well-written sentence is almost always grammatically correct,.but a grammatically correct sentence is not necessarily well written, or effec- tive. Word order determines the emphasis which the reader will give to different words, and the comfort with which the sen- tence will be read. For most purposes of business and tech- nical writing, the natural word order is the best. Like this: The cranes are mounted beside the hatchways. But the same information, and the same words, could be written like this: Beside the hatchways, cranes are mounted. 70The first example is the natural word order. It gives em- phasis to the cranes. The second example is inverted, and it puts the hatchways first in the mind of the reader. Both sen- tences are correct, but they affect the reader differently. The word order can also be changed by putting one clause, or unit of information, in a different place. Try this: The speedtorque characteristics of the winch will vary with the mooring material, as different mooring materials have different weights per unit length. That could be written as: As different mooring materials have different weights per unit length, the speeditorque characteristics of the winch will vary with the mooring material. In this example, the two clauses which make up the sen- tence are written in their natural order, and retain that in both examples. But they can be reversed without changing the meaning of the unit. Reversal could serve to make the document easier to read, more rhythmic, or simply to give more emphasis to either the winch, or the mooring materials. If all the sentences in a document were in natural order, it would be tedious and childlike. So altering word order gives life to the document. It is also important to avoid bunching too many long words. Try this: The P&I representative attending the vessel recommended that as he was impressed with the maintenance and run- ning of the vessel, an inspection by the local port captaincy would be helpful. That is a long sentence, with long words, and it is uncom- fortable to read. Reversed, it improves a little: 71As he was impressed with the maintenance and running of the vessel, the P&I representative recommended that an inspection by the local port captaincy would be helpful. Better still, the original order can be kept, but shorter words chosen: The P&I representative was impressed by the vessel, and recommended an inspection by the port captain. When you alter word orders, be careful to avoid leaving verbs, or actions, to dangle. Dangling happens when it is not clear who is acting on what. For example: After mixing the cement, it was poured into the box. The reader thinks, “Who mixed the cement?”, and reading is slowed. So write: After mixing the cement, the sailor poured it into the box. Another example: The chief engineer called the engineers together to explain the cause of the power failure. Who has to explain, the chief or the engineers? So write either: The chief engineer called the engineers together and ex- plained the cause of the power failure. Or: 72The chief engineer called the crew together and asked them to explain the cause of the power failure. The one special case of dangling which grammatical ped- ants love to fix on is the split infinitive. The old school in- sist that the two parts of the infinitive should not be sepa- rated by a descriptive word. For example: To anchor (infinitive) To quickly anchor (Split infinitive) To anchor quickly (Correct) In most cases, a split infinitive is ugly, and reads that way. Thus: We ordered the ship to quickly anchor. Instead of: We ordered the ship to anchor quickly. But there are cases where a split infinitive is preferable, such as: The bosun decided to partly paint the bulkhead before lunch. That is a split infinitive, but it reads better than the pedants’ version: The bosun decided to paint the bulkhead partly before lunch. But be aware that split infinitives are one of those things which many people will seize upon as evidence of bad writ- ing. So avoid them if possible. Making sentences active cuts down on confusion. That means using active verbs (J started the generator) rather 73than passive verbs (The generator was started by me). It also means using verbs instead of nouns whenever possible. For example: It should be noted that the vessel was overloaded. (Passive) Note that the vessel was overloaded. (Active) Or: There are five guys needed to secure the derrick. (Passive) Five guys are needed to secure the derrick. (Active) Or: You should provide clarification of this issue. (Passive) You should clarify this issue. (Active) Or: It was observed that crew hard hats were not worn. (Pas- sive) We saw that the crew did not wear hard hats. (Active) Which brings us to punctuation. The rule about punctua- tion that you need to remember is that there are no rules. Modern writing is sparing with punctuation, both in the use of different characters, and in their frequency. But punc- tuation is important. It helps the reader to understand what the writer means, by separating units of thought, and it sets the pace and rhythm of the writing, giving the reader time to pause and understand. 74Full stops are used at the end of sentences. They tell the reader that the unit of thought is over. So do not use a full stop to separate two things which should be joined. For ex- ample: I climbed down the hold ladder. I slipped on the bottom rung. It would be better, and more natural, to say: I climbed down the hold ladder and slipped on the bottom rung. Commas are used far too often. They should only be used when they are needed to make the meaning of the sentence clear. If they are used simply to break up a Jong sentence, then it would be better to break the sentence completely, and use full stops. So confine commas to places where they are needed, which is to break up a list, separate out a non- essential or link word and to mark off clauses or parts of a sentence which are explanatory or conditional. Look at these examples: Separating a list. The bosun had brushes rollers ladders and stages ready for the work. This needs commas, like this: The bosun had brushes, rollers, ladders and stages ready for the work. In the same way: The big ugly grey ship loomed over him. 75 aeThe big, ugly, grey ship loomed over him. Separating out non-essentials. The managers, however, decided not to install a microwave.. Your leave, Mr Guy, has been put off as we have no relief. or Your leave, Mr Guy, has been put off, as we have no relief. Marking off clauses. The master, who was fat and unshaven, shouted at the agent. The tanker, which had several inspections, was finally sold for scrap. But beware putting commas where they are not needed. The sailors who were drunk last night must report to the mate. This is not the same as: The sailors, who were drunk last night, must report to the mate, In the second sentence, the commas modify the meaning to include all the sailors. In the first sentence, only those who were drunk need report. Semi-colons and colons are more powerful stops than com- mas, but are slowly falling into disuse in modern English. It is possible to live without them, but the semi-colon is useful for linking two sentences which fit together easily, 76and for separating a list of long items. The colon is nor- mally only used to introduce a list or separate items, as in this book. The mate looked into the car deck. He knew it would be a nasty job. That could be linked by a semi-colon. The mate looked into the car deck; he knew it would be a nasty job. But if you are unsure about the semi-colon, don’t use it. Your writing will suffer more from misusing it than it will from not using it at all. The last kind of stop available to the author is the dash. It can be used to insert a subordinate or explanatory clause into a sentence. Some writers find them addictive, and use them a lot. Generally, they make for ugly writing when used in technical and formal documents, and should be used only when nothing better occurs to you. The owner strode up the gangway - no-one knew she was coming - and announced that the ship was to be sold. Misuse of hyphens is another area which can trip up the writer, and so make the document less effective. A hyphen serves to link words when it is absolutely necessary to show that they are linked, and not referring to other things. But some writers like to shove them in willy nilly, which can make for jerky reading. You need a hyphen to describe a double-stack train, other- wise you might have two stack trains. But you do not need a hyphen for a small vessel broker. Technically, that could mean a small broker dealing in vessels of any size, or a 77broker of any size dealing in small vessels. But given the sense of maritime writing, it would be a peculiar person who thought that the unhyphenated version referred to the height of the broker rather than the size of the vessels traded. So leave the hyphen out. Apart from linking descriptive words to clarify what they refer to, hyphens are used to link words to create a com- pound noun. These nouns change with use, tending to move from being two separate words, to hyphenated, to becom- ing one word. Ship manager, ship-manager, shipmanager. Post panamax, post-panamax, postpanamax. The only rule here is to try and choose the usage which your target reader will expect to find, andalways beconsistent. One punctuation mistake which will certainly make your work ineffective is to use inverted commas in the text to signify that the word in the commas is not quite “right”. Itis used sometimes to indicate slang, but most often because writers have not thought out properly what they want to say. English has plenty of words, so use the right one, and never use inverted commas in this way. Drafting and editing Writing is not easy. No-one, however practised they are, sits down and writes a perfect document first time. Clear, unambiguous and easy-to-read prose has to be worked for. That means drafting the document, then going back over it again and again, seeking out unnecessary words, clumsy sentences, repetitions, and padding. Be ruthless. There is no document in the world which cannot be shortened and sharpened by sensible editing. 78If possible, especially for a long report, it is good if you can try some reader tasting. Get your target reader, or someone similar, to read part of a draft, and ask if that is what they are looking for. Observe the reactions of readers of other things you have written, and learn from their comments. It is also very useful to get someone else to edit your work. Not everyone has an experienced sub-editor to call on, but most people can find someone to cast an eye over their first draft. The other person will notice things which the writer overlooks. And remember, if the editor doesn’t un- derstand something, then neither will the target reader. It is not their fault for being stupid, it is yours for not making your writing clear enough. 79Chapter Six Writing for business There are three kinds of business communication where effective writing can be applied. These are letters from you to other companies, memos within your company, and the minutes of meetings. Letters and memos A letter is an ambassador. It carries information or a request from you to another person, but it carries more than that. It represents you, and its style will affect the reader’s percep- tion of you and your company. So it is important to take care over layout, appearance and content of letters, and all the guidance in the foregoing chapters applies. Whatever is true for a letter is also true for a memo or a fax. The fax is simply a way of getting a letter to the target reader quickly. It is not an excuse for forgetting the importance of good presentation, courtesy and clear writing. A memo is a letter which does not leave the company. The guidance which follows applies to both letters and memos, however they are transmitted. Types of letter Letters can be broken down into different types, with slightly different techniques making each type more effective. The three main types of letter are: 1. Positive letters 2. Negative letters 3. Persuasive letters 80Before considering each type, think about some points which apply to all letters. First, and most important, every letter is selling something. It sells an idea, a product, or goodwill, even when it is a refusal. Second, a letter reflects the attitude of the writer towards the reader. Readers are sensitive to the nuances of the written word. Effective writ- ers want the reader on their side. Third, a letter has to stand on its own as a communication. You cannot explain it away verbally. It is on the file and available to everyone to read, both in your organisation and in the reader’s. So follow these rules for all letters. Write from the point of view of the reader. Do not use / this and J that, say you this and you that. Always think that the letter is intruding into the reader’s time, so think about the reader when you write. Which of these simple requests is more likely to achieve its object: Tam studying for a degree in maritime studies and I have to write a thesis on tanker shipping. I need help and would appreciate it if I could be sent a full list of all the articles which Fairplay has published on tankers during the last five years. or Your magazine regularly writes about tankers. Could you spare a few minutes to help me with my thesis on tanker shipping? If you could point me towards any recent articles dealing with the arguments over double hull tankers, it would make my chances of passing a maritime studies degree much better. The second example is talking to the poor soul at Fairplay who will take pity on the student and help. The first is sim- ply arrogant, and assumes that Fairplay journalists have nothing better to do than help students. 81Write in a courteous way. If you are boiling with anger and want to write a letter to the person who has angered you, then by all means do so. Sit down straight away and write the most angry letter you can, getting all your venom onto the paper. Be insulting, and if possible, libellous. Print the letter, then read it through. You will feel much better now, so throw the letter away, erase it from your word processor, and go home. Next day you can sit down and write a cour- teous, informed and sensible letter which will put the mat- ter right without making you an enemy in the eyes of the reader and a fool in the eyes of your boss. Courtesy in letters means not only avoiding sexist language and using correct titles, it means never belittling the reader, never accusing and, above all, never using sarcasm. You can get away with rudeness face to face by use of body language, or by correcting a slip of the tongue. But you will not be there when the reader opens the letter, and then the damage is done. Confidence and sincerity go together. All letters should re- flect a direct, sincere attitude, and confidence that the reader is going to believe the letter and act on it as the writer in- tends. That means not using flattery, and not using weak expressions. Expressions such as / hope, / trust, if you could possibly, all show a lack of confidence. Try these two let- ters, and see which you think is more effective: Dear Captain Meyer, I have been told by all sorts of people in this industry that your ship management company is synonymous with the highest quality. I am organising a conference on ship man- agement and am certain that a person of your high calibre would really enhance the occasion. Would you consider speaking at the conference, and sitting at the top table with other leading figures. If all goes well, we will hold the con- 82ference in London on April 18th. I hope that you will find our fee of £400 plus expenses a sufficient reward for giving us your valuable time. I hope to get a positive response from you. or Dear Captain Meyer, A number of leading ship managers have agreed to speak at a conference on ship management which I am organis- ing to take place in London on April 18th. Would you Join them? A short talk of twenty minutes on the theme of quality in ship management would fit nicely into the programme. You would receive a fee of £400 plus expenses. The programme has to be printed in February. Could you confirm that you can take part by January 15th? The second example avoids insincere fla:tery, writes about the reader not the writer, and is confident that the reader will want to take part and will find the fee adequate. Be happy. A cheerful letter, with a touch of humour, can still be formal and correct. But that touch of humour will soften the reader up, and make the content of the letter much more effective. Never think that business letters must be dry and formal. Pay attention to appearance. Use good quality paper, a clear typeface, a neat layout, and send letters in a neatly typed envelope. A scruffy letter has lost half its effectiveness be- fore itis even looked at. The best layout for a business letter is the layout which your reader expects to see. Most com- 83panies use a standard layout but, if you can choose, answer in the same style that your reader has used when writing to you. Again, company memos are normally on a standard format. Small companies do not have formats, and in such companies it is nearly always more effective to drop by the desk of the person you were going to send the memo to and speak to them face to face instead. For letters I favour a style which has my address at the top right, the reader’s at the top left, the reference below that, and a title underlined before the text. Paragraphs which are started flush left and justified look more formal than in- dented paragraphs with a ragged right margin. Choose the one that suits you. For memos, all that is necessary is a neat layout which shows clearly who it is for, who it is from, the date and subject, and the file reference. Use the same language for the letter and memo that you would use if you were speaking. Never use flowery expres- sions and cliches that you keep just for letters. Why write the undersigned when you can write [? Why write yours of recent date when you mean your recent letter? You will be able to think of lots of silly things that you only put into let- ters. Write the letter, then cross them all out and use plain language instead. See these examples: 84MEMO To: Susan Jones, Fleet Superintendent From: Clarissa Hawkins, Chairman Subject: Staffing Policy Date: 28/10/2002 File Ref: yb/28/45/001 1. Your proposal to seek extra male recruits and experi- enced male officers in order to balance the gender mix of our seastaff has been considered by the board. 2. We appreciate your point that there is a serious imbal- ance in the seastaff, with only five men in a total workforce of 543. However, the present seastaff give excellent results and the ratio of women to men is similar to that in compa- rable industries. 3. The board feels that today's men prefer the security of the home to the rough and tumble of seafaring life and is there- fore unable to accept your proposal. 85Rustbucket Inc Queens Parade Newcastle UK 23rd October 1993 David Jones Insurance Manager Double Trouble Tankers Oslo Norway Your ref: D//411/93 Dear David, Premium Discounts You have asked us for a premium discount on the hull cover for your fleet of double hull tankers. We have yet to see any evidence that double hulls will lead to lower claims than single hulls. Your premiums will there- fore remain at the usual low rates. If you collect information on the claims history of vessels of the type you have, it would help future rating decisions. Yours sincerely, I Prudent Underwriter 86Positive letters Positive letters are acknowledgements, thanks, congratula- tions and acceptances. Because they are positive, they seem easier to write. People like to get good news. But good news mishandled can create a bad impression, or even appear, to the reader, as bad news. So good news letters need as much attention as any other kind. All the general points apply, particularly those of appearance, courtesy and sincerity. It is no use sending a note of thanks or congratulations on a scruffy piece of paper, with the name of the reader misspelt, and a lot of obviously insincere flattery. That will do more harm than good. If the company has to do something for its staff, or for some- one else, there is no point in being grudging about it. An- nounce what is to be done in a good news letter or memo. It will cost the same, but sell better. The essential points of a positive letter are: 1.Get the good news up front. If it is a thank you letter, say thank you in the first paragraph. If it is a letter approving something, approve it in the first paragraph. If you are an- nouncing something, then announce it at the beginning. 2. Say why you are saying thank you, and what for, or what you are approving. 3. Explain the benefits of what you are saying thank you for, or qualify any approval in a positive way. 4. State clearly when and how you expect further contact or action. Here are two examples of good and bad positive letters. 87Dear Helen, Despite all the rush I was just able to get to your talk. I thought people seemed to enjoy it and I hope you will do it again sometime. I would like to offer you our warmest thanks for giving us so much of your valuable experience. Maybe we should have lunch soon. Yours or Dear Helen, Thank you for giving a talk on P&I reinsurance to our staff last Friday. We not only found it useful; we also enjoyed it. The office staff liked your insights into the wheeling and dealing at Lloya’s, which will help them when they next come to deal with a broker themselves. J owe you a good lunch, and will ring next Tuesday to fix a suitable date. Thanks and regards, or, Dear Mr Chawdla, 1 would like to know if you think angle grinders will wear out more quickly if we fit the guards you suggest. If they will last more or less the same time, then I am willing to allow guards to be altered on our other vessels. When I get your views on the service life of the grinders I will deal with the other ships. 88or Dear Ravi, Your idea for altering the angle grinder guards seems very good. The ship management team think it will make the grinders both safer and easier to use. We would like to pass your idea on to all our vessels. There is one small point. The technical manager would like to know if you have noticed any difference in the service life of the grinder after modification. He thinks it may mean replacing the grinders more often. Could you let me know if the grinder wears out more quickly or not? If you get a reply off by satellite fax during the trip to Singapore, we will be in time to include your idea in our December safety newsletter. ‘Try these staff notices: Memo To: All staff From: A McGrudge, Office Manager Subject: Compulsory Sight Tests EC legislation is going to mean that anyone working with a VDU will be entitled to an eye test. The company has to do this, but will only pay for the minimum spectacles you might need if there is a problem directly related to the company's vdus. Tests will be held in the boardroom on Friday October 15. There will be no alternative date, so if you are not there it 89will be assumed that you do not wish to have help from the company with the eyetests. or MEMO To: All staff From: A McBoon, Office Manager Subject: Help for our eyes WITH so many of us working long hours in front of compu- ter screens, the company has decided to offer staff regular eyesight tests. If the tests show that you need spectacles because of the screens, the company will help you to buy them. The first tests have been set for Friday 15th October, when a technician will visit the company to give everyone a pre- liminary check. Those of you shown by the check to have potential problems will then be offered a full eyesight ex- amination. Please try to be here on Friday 15th, but if you have to be out that day, let me know before October 10th, and I will try for an alternative date. Negative letters Negative letters are sent to refuse to do something. No-one likes bad news, or to have a request or idea turned down. Even the best crafted negative letter can harm a business relationship. The effective writer is seeking to say no firmly, without harming relations with the reader. 90The first point to consider is whether to write the letter or not. Can you possibly do what is asked of you? Is the matter so sensitive that it could best be handled by a phone call? If you don’t have to write the letter, don’t. If the letter or memo concerns a disciplinary matter, or staff behaviour, think ten times before writing it. Never write a broadcast memo about some aspect of organisation when you are only targeting one offender. Target the offender instead, and speak to him directly. A negative letter works in reverse to a positive one. It should start by stating the context, move on to give the reasons for the refusal, then give the refusal, and end on a positive note by offering an alternative or some encouragement. Avoid saying no directly, and use a long sentence for the actual refusal. It will seem less blunt. If you are right, do not apolo- gise profusely. If you are wrong, apologise gracefully. Don’t write when you are angry, don’t belittle the reader and don’t use words which will appear accusing. When giving rea- sons, do not just say that it is because of company policy. Explain what aspect of the company policy is the reason for the refusal. Finally, be firm, and do not leave any doors open for the reader to continue the correspondence. Here are two examples: Dear Mr Kim, We cannot reimburse you for heavy weather gear expenses. It is against company policy to pay for anoraks bought by crew members. I am surprised that you claim you needed extra gear, when no-one else on the vessel that voyage had any complaint. Yours sincerely, Fleet Personnel Manager 91or Dear Mr Kim, You have asked us to pay $60 for an anorak which you bought in Montreal, just prior to a trip up the Great Lakes. We supply all our crews with a full set of cold weather cloth- ing and our records show that you had a new set that voy- age. We buy the clothing in bulk through our central pur- chasing department, and therefore do not pay for clothing bought by individual crew members. Enjoy your leave, and we look forward to hearing from you when you are ready for another voyage. Yours sincerely, Fleet Personnel Manager or Dear Peter, I'm really sorry, but I can’t see my way to committing my- self to your tanker fund. You claim that it is guaranteed to generate a high rate of return, but you evidently haven't given much thought to the excess shipbuilding capacity in Japan which is just waiting to flood the world with tank- ers. I'll be in the office this week if you want to discuss the matter further. Yours, Boris 92or Dear Peter, You have asked me to invest $1m in your limited life tanker fund. Although many owners of older tankers are optimistic of good returns next year, studies of current shipbuilding ca- pacity, particularly in Japan, indicate that there may be a lot of new tanker tonnage coming into service soon. 1 intend to wait a year to see how trends move before mak- ing any further investment in tankers. Andreas is looking for a means of taking advantage of any forthcoming tanker upturn, so you might contact him. The best of luck with your fund, Regards, Boris. Persuasive letters Persuasive letters request information or services, apply for a job, sell an idea or a product, seek new equipment, ask for payment or carry a complaint. They share the common fac- tor that the writers do not control the readers, and are seek- ing to get the readers to act to satisfy them. A persuasive letter must start with an attention-grabbing first sentence. Readers don’t want or need anything from 93you. You want something from them. So they will not read the letter unless you get their attention. The needs of the writer must be clearly set out, followed by the benefits which would flow, to the reader and the writer, if the request is granted. The questions which the reader might have should be anticipated and answered. But do not go into so much detail that you make the letter too long. An effective persuasive letter is short. A long letter may not be read right through, and may fog the issue. The letter should end with a confident request for a specific action. Look at these examples: Fleet Technical Manager Dear Mr Macleod, Improving Spare Part Control You recently sent myself and my second engineer on a com- puter familiarisation course. We have seen a way to apply that knowledge and to save the company money. At present, spare part control for the fleet is done manu- ally. Chief engineers file spare parts orders when they think they need spares, using manuals to identify the part num- bers. Due to language difficulties and the frequent change of engineers, this often leads to expensive duplication, and even more expensive downtime when the requisite spare is not available. A computer programme called ShipSpare is available from Ship Service Lid. It costs $50, and would run on the pe 94already installed on board. It can be bought with all the data preloaded for spares control for the Sulzer engines we use, and its makers claim it will pay for itself in one voyage. We saw it demonstrated on the course and found it easy to use. We can think of a number of times when it would have made spare ordering more cost-effective on our ships. And if a matching programme is installed in the office, it will save you time matching inventory and order records. Please could you supply us with the ShipSpare programme when we arrive in Singapore. That way, we can get it up and running before the next major drydocking, due in Feb- ruary. Yours sincerely, Archie McDougall, Chief Engineer The Harbour Master St Petersburg Dear Sir, Berthing priority Several times in the last three months our vessels have had to wait for the berth you have allocated us in St Petersburg. Whilst waiting, our masters noticed empty berths on other quays in the harbour. Could we suggest another method of allocating berths which would give better results? The present system is losing revenue for the port and cost- ing us lost time on our schedule. Extra tug and pilot move- ments are also pushing up costs. We have lost $5,000 in the 95last three months because of the delays, and we estimate that your port will have lost a similar amount. The present method of allocating berthing priority depends on your controllers and a system of named berths for spe- cific lines. At our other turnaround port, Grindly upon Sea, berthing is computer-allocated on a first-come, first-served basis for tramps, with regular liner vessels like ours hav- ing access to a number of quays. The system was supplied by a subsidiary of ours, FirstBerth Computers. It works well and has increased port throughput by 15 per cent since its installation last year. We could arrange a demonstration of the system for you, and would meet the costs of flying you and your senior op- erations manager to Grindly to see it in operation. We would also offer assistance with purchasing and installing the sys- tem in St Petersburg, if you decide that it would be suitable for your port. I enclose some information about the FirstBerth system, with a duplicate set for your operations manager. The harbour manager at Grindly, my senior line manager and the manager of FirstBerth Computers will be avail- able for a demonstration during the week of Ist to Sth April. Can you let me know by the end of February if that would suit you? Yours sincerely, A Schoof General Manager Deutsche Boxline 96Minutes of meetings Managers spend alot of time in meetings. Some of the meet- ings are more formal than others, but formality and effec- tiveness are not linked. The effectiveness of a meeting de- pends on who takes part, the preparation done by the par- ticipants, the skill of the chairman and the way the outcome of the meeting is recorded. Effective writers can. get more out of meetings by making sure they are recorded effec- tively. Many managers regard keeping the minutes of a meeting as achore to be avoided. They try to give the job to a secretary or to a junior participant. But the minutes are much more than a written record of what happened at the meeting. They are an important part of the process of getting things done. Decisions at meetings are made verbally. The chairman will announce the decision of the meeting, and the participants will hear it. But ears and memories play tricks, and differ- ent people in the meeting will hear different decisions, and adopt different courses of action. That is why the record of the meeting is so important. The minutes of the meeting record in writing what has been decided and who has to act. Capturing the decision of the meeting into an explicit written record is not simple, and it gives enormous power to the person who is keeping the minutes. So if you have to attend meetings and you care what happens as a result of them, it is worth volunteering, or allowing yourself to be persuaded, to take the minutes. Then apply these simple effective techniques: 1, Write the minutes as you gO along. Never record the meeting on tape. Tapes go wrong, they intrude into the meeting, and they record a lot of unnecessary chatter. Also, they waste your time. If the meeting takes an hour, it will 97 Se OSEtake an hour to play the tapes back and make a written record from them. Worse, the tapes may record some comments which were excluded from the decision taken later, but which would slant that decision if repeated. You, as the writer of the minutes, want to slant the decision your way, not the way of other people’s comments. 2, Be prepared. Use a lined A4 size pad to make notes. Use the space to spread yourself. Don’t sit where you will be squashed up or where someone nosy will keep looking over your shoulder. Have two pens ready. Having only one is an invitation for it to run out halfway through the meeting. Have the agenda in front of you, and use the agenda headings as headings for each section of your minutes. 3. Use a standard format so that you don’t forget simple things. Every set of minutes should record the same basic facts at the beginning, and use the same structure in the body of the minutes. The format could look like this: Minutes of Meeting Committee: Crew Welfare Group Date: 4th October 1997 Purpose: Regular Monthly Meeting Venue: Head Office Room 4 Time: 1500 - 1545 Present: Yannis Papadoulos, managing director (Chairman) Petros Papandreou, fleet manager David Smith, personnel manager (Secretary) 98Record; 1, Agenda Item: Provision of libraries to company vessels DS presented proposal (attached) to supply SES libraries to all ships. Discussion of cost, logistics and culture/na- tionality of crews. Decision: To supply libraries to ships with European crews only, max budget $250 annually, starting 1/1/98. Action: David Smith 2. Agenda Item: Sea staff laundry costs YP insists crew laundry costs are out of control. PP says costs higher because vessel now trading to Scandinavia. DS suggests investigate supply extra linen and do laundry only in Piraeus. Decision: Investigate cost of extra set of linen for one week, and relative costs of laundry in Scandinavia and Greece. Report to next meeting, 5th November. Action: Petros Papandreou 4, Don’t record all the discussions. Just note who submits what to the meeting, any major response or objection and then the decision and who is to action it. If the decision is not clear, then intervene and say, “Could I just summarise that? Are we agreed that Petros is to investigate the cost of one set of linen and the relative costs of laundry in Scandi- navia and Greece before the next meeting?” That should ensure that Petros gets the job, not you, and no-one can wriggle out. 995. Be quick to get the minutes out. Using the format on a notepad, all the information should be in the right place and easy to read. Have a minutes format set up in your word processor, and get the formal document done the same day. Make sure that everyone who attended, or who has to ac- tion something, gets a copy. Highlight on individual copies the names of the people who have to action something. It is useless to send out the minutes of a meeting weeks, or even days, after it takes place. If the agreed jobs are to be done, you must get the minutes out quickly, before another meet- ing gets in the way. Delivering the message is all part of effective writing. 6. Think carefully about the words you choose to record decisions. You cannot twist the words spoken by others, but itis possible to make things more or less emphatic by choos- ing slightly different words. And apply all the rules of ap- pearance and courtesy found in the previous chapters of this book. The minutes of a meeting are as much a persuasive document as they are a simple record. 100Chapter Seven Writing reports Almost everyone in the marine industry will have to write a report at some stage of their career. Some, like surveyors, will write hundreds. In every case, the report is important, not just because of what it reports on, but because ittells the reader something about the writer. People are judged, con- sciously or subconsciously, on the quality of their reports. So it is important to get them right. There are several specific types of report which are used in the marine industry. At the simplest level, there are incident reports, which are straightforward factual listings of factors surrounding a specific incident. Then there are survey re- ports, which can vary in complexity from the simplest re- port of a draft survey, delivered on a standard form, to a thorough report on and investigation into a major cargo fire orcollision. The more sophisticated survey reports are more than a listing of what has been observed; they also contain tecommendations and suggestions. Ashore and afloat, management demands reports on things that are happening, or things that they would like to hap- pen. How are the new generators performing on heavy fuel? The chief engineer writes a report. That is a technical re- port. Should we invest in product tankers? The chartering manager writes a report. Why are we losing so many con- tainers in Angola? The foreign trade director writes a re- port. These are investigative reports. What should we do about staff losses? The personnel manager writes a report. This is an investigative report, and contains a strong ele- ment of recommendation. Should the EC have a ports policy? This is a consultant’s report and is intended as a policy guide. 101Finally, when it all goes wrong, disputes go to arbitration or court, and both sides commission expensive expert witnesses to report on the incident and why it happened. The difference in size, content, time spent, cost and impor- tance between the simplest incident report and the most complex consultant’s report is enormous. But all these re- ports have some points in common. First, they are all selling something. It may only be the abil- ity of the master or chief engineer to do a simple job well, but that is what an incident report from a vessel sells. It may be a surveyor’s, consultant’s or expert witness’s report, in which case the report itself is what they are selling. It is the physical manifestation of their knowledge, and it is what they will be judged on. An investigative report is selling a conclusion, or a recommendation, and, at the same time, selling the writer to the reader. Second, the rules of appearance, logical order, proper signposting, courtesy and clarity apply to all reports. So before going any further with this chapter, make sure you have hoisted in the contents of chapters two to five and, in particular, chapter four, which deals with logical order and layout. There is nothing more frustrating, and so less effec- tive, for the reader than a report where the information needed cannot be found easily. Third, your report will be read, or flicked through, by peo- ple who are busy thinking about something else. So the onus is on you, the writer, to grab their attention and to make the report easy to use, complete and accessible. The reader will not do the writer’s work. 102Types of report General guidance for compiling, writing, laying out and presenting reports has been given in chapters two to five. This section gives specific guidance on the content and preparation of some types of report common in the marine industry. Incident reports Incident reports are written as a record of an event by a person involved in the incident, or a witness to it. This could be a master’s report on cargo damage, collision or fire, or a technical manager’s report on an accident in drydock, or something similar. Incident reports should stick to listing facts, and should avoid either conclusions or recommenda- tions, Their purpose is to record the events as observed by the person who writes the report. Someone else will decide whose fault it was, or what action needs to be taken. This book cannot list the contents of every possible inci- dent report. The Master's Role in Collecting Evidence , pub- lished by the Nautical Institute, provides specimen check- lists for a variety of incidents that might happen on board ship. The same guidance is equally useful for incidents ashore, although it is less often that an office worker will be faced with incident reports. But all incident reports should start with: 1, Title page. What is the report about, who wrote it, when and where. Report of Damage to a Paper Cargo Mv Hardluck 103December 1984 by Captain Javinda Gosh Cornerbrook, January Ist 1985 This page may also list the people who the report is intended. for: Distribution: Fleet manager P&I Associates, Cornerbrook Rabid, Rabid & Co, owner’s lawyers Ship’s File Ref Cargo 1984/33 2. Contents page There should be no need for a contents page. Incident re- ports should be short, and in list format. But if it is long, make a contents page immediately after the title page. Contents 1. Introduction Page2 2. Details of Master Page 3 3. Details of Vessel Page 3 4. Voyage to Load Port 4 5. Loading Operation 4 6. Stowage and securing 5 7. Loaded voyage 6 8. Discharge Operation 7 9. Damage to cargo 83. Introduction This should be a short summary of what the report is about. It should follow the title page to allow readers to identify quickly if the report deals with the matter that interests them or not. Be careful not to use the summary to make any judge- ments about what happened, or as a place to include after- thoughts. It is a scene-setter only. There is no need for long conclusions, summaries or recommendations. 1.0 This report contains information about Mv Hardluck and the loading, carriage and discharge of acargo of 21,000 tonnes of newsprint. It covers a voyage between Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, and Oran, Algeria, commenc- ing August 1984 and ending December 1984. About forty per cent of the cargo was found to be water-damaged dur- ing discharge in Oran. 4. Details of the writer Here give name, address, telephone number, date of birth, qualifications and experience of the writer, and say exactly why the writer is concerned with this report. 2.0 Details of Master 2.1 Name: Javinda Gosh 2.2 Address: 334 Highbury Crescent, Bombay, India 2.3 Telephone: + 377 66 85 97 33 2.4 Date of Birth: 23rd May 1952 2.5 Qualifications: Master Foreign Going. Issued in Car- diff, UK, January 1981 2.6 Experience: Four years as seaman rating on Indian ships, commencing August 1968. Service as third officer, second officer in general cargo vessels from 1972 until 1976. Chief officer on specialist newsprint carriers from 1976 until 1983. Promoted Master April 1983, on Mv Hardluck. Apart from short leave, sailing since then as Master on Mv Hardluck. 1052.7 Relevance to this report: Was Master of Mv Hardluck during the voyage when the damage was found, and the voyage before that. 5. Details of the vessel Here list all the formal details of the vessel. Name; port of registry; flag; owner; type of vessel, when and where built; dimensions and tonnages; class; layout of holds; hatchcovers and tanks; engine model and power; navigational equipment, number and nationality of crew; draft on voyage in ques- tion; and any other details relevant to a particular incident. For example, for a fire, the number and type of fire appli- ances would be relevant. 3.0 Details of Vessel 3.1 Name: Mv Hardluck 3.2 Port of Registry: Port Louis 3.3 Flag: Mauritius 3.3 Type of Vessel: Specialised newsprint carrier 3.4 Built: Ishibras, Brazil, 1976 3.5 Dimensions: LOA 186 m, Beam 28 m, Summer draft 12.3 m, Gross tonnage 17,428 gt, Net tonnage 11,423 nt, Deadweight 31,426 dwt. 3.5 Class: 100 Al Lloyd's Register of Shipping 3.6 Layout of Holds: Five holds, each of similar size ex- cept No 1, closed by folding steel hatchcovers and also side loading ports. (See plan attached) 3.7 Layout of Tanks: Bunker tanks are all in the engine room. Ballast tanks are below each hold. Sounding and air pipes are on the main deck by the hold ac- cesses. (See attached tank plan) 3.8 Main engine: Sulzer RMT 64ZD 18,000 kw 3.9 Navigational Equipment: Two radars, Decca Navi- gator, gyro and magnetic compasses, RDF, GPS, echo sounder, auto pilot. 3.10 Crew: Six Indian officers, eight Somali ratings. 1066. Voyage to load port This is only relevant for cargo damage, and it should give enough information to establish if the previous cargo or something that happened on that voyage could be the cause of any damage, or to eliminate it from the question. Include: Dates of voyage; the cargo carried; the weather enroute; the ballast condition, if tanks pressed up or not; if bilges tested; any problem with the cargo on outturn; and action by crew, such as hold cleaning. 7. Loading operation This should include the name and geographical position of the load port; the date and time of arrival and notice of readi- ness; the date and time of berthing; the name of the berth and any relevant details (was the cargo covered/bought in rail trucks etc); name of any owner’s, charterer’s or insurance surveyors orrepresentatives and the times they were in attend- ance. The type and quantity of the cargoes should be des- cribed, along with the packaging. Then outline any specific instructions given about loading, including who they were given by, who to, and how, and if they were followed or not. This should be followed by an account of the dates and times worked, quantities loaded, the cargo plan, any stoppages and any problems encountered. 8. Stowage and securing Here the most important thing is to have some pictures of the actual stow. A few well-taken photographs will make your case much clearer than any written description. Make sure they are clearly identified and labelled. When taking them, include something in the shot, if possible, to identify the hold, perhaps by chalking the hold number on a conven- ient surface. 107Apart from the pictures, say who gave stowage and secur- ing instructions, who did the work and who inspected it, and describe the materials used and where and how they were deployed. Back this up with any remarks made on the mates’ receipts or bills of lading, or with any protest noted. Describe the sealing of the hatchcovers and any testing done on them. 9. Loaded voyage Much of the information needed here is already in the right format in the deck logbook. Refer to that, attach photocop- ies, and add details of any weather forecasts or routeing received, the ballast plan on departure, and records of sound- ing, ventilation and any cargo monitoring done. 10. Discharge operation This section needs the same details as for the loading op- eration. 11. Cargo damage This should include an accurate description of the cargo damage as seen by the master. Be factual only and give quan- tities. Do not say, Part of the cargo in the forward hatches was soaked. Rather say, Thirty per cent of the rolls of paper inNo I hatch, and twenty per cent of the rolls in No 2 hatch, were water-stained and wet to the touch all over. Then say who noticed the damage; who it was reported to; who surveyed it on behalf of whom; where the damaged cargo was taken to; any action taken to contain the damage or segregate the damaged cargo; any protest noted; and any delay caused to the vessel by the cargo damage and action taken because of it. Do not jump to conclusions or appor- tion blame. Stick to observations and facts. If packaging 108has failed, say how and why. If the damage was caused by stevedoring methods or equipment, and you saw that, then say so, and explain how and why, but without dishing out blame. Like this: 10.0 Cargo Damage 10.1 Damage noted: Thirty per cent of the rolls of paper in No I hatch and twenty per cent of the rolls in No 2 hatch were wet to the touch. Seventeen rolls in No 4 hatch had cuts along one side about one metre long and 6 mm aver- age depth. The deepest cuts were 12 mm deep. 10.2 Damage report: All the damage was first noted dur- ing outturn by the duty deck officer, Second Officer Ravi Shankar. He filled in a company damage cargo form, (cop- ies attached), and informed the chief officer and myself. All the damage was noticed and reported on the morning of December 4th, and I notified the P&I club representa- tive, Mr Abdul Rashid, and our agents the same morning. 10.3 Cargo survey: A joint survey of the cargo was under- taken by the Lloyd’s Agent, Mr Asprey, the P&I representative and myself on the afternoon of December 4th, at E berth. 104 Cargo disposal: The damaged rolls of cargo were sepa- rated during discharge and stored in a covered shed on E berth. No delays were caused, and extra labour was not required. 10.5 Stevedore’s equipment: Before discharge of No 4 hatch commenced, the Second Officer took a photograph of the complete stow. No cuts are visible then (copy attached). The stevedores then commenced discharge of that hold us- ing a set of wire slings ona metal frame, of a different type to that in use at the other holds. The sharp edges of the frame cut into the rolls as they were lifted. After the dis- charge of seventeen rolls the Second Officer was able to persuade the foreman stevedore to change the equipment inuse. There was no more damaged cargo from No 4 hatch. A diagram of the equipment first used is attached, showing how the sharp edges penetrated the rolls. 109This format of incident report can be adapted to almost any situation. The first part is the same - the title page, perhaps contents, the short introduction, the details of the writer and. the details of the vessel or location. The following sections will vary according to the incident. As a further example, this could be the contents of a report into an oil spill: Title Page Contents 1.0 Introduction 2.0 The writer 3.0 The vessel 4.0 The cargo on board 4.1 The tank plan 4.2 Types of oil on board 4.3 The cargo plan 5.0 The voyage 5.1 The load port 5.2 The route 5.3 Position at the time of incident 5.4 Persons navigating vessel at time of incident 5.5 Engine status 5.6 The weather 5.7 The tide 6.0 The spill 6.1 What was spilled 6.2 Where the spill was 6.3 Dateltimelplace of spill 64 Tanks involved 6.5 Quantity spilt 1106.6 Operations underway when spill occurred 6.7 Action to report spill 6.8 Action to stop spill 6.9 Action to containiclean up spill, including type and quantity of any dispersant used 6.10 The extent of pollution observed In summary, an incident report should stick to facts and list them in a sensible order. Survey reports Some surveyors think they live by their knowledge. They don’t. They live by their reports. The report is what the cus- tomer sees, and it is how the surveyor is judged. So it is vital for surveyors to produce attractive and effective re- ports. Too many don’t. A survey report is a record of what a surveyor saw, or meas- ured. Sometimes, for a damage or condition survey, the sur- veyor’s opinion or assessment will be required. But the first rule of survey reports is to report what you saw, not what you think. The second rule is to write and send the report off quickly. An old report is no good. The people who pay you to carry out a survey want to know the result now, not when the vessel has already arrived at the next port. So it is important to use standard formats and to harness the power of the word processor to produce reports quickly. Get them in front of the client when the client is feeling receptive. Late reports are not effective reports, however well-researched and writ- ten. The third rule is not to produce the reports so quickly that they are either wrong, or messy. In the long run, it may be dil