Style guidelines for financial services firms

Style guidelines for financial services firms can help you to make your written communications more consistent and thus easier to read.

 

Why create style guidelines for your financial services firm?

writing guidelinesIt can be distracting if writing styles are inconsistent within and across documents published by your firm. For example, is it “counterparty” in the first paragraph and “counter party” in paragraphs two and three? Do headings randomly mix sentence case and title case? Is your company name abbreviated in different ways?

It’s a good idea to pick a major style guide, such as the AP Stylebook, to use as your reference for common questions. However, style guides often don’t cover challenges specific to financial services firms. They certainly don’t tackle company-specific branding issues.

Creating style guidelines tailored to your company can help your writers and editors fill in the blanks left by the major style guides.

How I create style guidelines for my clients

For my editing clients, I create style guidelines for my own reference. They help me to be consistent. Also, I share the guidelines with my proofreader, when I use one.

As issues arise, I record the preferred style in an Excel spreadsheet. In the first column, I record the word, phrase, or other issue. In another column, I record the preferred practice.

Here’s an excerpt from the Capitalization section of one style sheet.

Capitalization style guidelines sample

 

 

 

 

 

potential topics to cover in your financial firm's style guidelines infographic

Section headings that I’ve used include the following:

  • Abbreviations/acronyms—for example, BRL→Brazilian real, 50 bps→50 basis points (0.50%)
  • Capitalization
  • Company names—identify your source for the preferred spelling of company names
  • Credentials—for example, use the ® mark with the CFP designation
  • Headings—for example, use sentence case and bold
  • Numbers—for example, SPELL OUT numbers 1 to 9, even in five-year Treasury
  • Punctuation/grammar/style—for example, use serial comma; DO hyphenate first-quarter and worst-performing WHEN used as ADJECTIVE; use a consistent number of decimal places
  • Spelling—for example, health care, NOT healthcare
  • Word replacements—for example, cap rate→capitalization rate

How long should your style guidelines be?

My client style sheets would typically fit on one page, if printed out.

I like the philosophy of Intelligent Editing, which recommends that your style sheet run no longer than four pages. The firm says in “Writing a Style Guide: What You Need to Know“:

…bear in mind that the goal is just to focus on points of style where there is no right answer but where one usage is preferred by the organization. A style guide is not the place to teach your colleagues things that they should already know.

The longer your style sheet, the harder it will be for you and your colleagues to apply it consistently. It’s harder for users to keep all of the issues in their heads, even if they scan the style sheet repeatedly.

If you already have style guidelines

If you already have style guidelines, please share them with writers and editors whom you hire, in addition to your company’s employees.

You may struggle with getting your financial firm’s writers to follow them. I’ve addressed your challenge in “Reader question: How to get writers to follow style guidelines?

Writer image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Note: This post was updated on March 10, 2025. It was originally published in 2016.

MARCH NEWSLETTER: Curly versus straight

What kind of quotation marks do you use in your writing?

Did you know that there are two kinds of quotation marks—straight and curly? Straight quotation marks don’t curve, whereas curly quotes seem to wriggle on the page (see image below). The actual appearance of the marks will vary depending on the font you use.

image with the words straight in straight quotes and curly in curly quotesStraight quotes are a hangover from the days of typewriters when you would have needed separate keys to show the curly quotation marks that appear on the left versus those that appear on the right. Today, software can automatically supply the appropriate quotation marks. In fact, curly quotes are also known as “smart quotes” because they’re smart enough to lean in the appropriate direction.

Here’s what one blog says about straight versus curly in “Curly quotes and straight quotes: a quick guide.”

Straight quotes come from typewriter habits. Typewriter character sets were limited by mechanics, so they were replaced with straight quotes. That’s not an issue anymore with word processors and modern typing. Straight quotes are no longer a necessity.

Curly quotes are typically preferred by writers today because they’re more legible and flow better with the content. Straight quotes rarely have a place in any type of modern writing or typography, the technique, and art of arranging type. Designers and people who work with typography tend to stay away from straight quotes as a rule of thumb.

I favor curly quotes because they’re more modern and are generally preferred by my clients. If your company prefers straight quotes, that’s OK, but please use that style consistently. It’s jarring for some readers if you switch between styles.

There are some rare cases in which straight quotes might be preferred. “The ‘Smart Quote’ Struggle” discusses how the use of curly quotes is not supported for searches in some scholarly literature databases. (Thanks, Robyn Bradley, for this link!) This is also true, according to my techie husband, when technical query text is pasted from word processors directly into most database management software that uses some form of structured querying language (SQL).

To turn curly quotes on or off in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, read “Smart quotes in Word and PowerPoint.”

Historic versus historical

Do you know when to use “historic” instead of “historical” in your financial writing?

For example, if you’re talking about the market setting new highs, you might refer to “historic highs.” That’s because “Historic is most commonly used for something famous or important in history,” as explained in “What’s the difference between ‘historic’ and ‘historical’?” on the Merriam-Webster website.

Treasuries or Treasurys?

How do you write the plural of “Treasury”? Read my take on the topic in “Treasurys vs. Treasuries — Which is the right spelling?

Learn more about hospice care and the end of life

I wish I had known more about hospice care and the process of dying before a family member started it some years ago. Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully is a practical, down-to-earth book written by hospice nurse Julie McFadden. McFadden has a YouTube channel where you can get a taste of her approach to this topic.

On this topic, a friend also recommends The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life by nurse Suzanne B. O’Brien. The book is scheduled for release on March 18, 2025.

Flemish art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem

I’m a big fan of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

The museum is currently hosting a traveling exhibition of Flemish art, “Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks.” The show runs through May 4, 2025.

 

carving or statue of a woman reading a book    pink and white flowers on a black background surrounded by a intricately carved frame    image of a male painter painting in a black frame


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

Hyphens matter

Hyphen, shmyphen, who cares whether you use hyphens? A Facebook ad drove home the lesson that hyphens’ role as connectors is important.

“Imagine life pain free,” said the ad. This hyphenless sentence could be interpreted as “Imagine getting ‘life pain’ at no cost.” No, thanks, I’ll pass on that offer.

The advertiser should have written, “Imagine life pain-free.” This makes it clear that “pain” relates to “free,” not life. It’s important to use hyphens if their absence changes your meaning or makes it unclear. This is true even though compound modifiers usually aren’t hyphenated when they follow a noun.

In the financial world, the following phrases typically use hyphens:

  • closed-end fund
  • risk-adjusted returns
  • sub-advised funds (although there’s a trend to delete the hyphen to use “subadvised”)
  • target-date funds
  • time-weighted rate of return
  • year-to-date period

For more on hyphens, check out these resources:

 

Note: This post was updated on Feb. 18, 2025. It was originally published in December 2013.

FEB. NEWSLETTER: Format your numbers correctly

Formatting ordinal numbers

It drives me crazy to see formatting like “10th” in people’s writing. I believe it happens because Microsoft wrongly makes superscript its default for ordinal numbers. But that’s wrong, at least according to Associated Press style, which shows the “th” suffix in regular font. I couldn’t find any well-known style guide that suggests using superscript with ordinal numbers. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) generally spells out ordinal numbers, although it makes exceptions for informal communications. However, CMOS never superscripts ordinal suffixes.

You can “Turn off superscripting of ordinal numbers in Word.” Doing this removed a big source of irritation from my life.

On a related topic, see my post on “How to write calendar dates in your financial communications.”

Is it OK to send cold emails?

A cold email is “an unsolicited e-mail that is sent to a receiver without prior contact,” as defined by Wikipedia.

Yes, it’s OK to send a cold email, but you should act within the bounds of laws governing email communications in the region you’re targeting. For more information, see “Is Cold Email Legal? Best Practices for Compliance” from Hunter.io, a website that helps people find and verify email addresses.

Could your older clients benefit from mentoring younger people?

Individuals who are age 60 or older might enjoy providing online intergenerational mentoring as facilitated by Eldera. According to the website, opportunities are open to individuals who:

  • Have six (or more!) decades of life experience
  • Have an internet connected device that can access Zoom
  • Can pass a background check
  • Possess kindness, generosity, and curiosity

I learned about this service in The Boston Globe’s “How do you define old? A push to mine wisdom, ease isolation among young and old.”

Bilingual language podcasts

I’ve been studying Spanish and reviewing Japanese using Duolingo since before the pandemic hit. But I only recently started listening to Duolingo’s Spanish-English podcasts, which tell interesting stories in a combination of intermediate Spanish with enough English to get me through the bits I don’t understand. The stories would interest me even if they were only in English. For example, there’s a story about how the family of one of Duolingo’s founders dealt with a relative getting kidnapped for ransom.

Duolingo offers bilingual podcasts for English-speaking students of Spanish and French and for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking students of English. I wish Duolingo would add a bilingual Japanese podcast.

Recycle office equipment and supplies

Staples recycles a lot of office supplies and equipment, as well as school supplies. Probably more than you think. For example, it recently added single-use batteries to the list of items it recycles. It will recycle monitors for a fee. I was surprised to learn Staples recycles earbuds, pencils, and computer mice.

Check it out!

Lemon crinkle cookies

I discovered this recipe for lemon crinkle cookies when I needed to prepare for a cookie swap. The recipe is from King Arthur Flour, which is a reliable source of recipes for baked goods.

When I needed to adapt the recipe to yield 24 cookies instead of 22 to meet the cookie swap requirements, I found a solution by calling the website’s Baker’s Hotline.

This recipe made me the winner of the cookie swap competition.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

JAN. NEWSLETTER: Verbs make your writing vivid

I was struck by this advice in Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel:

You want vivid writing. How do we get vivid writing? Verbs, first. Precise verbs. All of the action on the page, everything that happens, happens in the verbs.

According to Chee, writer Annie Dillard told her students to “increase the average number of verbs per page.” Strong verbs allow you to avoid using adverbs to fill in what your verbs fail to convey, as Chee says later in the same chapter of his book.

I discovered an interesting exercise from Dillard in Chee’s book. Dillard told her students to print the draft of an essay. Next, follow these steps, as described by Chee:

… cut out the best sentences … and tape them on a blank page. And when you have that, write in around them. … Fill in what’s missing and make it reach for the best of what you’ve written so far.

I might try that exercise with a personal essay with which I’m struggling.

Speaking of essays, here’s an essay I wrote long ago: “A Pink Kimono From a Japanese Mother.”

Punctuation with quotation marks

I frequently find that writers misplace quotation marks around their other punctuation, as I discussed in “Bloggers’ top two punctuation mistakes.”

If you’re puzzled by the rules of when to punctuate inside or outside quotation marks, review this nice summary about “Punctuation with Quotation Marks” on the website of the library of Loyola Marymount University.

Fact versus interpretation in your blog posts

Fact or interpretation, which should you place first in your article, commentary, or blog post? For my take on this, read “Financial writer’s clinic: fact vs. interpretation.”

Click to email me if you’d like to buy one of my digital products

If you’d like to buy one of my digital products—such as the PDF versions of Financial Blogging or Investment Commentary—click on the “Buy” button to email me so I can send you a PayPal invoice. Thank you for your interest in my products!

Research denials of health care claims

Difficulties with health care claims have been in the news lately.

If you’d like to find out why a claim was denied, try using this Claim File Request from ProPublica. I haven’t used it myself, but ProPublica is a respected investigative journalism organization.

Happy 2025!

I hope that 2025 is a healthy, happy, and prosperous year for you.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

 

Treasurys vs. Treasuries — Which is the right spelling?

What’s the right way to spell the plural of Treasury, as in U.S. Treasury bond?

Should it be “Treasurys,” following the rule that the members of the Murphy family become Murphys? Or should it follow the normal rules of creating plurals for words that end in the letter y?

I panicked when I saw “Treasurys” in The Wall Street Journal. Eek! Have I been spelling the word wrong for 20-odd years?

However, I quickly discovered that opinions are split. When I Googled the terms, there were 2.2 million results for Treasuries vs. only 1.5 million for Treasurys. 

The evidence for Treasuries
Here’s the rule that would typically apply. “…if a word ends in a -y that isn’t preceded by a vowel, the plural is formed by omitting the -y and substituting -ies…,” according to Garner’s Modern American Usage. Garner makes an exception for proper names ending in y. He agrees that Murphy becomes Murphys.

Does Treasury qualify as a proper name? Proper names are usually personal names–such as Murphy–or geographic names–such as Washington, D.C. Following this reasoning, Treasuries makes sense.

My friend, financial editor Harriett Magee, found that sources including the Barron’s Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms agreed with Treasuries. Plus, her spell-checker flagged Treasurys as a mistake. 

If you prefer Treasurys…
You’ve got some high-powered company if you stick with Treasurys. When The Wall Street Journal spells it that way, that legitimizes it in my eyes.

If you can’t bear not knowing what’s 100% correct, then use the workaround that Harriett Magee suggests. Refer to Treasury bonds, Treasury notes, and so on. It’s bit wordy, but correct. 

Follow this advice, no matter what you decide
It’s important to use your words consistently in your corporate communications. Pick one spelling and stick with it. 

Consider creating a corporate style guide that lists preferred spellings. It’s a lot easier to have an authoritative source for your company than to try to keep the rules in your head.

My thanks go to David Glen for raising this question when he was a senior vice president at Boston Private Bank.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

 

Note: updated on Nov. 15, 2024. This post was originally published in 2010.

DEC. NEWSLETTER: Banish “learnings” and take advantage of sale on my PDF e-books

Down with “learnings”!

I’m not a fan of pedantic expressions like “learnings,” so I was thrilled to read “An insightful alternative to the dreadful jargon ‘learnings’ ” by Josh Bernoff.

Bernoff says, “…a large proportion of your audience, when reading about ‘learnings,’ will tune out or resist. And that doesn’t accomplish your goal of communicating without generating an emotional backlash.” That’s so true!

He suggests “insights” as a good substitute for “learnings.” For example, instead of saying, “Please write up your learnings from the completion of the project in a memo,” he suggests saying, “Please write up your insights from the completion of the project in a memo.” I like it.

Another word that I hate is “mitigate,” as I’ve discussed in “BNY Mellon: I liked your ‘truth ad’ until you used that word” and “Can you make a case for ‘mitigate’?

If you’re struggling to convince someone about the value of plain language, read “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing,” my guest post that originally appeared on the MarketingProfs blog.

December sale on PDF e-books that will make you a better writer

Keep my practical writing tips handy with my two PDF e-books.

My 45-page Investment Commentary e-book gives you commentary-focused tips for organizing your thoughts, editing for the “big picture,” editing line by line, and getting more mileage out of your commentary.

One financial advisor writes, “Susan’s Investment Commentary book is a must-read. Anyone who writes investment commentary and financial reports should read—and reread this book—in order to avoid the dry, boring reports we see all too often.”

Regularly $9.99, the PDF is $4.99 during December 2024.

 

My 107-page book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, takes you step-by-step through a powerful system for writing blog posts—or just about any communication you’d share with clients or prospects.

Financial planning expert Michael Kitces says, “A great read for advisors who want to blog better—or learn how to start!”

Blogger Mike Lipper says, “I wish I had read Susan’s Financial Blogging before I produced 300 weekly posts.”

Regularly $39, the PDF is only $27 during December 2024.

 

Winter soup recipe

My favorite new recipe is “Healing Curry Butternut Squash Lentil Soup (with a slow cooker option!)” I didn’t have the coconut milk called for in the recipe, but the soup still turned out great.

You can use any squash, pumpkin, or sweet potatoes in this recipe. I used tetsukabuto squash instead of butternut squash.

Happy holidays!

I hope you and all of the people in your circle enjoy a lovely holiday season. I’ll see you in 2025.


What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Read more testimonials!


Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!


Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).


Hire Susan to speak

Could members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.

Seven ways to talk your financial execs out of jargon and bad writing

Marketing and communications professionals know how to write well. However, sometimes you struggle to get your firm’s executives to recognize the power of good writing. You edit their text, but the execs put the jargon and long-winded, indirect language back in. I have seven tips for how to win over your subject-matter experts.

Note: This post was originally published on Oct. 18, 2013, on the MarketingProfs blog, but it remains relevant today. I have made some updates and additions.

  1. Use the Oracle of Omaha

When I push for plain language, sometimes my asset manager clients say they’re worried they’ll be seen as “dumb.” That’s not justified.

I tell them to look at Warren Buffett. His annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders relies heavily on plain language. Yet the report is widely discussed by sophisticated financial professionals. I’ve never heard anyone call Warren Buffet dumb because of the way he writes.

Buffett writes like you imagine a trustworthy person would talk. For example, “A number of good things happened last year, but let’s first get the bad news out of the way,” he says on page 3 of his 2012 shareholder letter (PDF). He admits that the firm’s 2012 gains were “subpar.” He says it’s even possible that the firm may lose its record of consistently outperforming the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index over consecutive five-year periods.

It’s easy to imagine a different company burying the bad news at the bottom of the letter or even in the footnotes. Other companies surely would have used stuffier language to convey such news.

Buffett’s style works for various reasons:

  • A plainspoken style instills trust in investors. For example, its 2010 full-service investor survey spurred J.D. Power and Associates to recommend boosting investor trust with methods that include honest communication about investment performance and plain explanations for fees and commissions, according to “Study: Why focus on people, not profits, increases investor trust.” On a similar note, “investors are no longer impressed with jargon. They want to understand their investments without learning the definitions to unfamiliar words,” according to “New Word Order,” part of the Invesco White Paper Series (highlights available online). Moreover, “when Invesco tested the phrase ‘institutional-quality money management,’ one focus-group member asked why prison inmates were handling the money,” according to an article in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
  • The directness of Buffett’s writing saves time for readers. Everybody’s busy. They can save time by reading data-supported statements like this: “Our insurance operations shot the lights out last year. While giving Berkshire $73 billion of free money to invest, they also delivered a $1.6 billion underwriting gain, the tenth consecutive year of profitable underwriting.” Though a securities analyst and a portfolio manager might want to dig into the annual report for more details, these sentences give them a quick idea of what to seek.
  • It’s entertaining. Whether you’re an investor, an analyst, or a random reader, you’ll find something to make you smile in Buffett’s reports, which are regularly discussed in articles such as The Wall Street Journal‘s “Warren Buffett’s Annual Berkshire Letter: The Highlights” and, more recently, “I Read All 59 of Warren Buffett’s Annual Letters. These Are the Best Parts.” The author of the latter article says, “Buffett wrote in the voice of a friendly—and sometimes funny—teacher” and points to wording such as “Warning: It’s time to eat your broccoli.”

I imagine that some industry experts would read Buffett even if he wrote terribly; his investment insights are respected. However, weak writing would limit his reach.

  1. Remind them that longer sentences and paragraphs lose readers

Jargon isn’t the only problem. Research suggests that the longer your writing, the greater the probability that your readers will drop out. The average American starts to lose interest when pieces average more than 42 words per paragraph, 14 words per sentence, and two syllables per word, according to research cited by Ann Wylie of Wylie Communications in Portland, Oregon.

The 42-14-2 rule may be too strict for you, but the bottom line is clear: Longwinded writing is bad for readership. That should be intuitive: Everybody is bombarded with content; and they skim or skip pieces that run long, as the mutual fund prospectus research in the next section suggests.

Don’t believe the research? Here’s what Warren Buffett wrote about his experience reading corporate reports in his preface to A Plain English Handbook: How to create clear SEC disclosure documents: “I’ve studied the documents that public companies file. Too often, I’ve been unable to decipher what is being said or, worse yet, had to conclude that nothing was being said.”

The problem of bad writing is separate from the problem of jargon, because technical terms wouldn’t stump Buffett. It’s probably longwindedness and indirectness that derail him.

  1. Read out loud

When writers read their work out loud, they get a new perspective on it. I’ve seen that to be the case in my financial blogging class: Students recognize weaknesses they overlooked on a computer screen or printout.

Ask your experts to read their clunky sections out loud. Or, you can read it to them. Then ask, “How does that sound?” You can also suggest reading your edited version of that passage and comparing the “before” and “after.”

Here’s a “before” example:

Proposals from the German/French axis in the last few days have heartened risk markets under the assumption that fiscal union anchored by a smaller number of less debt-laden core countries will finally allow the ECB to cap yields in Italy and Spain and encourage private investors to once again reengage Euroland bond markets. To do so, the ECB would have to affirm its intent via language or stepped up daily purchases of peripheral debt on the order of five billion Euros or more. The next few days or weeks will shed more light on the possibility, but bondholders have imposed a “no trust zone” on policymaker flyovers recently. Any plan that involves an “all-in” commitment from the ECB will require a strong hand indeed.

Did you find it hard to grasp the main point of the “before” paragraph? Now consider the “after” paragraph:

Prices of riskier investments rose in response to recent proposals by German and French leaders, but we are skeptical that this will continue. Investors seem to believe that the proposals will strengthen the euro zone by capping bond yields. This would make euro-zone bonds more attractive to private investors. However, success would require the European Central Bank (ECB) to use strong language or to boost its daily purchases of the troubled countries’ debt by at least €5 billion. To convince distrustful investors will require strong action. That may be more than the ECB can achieve.

In addition to shortening and simplifying, I summarized the paragraph’s main point in the first sentence. Doing so is an easy way to boost reading comprehension. In fact, by simply making that one-sentence change to the “before” paragraph, the author can greatly improve the paragraph’s effectiveness.

By the way, the “before” example is written at the level of grade 16, while the “after” is grade 10, as calculated by Hemingway Editor, which I’ve written about in “Free help for wordy writers!” Think of grade level as a measure of how hard you are making your reader work to understand your message. The lower-grade-level “after” doesn’t sound “dumb.” Rather, it’s clear and confident.

  1. Plain English boosts results

Research shows that rewriting documents using plain English improves their effectiveness.

According to Joseph Kimble’s Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please, mutual fund buyers found a proposed plain-English “profile prospectus” more appealing than the traditional prospectus. He writes:

In every one of a series of comparisons—including how easy it was to find and understand several important items—the buyers rated the profile prospectus higher than the traditional prospectus. What’s more, most of the buyers had not even read the traditional prospectus before investing; but 61% of that group said they would be very likely to read the profile prospectus.

Respondents to an Investment Company Institute survey (PDF) on the profile prospectus revealed that “Investors overwhelmingly considered the writing style of the profile prospectus superior to that of the [traditional] prospectus.” They also liked the profile prospectus better for making purchase decisions, locating specific information, and comparing funds.

Profile prospectus research conducted by fund companies showed that financial advisers also liked the layout, length, and content of the profile prospectus and would use it with investors. Unfortunately, this simpler overview of funds was not adopted because of fund company concerns about costs and liability. However, a similar document, called a “summary prospectus,” was adopted in November 2008 with the mutual fund industry’s support.

  1. Show them you can work with the compliance department

Some bad writing results from fear of the firm’s compliance department. Under SEC and FINRA oversight, nobody wants to make a mistake. Here’s an example of the kind of clunkiness that results:

In the investment decision-making process, it has been demonstrated that the most important element affecting future portfolio performance is the asset mix.

I suspect that the use of “it has been demonstrated” comes from the desire to fend off a compliance officer’s complaint that there’s no proof that the asset mix is so important. The same may be true of the reference to “future” performance, because a hair-splitting compliance officer might point to the many times when factors other than asset mix play an outsized role in investment returns.

However, you may be pleasantly surprised by how open your compliance professionals are to your efforts to write well while also satisfying their concerns. After all, they benefit if readers understand what both of you are trying to say.

I suggest that first you write your message clearly. The sample sentence above might become “The investment decision that has the most impact on portfolio performance is the asset mix” or “A portfolio’s asset mix has the greatest impact on performance.” This could cut the sentence’s length from 23 words to as few as 10 words.

Next, consider ways to satisfy the compliance department’s concerns. It may be enough to document the importance of the asset mix by listing links to academic articles in the marketing department’s compliance files or in a footnote to the document. If your overseers demand more information in your publication, remember that you don’t need to jam it all into one sentence. A less prominent position in the same paragraph should work.

  1. Turn the tables

Your troublesome executive may be more open to recognizing problems in other people’s writing. That gives you an opening. Try showing them before-and-after examples of somebody else’s writing. You can use the examples given earlier in this article or something more relevant to your firm.

When an executive recognizes the value of streamlining someone else’s writing, you will have an opening to discuss the exec’s writing.

  1. Be tactful

Tread gently when you edit your subject-matter experts’ work. Suggest changes rather than offering criticism. That’s less threatening to fragile egos. Also, a wise writing coach talks about the writing, not the writer. It may also help to position your rewrite as “alternative” wording rather than a “better” approach.

It’s not easy for anyone to break a lifetime of bad writing habits. My tips could help you nudge someone in the right direction. As a starter, share this article and ask for your subject-matter experts’ advice on how to boost the effectiveness of your firm’s communications. Enlist them as your partners in better marketing.

“The pebble in the shoe”: The power of metaphor

Metaphors are powerful tools for communication. I couldn’t get the phrase “the pebble in the shoe” out of my mind after an advisor mentioned it to me at an annual conference of the Financial Planning Association of Massachusetts back in 2011.

Photo by Kaptain Kobold

Apparently, speaker Todd Fithian of the Legacy Companies suggested that advisors tackle whatever represents “the pebble in the shoe” for their clients.

I felt anxious just thinking about that pebble. This metaphor also sparked my curiosity about the presentation in which the term popped up.

Pebble vs. pressing problem

Which phrase is more memorable? “The pebble in the shoe” or “The pressing problem your client wants to address”?

For me, it’s clearly the first phrase. I’ll probably remember this phrase and perhaps even Todd Fithian long after I’ve forgotten the rest of the day’s sessions. This is true even though I didn’t attend Fithian’s presentation.

 

 

Note: This post was updated on October 15, 2024, following its original publication in 2011.

Improve your financial writing with these rules

Sometimes I find inspiration for my writing in unusual places. For example, it appeared in a newsletter from a professional organizer. Lorena Prime’s “7 Golden Rules of Organizing” made me think about how you can improve your financial writing skills.

rules from a professional organizer infographic

Rule 1. Be open to change

It’s not easy to change your financial writing style after putting your words together in the same way for many years.

However, the rules that you learned in school may no longer apply. For example, I learned in typing class to put two spaces after every period. Today, one space is the standard practice, as explained in Farhad Manjoo’s “Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.” Similarly, today a much more personal, casual style of writing prevails than when I entered the business world. For example, when I rewrote my website in 2015, I changed my biography from using “Susan Weiner” to “I.”

Also, there are always new areas where you can learn things. I try to take at least one writing-related class every year. I also read extensively and ask questions of the experts around me.

You’re a smart person who can learn. Take advantage of your curiosity and intelligence to try new approaches to your financial writing.

Rule 2. Purge

One of the biggest curses of financial writing is wordiness. Purge those excess words from your writing.

While you’re at it, replace multisyllabic jargon with simpler words that count as plain English. I mentioned one tool for identifying text that needs purging in my post on “Donald Trump, grade level, and your financial writing.”

Rule 3. Put like things together

Keep like with like, as I keep my sweaters together in one drawer

Keep like with like, as I keep my sweaters together in one drawer

Financial writing that’s well organized is easier to read than writing that hops from one topic to another and then goes back and forth again.

Divide whatever you write—especially longer pieces, such as white papers or quarterly letters—into distinct sections that each discuss one topic.

I describe an example of how to do this in “Key lesson for investment commentary writers from my professional organizer.”

Not sure if you’ve succeeded in putting like things together? You can outline or diagram the topics covered in each paragraph to check. The color coding used in Roy Peter Clark’s margin analysis technique may help.

Rule 4. Create homes

Your ideas for articles, blog posts, and longer pieces deserve homes. Creating a place where you store your ideas (and the data to support them) will help you to find them when you need them. There’s nothing worse than sitting down at your keyboard with no idea of what you want to write about.

You can house your ideas in a way that suits your style. Some people write notes by hand and cram paper copies of relevant articles into manila folders. Others have embraced virtual repositories, such as word-processing documents, Evernote folders, or online mind maps. I store my blog post ideas as Microsoft Outlook tasks.

Rule 5. Do it if it takes 2 or 3 minutes

I’m stretching to apply this rule to your financial writing. However, I’d like you take advantage of even small time slots to work on your writing.

For example, if you’re struggling to write a blog post, commit to spending 15 minutes on it. What you write doesn’t have to be great. It’ll get your mind thinking. You may develop momentum and keep going after your 15 minutes end. Even if you stop after 15 minutes, the ideas will continue marinating in your head.

Only have two or three minutes? Brainstorm ideas for future topics. Try my Barbie-inspired technique if you’re out of ideas.

Rule 6. Maintain it

You must write to improve your financial writing skills. Write regularly—daily, if possible.

Rule 7. Work with someone

I’m a big believer in classes—and getting feedback from others—as a way to improve one’s writer. Even non-financial writing classes can make you more aware of your writing’s strengths and areas where you need to improve. I took many writing classes through adult education programs while I was learning to write better. None of the classes had anything to do with investments or other financial topics.

If you’d like to focus on financial writing, I offer coaching and my financial blogging class, “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Week Writing Class for Financial Advisors.” I also lead writing workshops on email and investment commentary for professional societies and corporate clients.

 

How are YOU working to improve your financial writing?

I’m always interested in learning from you. Tell me how you’re improving your financial writing.

By the way, if you need a professional organizer to help you get your office in shape, I recommend Lorena Prime, whose article sparked this post. She is a woman of many talents. She has also acted as facilitator for my annual investment commentary webinar.

Paper image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net