Writamin: Put the Cause Before the Effect
It all started when she hit me back.
— Anonymous five-year-old child
Business writers often blur their ideas unnecessarily by reversing the natural flow of cause and effect. The notion that cause precedes effect is one of the most powerful patterns of our mental conditioning. When presented with a statement that puts the effect before the cause, the reader’s first impulse is to put the information back into cause-effect order. This requires mental effort, which many readers are unwilling to exert. Rather than turn your sentence around in their head, they quietly figure, “Why bother?” and proceed without comprehending your sentence.
When you bury the cause at the end of a statement, you force the reader to reverse the order of the information mentally before he or she can fully comprehend it. The reader will mentally reorganize the concept so that the cause comes before the effect. This process takes effort and time. It often forces readers to reread your work. Why make their lives more difficult?
State the cause of the situation you are describing before you state the effect. Stating causes clearly requires writers to acknowledge their own actions or errors and to place responsibility squarely on others when necessary. Maybe this is why so many people are loath to put causes first.
If you develop the habit of putting effects before causes, you might unwittingly omit the cause when you are in a hurry or are trying to streamline your work. However, your readers need to understand causes, because comprehending the causes of problems helps them find more intelligent solutions. When you remove the cause, you leave your reader with a fact — an effect — without any explanation of what led to that effect. If you want your reports and analyses to be useful to your readers, emphasize causes.
Some sentence constructions lend themselves naturally to burying causes. Try to avoid them.
|
PROBLEM: Putting the effect before the cause.
|
SOLUTION: Rework the sentence so that the cause precedes the effect.
|
|
B is due to A.
The loss was due to an increase in material costs.
|
A led to B.
An increase in material costs led to the loss.
|
|
B is caused by A.
The increased cost was caused by increased material costs.
|
A caused B.
Increased material costs caused the increased cost.
|
|
B was the result of A.
His heart attack was the result of clogged arteries.
|
A caused B, or A led to B.
Clogged arteries caused his heart attack.
|
|
B can be attributed to A.
The loss in net earnings can be attributed to an increase in cost of sales.
|
A led to B.
The increased cost of sales led to the loss in net earnings.
|
Notice that in all of the Solution examples, the cause, A, is the grammatical subject of the sentence and the verb is in the active voice. Switching to the more powerful active voice is just one positive side-effect of putting causes first.
Put the origin before its effect and your readers will follow you anywhere.
© 2010 Elizabeth Danziger All rights reserved
Cut Your Writing Time in Half
Ever wish you had a magical method that would enable you to get started on writing projects smoothly and end up with a polished first draft? Dream no more: the Worktalk trainings give you the secrets.
.
The Worktalk Core Business Writing Trainings teach you how to plan, organize, draft and edit clean, clear copy.
Contact Elizabeth Danziger today to find out how you can cut writing time in half while radically improving the quality of every document that your organization produces. Visit www.worktalk.com for more information.
|
