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For more details on products, and to contact us, visit www.pearsoned.co.uk Persuasive Writing How to harness the power of words Peter Frederick Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate Harlow CM20 2JE Tel: +44 (0)1279 623623 Fax: +44 (0)1279 431059 Website: www.pearsoned.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2011 © Pearson Education Limited 2011 The right of Peter Frederick to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Pearson Education is not responsible for the content of third party internet sites. ISBN: 978–0–273–74613–3 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frederick, Peter. Persuasive writing : how to harness the power of words / Peter Frederick. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-273-74613-3 (pbk.) 1. Business writing. 2. Report writing. 3. Persuasion (Rhetoric) I. Title. HF5718.3.F74 2001 808’.06665--dc22 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 14 13 12 11 Typeset in 10pt Iowan Old Style BT by 3 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Henry Ling Ltd, Dorchester, Dorset Contents About the author ix Introduction x Acknowledgements xii 1 What is Persuasive Writing? 1 Why are you writing? 4 Who is your audience? 7 Reader Response = Result 12 2 Tools for Persuasive Writing 17 Ethos, Logos, Pathos 19 Using emotive language 21 You, We, I – getting personal 24 FABU 25 Storytelling 27 Persuasive writing example 31 3 Persuasion – Beyond Logic 35 The science of decision-making 37 Primacy – why coming first matters 39 Availability 40 Consistency and why we hate changing our minds 43 Justification and evidence 46 Simplicity 48 v g Loss and reward – a bird in the hand . . . 50 n ti ri Outside influences – following the herd 53 w e Repetition, repetition, repetition 56 v si a Anchoring – decision-making all at sea 57 u s r e The halo effect 58 p Recency – the here and now 60 The reader is always right 62 4 Commercial Break: Advertisement Slogans 65 5 Conciseness Equals Clarity 71 Ason and the Jargonauts 74 Sentences that are too long 76 The writer’s diet – cutting padding 78 Culling lazy words 80 Examples, similes and analogies 82 A seven-step concise writing process 83 6 Verbs Equal Vigour 87 Grammar refresher 89 Verbs just wanna have fun 90 Verbs in disguise – noun suffixes 92 7 Mistakes 95 Commonly confused words 97 Using the wrong word 100 Scattershot punctuation and no punctuation 101 Poor spelling 104 ‘Mistakes’ that aren’t mistakes 106 vi 8 Planning and Structuring 107 C o n t e Plan, draft, edit 109 n t s Document structures 114 9 Layout, Fonts and Formatting 117 Font choice 119 Layout 121 Headings 125 Bullets 126 Tables and diagrams 127 10 Tips for Common Documents 131 More effective emails 133 Writing for the web 137 Persuasive CVs 138 Executive summaries and abstracts 142 Grant funding 144 Feedback, fear and a favour 152 11 Persuasion – the Dark Arts 155 Assume causality 158 It’s common sense, stupid 159 It’s common knowledge 160 Abuse statistics 161 Widen or narrow definitions 164 Flattery will get you everywhere 165 And a few more . . . 166 The End 169 vii g Appendix 1 Summary of rules 171 n ti ri w Appendix 2 Supersized words and their alternatives 173 e v si a Appendix 3 Recommended reading 174 u s r e p Appendix 4 Persuasive writing flowchart 175 Appendix 5 Persuasive writing checklist 176 Appendix 6 Exploiting and countering human decision-making 177 Appendix 7 The seven-step concise writing process – worked example 181 Index 189 viii About the author Peter Frederick has spent the last ten years persuading people with money to hand it over. More specifically, as the Senior Bid Consultant at Pera Innovation, he persuades national and European bodies to fund innovative research on behalf of Pera’s clients. Peter supports bid writers through every step of the process, from concept review through to final submission, to ensure their proposals have the best possible chance of success. It seems to be working: in the last three years his expertise has been used to secure projects worth over £200 million. Beyond Pera, Peter’s training, writing guidelines and evaluation skills are used by a network of research centres across Europe, including the likes of QinetiQ and Fraunhofer Institute. Peter’s expertise is not only restricted to research funding; he also works on corporate communications, sales collateral and, most recently, commercial and charity bids. And, as you may have noticed, he’s started writing books. ix