Why it pays to Kiss

Do you take an entire page of text to describe the anthropomorphic qualities of a chest of drawers or do you keep your descriptions simple, short and to the point?

Would you have inserted an Oxford comma into the above sentence so it read: 'simple, short, and to the point?'

Writing anything takes time, and writing well can take even longer. 

In the good old days of print-only journalism, opening sentences were kept to 20 words maximum. They had to have no subordinate clauses and were structured so the reader could get the gist of the entire story in that one phrase.

There are client newsletters that seem to serve no purpose other than a vanity exercise.

Stories were written based on solid rules, 'pyramid style' so all the background information was shoved to the bottom of the article, while the salient information was in the first few paragraphs.

Word counts mattered.

The advent of digital journalism has turned this conventional wisdom on its head, unless you have an old editor (like yours truly) who keeps pressing this point home. 

People do not have the energy to read Dickens online. It requires too much thought.

And while his words (ironically, initially serialised in newspapers) are beautiful to read in a book, it is much easier to read Hemingway's bald and basic sentence structure. You can see that Hemingway was a print journalist, first and foremost.

Why does all this matter? And what does this have to do with kissing?

More than words

The Bank of England has everything to do with it. And most investment commentary. And your own client newsletters. 

It pays to Kiss because it pays to 'keep it simple, stupid'. 

The Kiss principle is used across various industries and is about striving for simplicity. For communications, simplicity should be a key goal and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. 

A deep-dive analysis of the BoE's various missives has posited that the more convoluted the writing style of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, the longer it takes for markets to react and the fewer news reports on it. 

Writing for Bank Underground (an excellent blog that you should follow), Timothy Munday stated: "The BoE’s message is of paramount concern when drafting communication.

"But, at the margin, when that message’s substance has been formed, the style it is presented in can help the market to understand it quicker."

('More quickly', say the people who like Oxford commas).

Munday's analysis said writing style can influence how long markets take to digest BoE monetary policy information.

He wrote: "BoE publications that summarise content in the first sentence, and use less unexpected vocabulary, are associated with a faster time for swap markets to reach a new equilibrium price following the publication release."

Also, based on how well the policy document outlines its base premise from the start, using clear wording, news reports are more likely to pick it up and provide readers with the information. 

Moreover, Munday says dependency arc length – essentially, how many words and subclauses that readers must manage while reading a sentence – also matters.

He states: "When reading a sentence, we process each word incrementally over time. Sentence structures that hamper this process make reading more difficult.

"Munday and Brookes (2021) find that long dependency arcs are related to reduced news coverage of bank communication."

Kissing your clients

The same goes for your own client missives. 

I get many client newsletters from advisers. Most are well-written, informative, and explain from the start what the various sections are about.

This enables the client to get to the sections that look most relevant to them.

But there are also client newsletters that seem to serve no purpose other than a vanity exercise for the advice business. 

(Here I am thankful the commenting function is not yet available, because I'm sure someone would quote, 'Journalist, heal thyself' at me).

Some newsletters are essentially a long email of text, with clauses, sub-clauses, dependent clauses, Santa Clauses, ellipses, brackets and semi-colons aplenty.

As a client I am less likely to be able to grasp what you are trying to tell me about my portfolio.

I love a good semi-colon as much as the next word nerd, but such convoluted structures make it very difficult to read and understand what you are trying to get across. 

If I have to slow down my brain to take in and process each phrase, I am going to take a lot longer to read what you have written. 

If I have to work my way around too many anecdotes and 'funny asides', like trying to follow a Ronnie Corbett punchline, I am going to lose the thread. 

This means as a client I am less likely to be able to grasp what you are trying to tell me about my portfolio.

I am more likely to switch off, delete or even move your emails into spam, potentially missing out on vital information about market movements or important policy changes that will affect my financial situation.

Moreover, clients are more likely to turn to the internet to find things that are easier to read – and as we all know, the internet can be a minefield of false information for people to navigate.

We could all take a leaf out of Munday's blog, or Hemingway's book. Be clear and careful about what you write to clients. 

Communication is vital, but doing it well is paramount.

So go ahead, kiss your clients. It will pay in the long run.

Simoney Kyriakou is senior editor of FTAdviser