Recipient-First: Principles for Clear, Effective Communication
Bottom line up front (BLUF)
Say
I’m buying the Verna.
It’s better than SUVs like the Creta.
Not:
I used to think I’ll buy an SUV, specifically the Creta. A couple of knowledgeable friends told me to try sedans but I rejected them saying they’re cramped. I finally test-drove some, and I understood what they were saying. The driving dynamics are superb, there’s no body roll, it’s stable and safe at high speed, it can drive on a curved road at speed. They’re actually better than SUVs! So, I’m buying the Verna.
In the second version, people have to follow the entire story to get to the conclusion. People are busy and impatient, and successful people communicate efficiently, respecting the reader’s time. If you expect them to reverse-engineer your communication to extract your main point, many will miss it, and you’ll have failed as a communicator. Communication is about the listener, not the speaker.
In the first version, the conclusion is front-loaded. Ask yourself, “What’s the single most piece of information that readers care about?” Then start with that.
For inspiration, look to news headlines like “India Becomes 4th Largest Economy”. If that’s all the information the reader needs, he needn’t even read the article — it has already done its job!
To get from the second to the BLUF version, read through everything you’ve written and ask yourself, “What’s the single most important takeaway I want readers to remember?” The answer is that you’re buying the Verna, so start with that.
Inverted pyramid
Then ask yourself what’s the second most important piece of information you want to communicate. In this example, it’s WHY I’m buying the Verna. That comes second.
The inverted pyramid is structured as:
<Most important point>
<Second most important point>
<Third most important point>
… and so on.
If the reader stops reading anywhere, he’s already got the most important takeaways for the time he’s invested. If he reads 20% of an article, he gets 50% of the value. If he reads 50% of an article, he gets 90% of the value!
This is called inverted because it’s the opposite of how many people communicate: they start with the least important and build up to the most, which is one of the many wrong lessons we learn in school and college.
Progressive disclosure
… is a technique UX designers use: they don’t dump all the information at once onto the user. They show only the important, and put the rest behind a More button.
This technique applies to writing too. Scroll up to the BLUF section and observe that the rambling version communicates all the following messages:
I used to think I’ll buy an SUV, but I no longer do.
What my friends told me
How I reacted
What was my justification for rejecting my friends’ advice? (It’s cramped.)
What I did later (test drive)
What I observed (driving dynamics, body roll…)
The Verna is better
I’m buying the Verna
When you apply progressive disclosure, you eliminate everything but the two most important messages. If you communicate 10 things, the reader will miss all of them. If you communicate two or three, he’ll get all of them. If someone wants to know, he can ask. Or put it in a footnote, so that it’s there for interested readers, but doesn’t confuse people who didn’t ask about it.
Avoid unnecessary precision
A podcast about sleep said:
Epinephrine is a neurotransmitter that…
Instead say:
Epinephrine is a chemical that…
… unless you need to need to differentiate between neurotransmitters and other kinds of chemicals in the brain. Avoid unnecessary jargon — it tells viewers, “I’m not a neuroscientist, so this is not for me.”
As another example, I knew someone who instead of saying
Driving fast is dangerous
would say
Driving at elevated speeds is statistically correlated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes like death, permanent disability and total but temporary disability.
Let’s unpack this masterpiece. To begin with, nobody asked for an exhaustive list of the adverse outcomes that can occur. Then, we don’t need to say “statistically correlated”, because what other kind of correlation is there? You can even skip the talk about correlation since “dangerous” already captures that. Nobody with any amount of common sense interprets “dangerous” to mean that every single person who drives fast will die (sorry: have “adverse outcomes”) and that everyone who drives slow will live. Finally, say “fast” instead of “at elevated speeds”.
Engineers, scientists and professors are guilty of unnecessary precision. The main point can get lost, which means the communication has failed.
Avoid digressions
Too often, I come across writing that has digressions or that seem to present two incompatible perspectives. I’m confused what to do. That means the communication has failed.
There could be many reasons for digressive communication. One could be that the writer is sharing his mental journey where he considered different options before finally choosing one. But the format in which you present something need not be the one in which you arrived at the conclusion. In fact, listeners would prefer a cleaned-up story.
Someone I was talking to thought it’s fair to present multiple points of view. But not presenting a point of view that you don’t agree with, or when there’s another point of view you agree with more, is not being unfair. It’s being selective and telling your audience what they need to know, which is why they’re coming to you. Be a curator.
Your writing may be clear to you, because you have gone through the experience, but not to others. Readers also don’t read every word carefully, so they’re more likely to get confused.
So, delete digressions or put them in footnotes. Or in an appendix. Or behind an Expand / Collapse, collapsed by default. 95% of the time should be allocated towards the primary option, and 5% towards alternatives. On one occasion, I used grey text for the entire Rejected Alternatives section because it indicates that it’s rejected, and so that readers never forget where they are. These are all ways to de-emphasise the rejected options and make the structure linear rather than sprawling.
Don’t write too defensively
Too much communication is too defensive, filled with qualifiers like “Typically” or “Just my view; this may not be universally true”. They do this because they (consciously or subconsciously) imagine getting comments and try to protect against them.
Overly defensive writing is hard to follow, because of all the disclaimers. Which are anyway understood, and so don’t need to be spelt out. At least for readers with common sense. Outside mathematics, few statements about the world are universal.
The haters are going to hate anyway. When you cater to them, you’ve turned away both the haters and well-intentioned readers. By contrast, if you write for well-intentioned readers, it will resonate with them, and they’re the ones who matter.
Even today, idiots on Hacker News mock Bill Gates for supposedly saying “640K memory ought to be enough for everyone”. He didn’t say that, but for the purpose of this conversation, let’s assume he did. That may have been the right decision to make in 1981 in the context of designing MS-DOS. Taking it out of context and criticising it in 2025 says more about the critic than the person being criticised. Geeks, whether software engineers or photographers, are especially obsessed about nit-picking. This is why reviews on DPReview never come up with conclusions like “This camera is the best for night photography under $1000.” The reviewers are afraid someone will attack them. That’s why I no longer read DPReview. There are situations where you need to be careful and defensive, like writing a contract. Or sending an email saying you’ll kill someone — if he’s found dead, you’re screwed. But outside of those narrow circumstances, put down your shield. Don’t write with an adversarial mindset, looking over your shoulder, worrying about every word lest the other side’s lawyer bring it up in court. It feels better when you write with a positive mindset. And if you do get haters, use the Block button.
Scalable communication
Think about how you can make your communication accessible to a wider range of people. One technique is to define terms. For example,
These speakers sound good, with a wide soundstage. Which means a feeling of spaciousness as you listen to the music. Imagine sitting in front of an orchestra, as opposed to being in the next room with only a small hole in the wall letting the sound through.
Notice how I’ve used the jargon (soundstage) so that knowledgeable people understand, and explained it so that the rest understand. If you think a lot of your readers will understand it, or will be turned off by an explanation because you’re writing for an advanced audience, move the explanation to a footnote. But keep it somewhere. When you’re a beginner, many articles are frustrating to read, because they assume knowledge. Don’t exclude people with less knowledge than you.
Tell them what you’re going to tell them
Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them.
This advice on public speaking underscores that most people are not paying attention. They’re not investing as much effort in listening as you have in preparing and speaking. Their mind wanders at the drop of a hat. If you say “refined”, they may immediately think about the car they’re buying, how much fun it will be to drive, how fast they’ll drive on the expressway, where they’ll go, and so on. After daydreaming for a while, they’ll eventually come back to you, and have missed everything in the interim. Even when they’re listening to you, they may catch some things you said and miss some. Even if they understand, they may forget some of it. That’s why you should tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you’ve told them. People remember what was said at the end.
Connotations
When you pick a word, ask yourself if there’s a different word that has a connotation more appropriate for what you want to convey. If someone is particular about something and you think he’s taking it too far, call him a zealot. If you want to praise him, refer to him as an enthusiast. Both convey that someone is really interested in something, but with opposite connotations. Use neutral terms when you’re actually neutral, negative terms when you’re criticising, and positive terms when you’re praising.