After you’ve researched and planned out your document, here are some additional guidelines for developing a draft:

• Begin paragraphs with your most important ideas, and end them with a customer-oriented statement. Repeat important ideas in the summaries.
• Use theme statements.
• Use headings that are informative, specific, and inclusive.

Avoid writer's traps such as:

• Needless jargon and acronyms.
• Vague or imprecise modifiers, such as very, somewhat, almost, and virtually.

• Needless and redundant phrasing, such as combine into one and refer back.

• Superfluous language, such as at this particular moment of time, in the majority of instances, in view of, and despite the fact that.

• Passive voice: The Wonderful Wally Widget is manufactured in the United States. Instead, write actively: We manufacture the Wonderful Wally Widget in the United States.

• Finally, since English is a second language for many, keep sentence structure simple, concise, and easily understood.

Write your first, rough draft quickly. Remember, it’s a rough draft and doesn’t need to be perfect. What’s most important is to get your ideas from your head onto the page, and then polish them until they shine. Here are some dos and don'ts for generating your rough draft:

• Do find a quiet place to work.

• Do begin where you feel most comfortable. Write the easiest parts first, and don't worry about writing in sequence.

• Do write quickly and keep writing, even if it looks and sounds bad. It can be cleaned up later.

• Do ignore errors and mistakes, leave yourself room and time for revision.

• Don't fret about organization. Rearrange it later.

• Don't re-read extensively. Read it when you've written all of it.

• Don't worry about wordiness. Clean it up later.

• Don't use your dictionary or thesaurus. Look it up later.

• Don't worry if it looks messy, it's only your first attempt.

• Don't revise as you write. Ignore errors and keep going. Revise later.

After you have created the first complete rough-draft go back and make corrections to spelling, grammar, style, and content, polishing the input until it is complete, concise, and accurate. A good way to improve what you’ve written is to read it out loud. Your ears will hear the rough places your eyes miss.

And, if you’re still stuck and the deadline’s looming, give me a call and I’ll be happy to take on the assignment!