# Plain Finance > The communication skill your qualification never taught you. Plain language gets you and your ideas noticed. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/about/ Last updated: 2026-06-29T16:07:37.000Z # About Plain Finance Most financial writing is correct and still doesn't work. The numbers are right and the analysis is sound, but the message does not land with the reader. This is because the document (or email) buries the point, repeats itself, or asks the reader to do work that's the writer's job. Plain Finance exists to fix that. I help finance professionals turn technically correct drafts into clear, confident documents that decision-makers actually read and act on. Not jargon-free writing for its own sake but writing that gets results. Plain Finance covers three things: written reports and business cases, the charts and tables that go with them, and the presentations that put them in front of people. If it's influencing people through negotiation, leadership or office politics you are looking for, you won't find it here. This is about the document itself. This is for finance professionals who know their numbers are right and want their writing to carry the same weight — people heading towards senior roles, or already in them, where being understood is essential, and not a nice-to-have, skill. I'm [Gary Bandy](https://uk.linkedin.com/in/garybandy?ref=plainfinance.net). I worked for 19 years in public sector finance, the last three as a finance director, before turning to consulting, training and writing. I've written two books on public financial management, and spent many years teaching it, in the UK and internationally. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4d/c2/4dc2d052-c0cb-41f5-a756-3f3ca51d7333/content/images/2026/06/book-covers-together-1.png) Plain Finance is about applying what I've learned about the gap between knowing your numbers and getting your point across. Subscribe below for one practical idea a week. No noise, no selling. And if you have any questions about Plain Finance, please [email me](mailto:gary@garybandy.co.uk). ## Sign up for Plain Finance The communication skill your qualification never taught you Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### Home URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/home/ Last updated: 2025-06-11T14:14:45.000Z ## ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4d/c2/4dc2d052-c0cb-41f5-a756-3f3ca51d7333/content/images/2025/06/garybandy-site-homepage-hero.png) ## Your ideas. Clearly written. You’re an expert in public finance but your time is limited and your message matters. I help public sector accountants, auditors, and CFOs write reports, briefings, articles and other documents that get straight to the point. [Let's work together](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) **Better writing for busy finance professionals.** I offer ghostwriting and document makeover services for people who know what they want to say but don’t have time to wrestle with words. I write: - Cabinet and committee reports - Briefing notes - Business cases - White papers and thought leadership - LinkedIn posts and articles - Reports for donors, regulators or the general public. Whether it’s a one-off report or a regular monthly retainer, I’ll help you get your message across clearly and concisely. ## **Why Not Use AI?** AI can write quickly but it can’t think for you. It doesn’t understand your audience, your context, or the risk of getting the tone wrong. And because it’s trained on average writing, it will give you more of the same — just faster. **You don’t need faster. You need better.** ## **Why work with me?** > Love the way you always practise what you preach Gary! A lovely example here of you explaining in clear, simple terms how to explain things in clear, simple terms 😊 I’ve worked in public finance for over 30 years — in accounting, internal and external audit, treasury management and 3 years as a CFO. I have also written two successful textbooks on public financial management (including this one). I know what good looks like in a report, a business case, or a budget narrative. And I know how to write it. My clients value: - A writer who understands finance - Plain English, not consulting jargon - A collaborative, discreet service. You get expert help, without having to admit you need help. ## **How it works** ### **Option 1: Report makeover** Send me your draft. I’ll rewrite it for clarity, brevity, and impact. I will also fix the typography so that it looks its best on the page or screen. ### **Option 2: Ghostwriting** You give me the bullet points and information about the audience and I write the full piece from scratch. Pricing varies with document length and turnaround time. ### **Option 3: Retainer** Regular writing support for you and/or your team, with a monthly word limit. ### **Option 4: 1 to 1 coaching** If you’d rather get better at writing yourself, I offer a small number of coaching spots each quarter. ### **What next?** If you’d like to improve the quality of your written work — and save time doing it — I’d love to hear from you. [Book a short call](https://fantastical.app/garybandy/15-minutes?ref=plainfinance.net) [Send me an email](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) ### My services URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/services/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T16:24:32.000Z ### **One-off documents** Do you need a specific report, article, or paper written (or rewritten)? I can work from a rough brief, or a first draft, and turn it into something polished and purposeful. ****From £150 to makeover a short document (up to 2,000 words) and from £450 to write a document from scratch.** [Request a quote ](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) --- ### **Retained writing support** If you regularly need help with written communication, a retainer gives you priority access and predictable support. Send me your drafts or briefs and I’ll shape them into crisp, clear prose that gets results. ****From £750/month for up to 10,000 words. Custom packages available.** [Ask for more information ](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) --- ### **Coaching** If you prefer to write your own material but want to write better then coaching is the solution. In one-to-one sessions, we work on your real documents so you get practical, lasting improvements. Ideal if you’re aiming for a leadership role and want your writing to match your ambition. ****£120 per 60-minute session. Discount for multi-session packages.** [Book a coaching session ](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) --- If you’re not sure which service fits best, just get in touch. I’ll help you figure out what’s right for you. [Book a short call](https://fantastical.app/garybandy/15-minutes?ref=plainfinance.net) [Email Gary](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) ### Privacy statement URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/privacy-statement/ Last updated: 2025-07-02T14:02:32.000Z ### Privacy policy This privacy policy notice is for this website and served by Gary Bandy Limited, Clover Cottage, Stubbins Lane, Chinley, High Peak, SK23 6AE and governs the privacy of those who use it. The purpose of this policy is to explain to you how we control, process, handle and protect your personal information while browsing or using this website, including your rights under current laws and regulations. If you do not agree to the following policy you may wish to cease viewing/using this website. 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However, if you disable cookies, you may not be able to access features on our website correctly or at all. ### Web Beacons We may also use a technology called web beacons to collect general information about your use of our website and your use of special promotions or newsletters. The information we collect by web beacons allows us to statistically monitor the number of people who open our emails. Web beacons also help us to understand the behaviour of our customers, members, and visitors. ### **Google Analytics Privacy Notice** This website uses Google Analytics to collect information about its use. Google Analytics collects information from users such as age, gender, interests, demographics, how often they visit our website, what pages they visit, and what other websites they have used before coming to our website. We use the information we get from Google Analytics to analyse traffic, market our products and services to users, improve our marketing, advertising, and to improve our website. Google Analytics places a permanent cookie on your web browser to identify you as a unique user the next time you visit our website. Google also uses specific identifiers to help collect information about the use of our website. For more information on how Google collects and processes your data, visit [https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/](https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/?ref=plainfinance.net) You can prevent Google Analytics from using your information by opting out at: [https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout](https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?ref=plainfinance.net) ### Need help with a document? Upload it here. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/upload/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T16:25:24.000Z _No content available._ ### Get a free e-book about public procurement URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/how-to-hire-a-consultant-in-the-public-sector/ Last updated: 2025-07-08T11:47:57.000Z ## Get a free e-book about public procurement A few years ago I wrote a short book about public sector procurement as a practice exercise to learn how to create and publish an e-book. It's called *How to Hire a Consultant in the Public Sector.* ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4d/c2/4dc2d052-c0cb-41f5-a756-3f3ca51d7333/content/images/2025/07/cover-hire-a-consultant---small-1-1.jpeg) It is available to [buy on Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Hire-Consultant-Public-Sector-ebook/dp/B07G3H84PY?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.peRf5a2N%5FXOBN-XHP6y6O1yS08q7gEaYJwWbnSpWqW8.c6UTGkh5NxgMJpZhmq8fUtpbHHnw7-qbojhp4pnBQkI&dib%5Ftag=se&keywords=gary+bandy+consultant&sr=8-1&ref=plainfinance.net) but you could, if you want, download it for free from the links below. All you need to do is to sign up as a member of this site. _This page is for subscribers only._ ### Pricing URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/pricing/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T16:18:37.000Z | Document Length | Makeover (Rewrite) | From Scratch | | ------------------ | ------------------ | ------------ | | Up to 2,000 words | £150 | £450 | | Up to 5,000 words | £300 | £900 | | Up to 10,000 words | £500 | £1,500 | ### Notes - **Makeover**: You provide a draft and I'll rewrite, restructure, and edit it for clarity, tone, and impact. - **From scratch**: You provide a brief or notes — I’ll research, draft, and revise a new document tailored to your needs. - **Prices include**: a discovery call (if needed), one round of revisions, and delivery in Word or PDF format. - **Payment terms**: a Stripe payment request will be sent with the quote and work will start only after the payment has been received. - **Turnaround**: Typically 5–10 business days, depending on complexity and length. - **Express work** (delivery under 3 business days): +25% surcharge. - **Add-ons** such as a slide deck can be quoted separately. ### No more death by PowerPoint URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/no-more-death-by-powerpoint/ Last updated: 2025-07-08T11:39:05.000Z ### Discover the 5 steps that will transform how you approach finance presentations. Most accountants design and deliver presentations in the same way as most people do. They create a series of slides that are lists of bullet points, and use those bullet points to remind them what to say. Occasionally they might include a chart that has too many lines, colours and clutter to be understandable at a glance. Presentations like this are not memorable. There is a much better way to design and deliver presentations ... and I can help you learn it. Follow the steps in my free PDF and you'll be better than most accountants when it comes to making presentations. And your audience willremember what you say. Sign up below and get the PDF for free. _This page is for subscribers only._ ### How to fix ugly documents in 5 minutes URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/how-to-fix-ugly-documents-in-5-minutes/ Last updated: 2025-09-25T23:42:36.000Z A slide deck explaining how you can make your documents much easier to read by making a few changes to the typography. _This page is for subscribers only._ ### 5 steps to clearer finance reports URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/5-steps-to-clearer-finance-reports/ Last updated: 2025-11-12T11:40:14.000Z _This page is for subscribers only._ ### 5 steps to your best presentation ever URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/5-steps-to-your-best-presentation-ever/ Last updated: 2025-11-14T16:45:07.000Z _This page is for subscribers only._ ### Presentation skills for accountants URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/presentation-skills-for-accountants/ Last updated: 2025-12-08T16:43:13.000Z _This page is for subscribers only._ ### Typography 101 for accountants URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/typography-101-for-accountants/ Last updated: 2025-12-17T14:45:06.000Z The presentation below shows you how to fix the typography in your reports and other documents by changing four settings. ### Stop burying the point in your reports URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/stop-burying-the-point-in-your-reports/ Last updated: 2026-05-27T11:11:13.000Z Most finance reports make the reader work too hard. They wade through background, context, and data before they find out what you actually think or what you want them to do. This one-page guide gives you three fixes you can apply to your next report today. Sign up free to download it and join over 300 finance professionals who get plain, practical writing advice direct to their inbox. [3 fixes for reports that bury the pointA one-page guide to fix your next report 3 fixes for reports that bury the point.pdf583 KBdownload-circle](https://www.plainfinance.net/content/files/2026/05/3-fixes-for-reports-that-bury-the-point-2.pdf "Download") ### Contact me URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/contact/ Last updated: 2026-06-25T16:12:12.000Z Send me one of your documents and I'll tell you what's slowing the reader down or confusing them. For a makeover, training, or a style guide for your team, [email me](mailto:gary@garybandy.co.uk) with what you're working on. I'll come back to you within two working days. Use the same [email address](mailto:gary@garybandy.co.uk) if you have questions about a post, a correction or an idea for the newsletter. ### Further reading (and watching) for Financial Management and Accounting in the Public Sector URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/3e-further-reading/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T13:44:09.000Z Each chapter of the third edition of [*Financial Management and Accounting in the Public Sector*](https://amzn.to/42f3H9h?ref=plainfinance.net) concludes with a section called Further Reading (and Watching). This page collates links to all those resources, plus other relevant resources I have found since the manuscript was finished. If you are a teacher or lecturer using my book in your classes I may have slide decks and other resources you could use or adapt. Feel free to contact me. --- ## Chapter 1: The context of public financial management [*International Handbook of Public Financial Management*](https://amzn.to/3Ta6GM2?ref=plainfinance.net) edited by Richard Allen, Richard Hemming and Barry Potter (2013) [*Public Financial Management and Its Emerging Architecture*](https://amzn.to/3ZHIzah?ref=plainfinance.net) edited by Marco Cangiano, Teresa Curristine and Michel Lazare (2013) [Beyond Doctrine: Refocusing PFM for Vital Public Objectives](https://blog-pfm.imf.org/en/pfmblog/2020/07/beyond-doctrine-refocusing-pfm-for-vital-public-objectives?ref=plainfinance.net) by Hedger, Manning & Schick [*Money Creation in the Modern Economy*](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy?ref=plainfinance.net) by McLeay, Radia and Thomas (2014) The Bank of England's [video on how money is created](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvRAqR2pAgw&ref=plainfinance.net) [*Money, Money, Money*](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct42d7?ref=plainfinance.net) series of podcasts by the BBC (2022) [*Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government*](https://amzn.to/3Le8Vw6?ref=plainfinance.net) by Moore (1997) [*Public Value: Theory and Practice*](https://amzn.to/3J4FqtW?ref=plainfinance.net) by Benington & Moore (2011) [*Getting Serious About Value*](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/sites/public-purpose/files/iipp%5Fpolicybrief%5F07%5Fgetting%5Fserious%5Fabout%5Fvalue.pdf?ref=plainfinance.net) by Mazzucato and Kaitel (2019) [*Public Finance and Service Delivery: What's New, What's Missing, What's Next?*](https://odi.org/en/publications/public-finance-and-service-delivery-whats-new-whats-missing-whats-next/?ref=plainfinance.net) by Miller, Hart and Hadley (2021) Harvard's [Center for International Development](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid?ref=plainfinance.net) Neil Cole's [Top 14 Public Finance Lessons](https://www.cabri-sbo.org/en/media/top-14-public-finance-lessons?ref=plainfinance.net) Stephanie Kelton's TED talk, [The Big Myth of Government Spending](https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie%5Fkelton%5Fthe%5Fbig%5Fmyth%5Fof%5Fgovernment%5Fdeficits?ref=plainfinance.net), explains modern monetary theory. And Stephanie Kelton also features in the full-length documentary movie called *Finding the Money* which you can [rent or buy](https://findingthemoney.vhx.tv/products/finding-the-money?ref=plainfinance.net). The trailer is below: Below is a very short clip of Professor Mariana Mazzucato on BBC's *Newsnight* programme explaining the myth that government spending is like household spending. 0:00 /0:39 1× The [Modern Money Network](https://www.modernmoneynetwork.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) promotes the public understanding of money and finance through education, discussion and scholarship PEFA's [*2022 Global Report on Public Financial Management*](https://www.pefa.org/global-report-2022/en/?ref=plainfinance.net) The UK's Office for Budget Responsibility has a useful [databank](https://obr.uk/data/?ref=plainfinance.net) for information about UK public spending Mariana Mazzucato was interviewed in 2021 on Australia's ABC radio about the [public sector in the pandemic](https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/saturdayextra/public-sector-3/13315792?ref=plainfinance.net) There is a BBC Radio 4 show [Understand: The Economy](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2r75BN6kSxzZPd1YKKzSdw6/5-economic-terms-explained-really-really-simply?ref=plainfinance.net) that explains 5 common economic terms "really, really simply" --- ## Chapter 2 The OECD's [budget practices and procedures database](https://www.oecd.org/gov/budget/database/?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Performance and Programme-Based Budgeting in Africa*](https://www.cabri-sbo.org/en/publications/performance-and-programme-based-budgeting-in-africa-a-status-report?ref=plainfinance.net) report by CABRI (2013) Papers from CABRI's 2012 [conference on performance budgeting](https://bit.ly/1fzwpJ2?ref=plainfinance.net) Marc Robinson's [performance budgeting blog](https://blog.pfmresults.com/?ref=plainfinance.net) [Participedia](https://participedia.net/?ref=plainfinance.net) The New York-based [Participatory Budgeting Project](https://www.participatorybudgeting.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) The UK-based PB Network has become [Shared Future](https://sharedfuturecic.org.uk/?ref=plainfinance.net) [*How to Share Public Money Fairly*](https://www.ted.com/talks/maja%5Fbosnic%5Fhow%5Fto%5Fshare%5Fpublic%5Fmoney%5Ffairly?ref=plainfinance.net), Maja Bosnic's TED Talk from 2021 about gender-responsive budgeting Balancing Act's [federal budget simulator](https://us.abalancingact.com/2022-federal-budget?ref=plainfinance.net) The [Open Budget Partnership](https://internationalbudget.org/initiatives/?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Public Value Budgeting: Propositions for the Future of Budgeting*](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343400634%5FPublic%5Fvalue%5Fbudgeting%5Fpropositions%5Ffor%5Fthe%5Ffuture%5Fof%5Fbudgeting?ref=plainfinance.net) by Douglas & Overmans (2020) Allen Schick and other senior budget officials in the OECD wrote [*Evolutions in Budgetary Practice*](https://archive.org/details/evolutionsinbudg0000unse) in 2009 The Georgia Governor's Office of Planning and Budget used zero-based budgeting from 2013 to 2021 and here is a [page with reports summarising each year's process](https://opb.georgia.gov/budget-information/budget-documents/zero-based-budgeting?ref=plainfinance.net). --- ## Chapter 3 [*Economics of the Public Sector*](https://amzn.to/3TdUY3c?ref=plainfinance.net) by Joseph Stiglitz (2000) [*The International Handbook of Public Financial Management*](https://amzn.to/3l7tzDv?ref=plainfinance.net) (2013) edited by Allen, Hemming & Potter has a chapter on tax design The ODI's [10 tax evasion terms you need to know](https://odi.org/en/insights/tax-evasion-ten-terms-you-need-to-know/?ref=garybandy.co.uk) Keen and Slemrod's [*Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue*](https://amzn.to/3mSXeAA?ref=plainfinance.net) (2021) Stephanie Kelton talks about modern monetary theory in [Why We Need to Debunk the 'Deficit Myth'](https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p08jbbry/why-we-need-to-debunk-the-deficit-myth-?ref=plainfinance.net) (made by the BBC in 2020) and her [2021 TED Talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie%5Fkelton%5Fthe%5Fbig%5Fmyth%5Fof%5Fgovernment%5Fdeficits?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Money for Nothing*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FglZyBcFyQ&ref=plainfinance.net) is a video explaining how the UK's monetary system actually works The IMF's [Global Debt Database](https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.FAD:GDD?ref=plainfinance.net) has numerous datasets relating to private and public debts in 190 economies Francesca Bastagli's 2013 article for the ODI, [*Tax Evasion: Ten Terms You Need to Know*](https://odi.org/en/insights/tax-evasion-ten-terms-you-need-to-know/?ref=plainfinance.net), explains the dark arts of tax evasion There is a video on the BBC news website that gives a quick [explanation of how companies can avoid corporation tax](https://bbc.in/1s2eAnD?ref=plainfinance.net) The OECD also have a short video (2021), [Building Fairer Societies through Global Tax Co-operation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEh2aYw546A&ref=plainfinance.net), about the work done to address the problem of global tax avoidance --- ## Chapter 4 The [Holyrood Inquiry](https://www.inquestsandinquiries.com/projects/holyrood?ref=plainfinance.net) The Auditor General for Scotland's [report (2004)](https://www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/publications/management-of-the-holyrood-building-project?ref=plainfinance.net) on management of the Holyrood building project Walley and Jennison-Phillips's [literature study on demand management in the public sector](https://www.open.ac.uk/centres/policing/sites/www.open.ac.uk.centres.policing/files/files/Outputs/Demand%5Fmanagement%5Fin%5Fthe%5Fpublic%5Fsector%5Fdevelopments%5Fand%5Fissues.pdf?ref=plainfinance.net) Article on failure demand by [Walley and Radnor (2006)](https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/2006/07/lean-me-zoe-radnor-and-paul-walley?ref=plainfinance.net) and [Walley, Found and Williams (2019)](https://oro.open.ac.uk/60114/?ref=plainfinance.net) The IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department's comprehensive [manual on implementing the treasury single account mechanism](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/TNM/Issues/2016/12/31/Treasury-Single-Account-An-Essential-Tool-for-Government-Cash-Management-25188?ref=plainfinance.net) Steve Giles's book, [*Managing Fraud Risk*](https://amzn.to/3mSgpun?ref=plainfinance.net) Peter Eigen's short presentation at a TED conference in Berlin in 2009, [*How To Expose the Corrupt*](https://www.ted.com/talks/peter%5Feigen%5Fhow%5Fto%5Fexpose%5Fthe%5Fcorrupt?ref=plainfinance.net), where he explained why he believes it is important for corruption to be eradicated UNDP publication, [*A Users' Guide to Measuring Corruption*](https://www.undp.org/publications/users-guide-measuring-corruption?ref=plainfinance.net) [*The Cost of Global Corruption*](https://www.imf.org/Publications/fandd/issues/2019/09/the-true-cost-of-global-corruption-mauro?ref=plainfinance.net) by Paolo Mauro, Paulo Medas & Jean Marc Fournier (2019) [*Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators*](https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264026865-en?ref=plainfinance.net) by Arndt and Oman (2006) The OECD's [anti-corruption and integrity landing page](https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/lobbying.html?ref=plainfinance.net) The OECD has produced information on fighting corruption in the public sector which is split into three themes: - integrity in [public procurement](https://www.oecd.org/gov/ethics/integrityinpublicprocurement?ref=plainfinance.net) - managing [conflicts of interest](https://www.oecd.org/gov/ethics/conflictofinterest?ref=plainfinance.net) - [lobbying](https://www.oecd.org/gov/ethics/lobbying?ref=plainfinance.net) Lifehacker's [article on how to be a whistleblower](https://lifehacker.com/how-to-be-a-whistleblower-1794921442?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Getting Ahead of Risks Before They Become Government Failures: An Imperative for Agency Leaders to Embrace Enterprise Risk Management*](https://govwhitepapers.com/whitepapers/getting-ahead-of-risks-before-they-become-government-failures-an-imperative-for-agency-leaders-to-embrace-enterprise-risk-management?ref=plainfinance.net) The CIPFA/IFAC [*International Framework: Good Governance in the Public Sector*](https://www.cipfa.org/policy-and-guidance/standards/international-framework-good-governance-in-the-public-sector?ref=plainfinance.net) --- ## Chapter 5 [*Management and Cost Accounting*](https://amzn.to/3ZYugh4?ref=plainfinance.net) by Tayles and Drury (2020) [*Management Accounting in Public Service Decision Making*](https://amzn.to/3LlN5XE?ref=plainfinance.net) by Malcolm Prowle (2020). Cooper and Kaplan's (1988) original Harvard Business Review article about activity-based costing, [*Measure Costs Right: Make the Right Decisions*](https://hbr.org/1988/09/measure-costs-right-make-the-right-decisions?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Activity-Based Cost Management in Government*](https://amzn.to/403rvLr?ref=plainfinance.net) by Cokins (2006) and the series of [four blog posts based on the book](https://www.ifac.org/knowledge-gateway/preparing-future-ready-professionals/discussion/need-better-cost-information-public-sector?ref=plainfinance.net) that Cokins wrote in 2015 for the IFAC website [*Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: The Failure of the Reform Regime and a Manifesto for a Better Way*](https://amzn.to/3ZLlnrF?ref=plainfinance.net) by Seddon (2008) Here are some examples of public sector project appraisal guidance from around the world: - [The Economic Appraisal of Investment Projects at the EIB](https://www.eib.org/en/publications/economic-appraisal-of-investment-projects?ref=plainfinance.net) (European Investment Bank, 2013) - [Cost-Benefit Analysis for Development: A Practical Guide](https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/institutional-document/33788/files/cost-benefit-analysis-development.pdf?ref=plainfinance.net) (Asian Development Bank, 2013) - [Cost-Benefit Analysis in Educational Planning](https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000139042?ref=plainfinance.net) (UNESCO, 2004); - [Measuring the Economic Benefits of Arts and Culture](https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/Measuring%5Fthe%5Feconomic%5Fbenefits%5Fof%5Farts%5Fand%5Fculture.pdf?ref=plainfinance.net) (Arts Council England, 2016); - [Monetised Benefits and Costs Manual](https://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/monetised-benefits-and-costs-manual/?ref=plainfinance.net) (Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, 2020); and - [ICT Business Case Guide](https://www.digital.gov.au/media/399?ref=plainfinance.net) (Australia Government, 2015). The UK Treasury's [*The Green Book: Appraisal and Evaluation in Central Government*](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-green-book-appraisal-and-evaluation-in-central-governent/the-green-book-2020?ref=plainfinance.net) that was mentioned in the chapter, imply that all the relevant information would be collected into a business case for decision-makers to consider. CIPFA's (2015) webinar, [*Top Tips for Business Cases*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULsPGuLz1dw&ref=plainfinance.net) --- ## Chapter 6 [*Contracting for Public Services*](https://amzn.to/3ZLIodQ?ref=plainfinance.net) by Carston Greve (2008) [*Rethinking Public Service Delivery: Managing with External Providers*](https://amzn.to/42mskBh?ref=plainfinance.net) by Alford & Flynn (2012). The Institute for Government's [resources on outsourcing policy](https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/our-work/policy-making/government-outsourcing?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Public procurement and innovation: a systematic literature review*](https://academic.oup.com/spp/article-abstract/47/4/490/5903068?login=false&redirectedFrom=fulltext&ref=plainfinance.net) by Kundu, James & Rigby (2020). The UK Government's [sourcing and consulting playbooks](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-sourcing-and-consultancy-playbooks?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Strategies for Avoiding the Pitfalls of Performance Contracting*](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3380931?origin=crossref&ref=plainfinance.net) by Behn and Kant (1999) The [European PPP Expertise Centre](https://www.eib.org/epec/index.htm?ref=plainfinance.net) Baker's 2003 article, [*Investigating Enron as a Public Private Partnership*](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09513570310482327/full/html?ref=plainfinance.net) [*New Models of Public Procurement: A Tool for Sustainable Recovery*](https://www.accaglobal.com/my/en/professional-insights/pro-accountants-the-future/New%5Fmodels%5Fpublic%5Fprocurement.html?ref=plainfinance.net) by ACCA (2020) Harvard's Program on Negotiation's [daily blog](https://www.pon.harvard.edu/blog?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Getting to Yes*](https://amzn.to/406G4hc?ref=plainfinance.net) by Fisher, Ury & Patton Below is *Getting to Yes in Challenging Times*, a video lecture by William Ury of Harvard's Program on Negotiation --- ## Chapter 7 [*Performance Management in the Public Sector*](https://amzn.to/3FhRmHJ?ref=plainfinance.net) by van Dooren, Bouckaert and Halligan (2015) [*What All Mayors Would Like to Know about Baltimore's CitiStat Performance Strategy*](https://www.businessofgovernment.org/report/what-all-mayors-would-know-about-baltimore%E2%80%99s-citistat-performance-strategy?ref=plainfinance.net) (Behn, 2007). Harvard's Citiesx video (2018), [*CompStat in New York, Boston and Chicago*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Q9qHAnY%5FE&ref=plainfinance.net) [*Cost-Benefit Analysis: Concepts and Practice*](https://amzn.to/3JevgXB?ref=plainfinance.net) (5th edition) by Boardman, Greenberg, Vining & Weimar (2018) [*A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Privatization of Canadian National Railway*](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40213401?ref=plainfinance.net) by Boardman, Laurin, Moore & Vining (2009) Gary Lauder's short presentation about the cost-benefit analysis of replacing a stop sign in his neighbourhood is called [*Take Turns*](https://www.ted.com/talks/gary%5Flauder%5Ftake%5Fturns?ref=plainfinance.net) (TED, 2010) Take Turns by Gary Lauder Karnon, Afzali and Edney's article (2015) about the [concept of the quality-adjusted life year](https://theconversation.com/new-cancer-drugs-are-very-expensive-heres-how-we-work-out-value-for-our-money-44014?ref=plainfinance.net) (QALY) --- ## Chapter 8 [*Accounting and Business Ethics: An Introduction*](https://amzn.to/3Lmlbe7?ref=plainfinance.net) by McPhail & Walters (2009) The Consultative Committee of Accounting Bodies (2022) [five sets of case studies](https://www.ccab.org.uk/ethical-dilemmas-case-studies-2022/?ref=plainfinance.net) to illustrate how the codes of ethics can be applied in five different work contexts The Institute for Government's (2018) discussion paper, [*Accountability in Modern Government: What Are the Issues?*](https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/accountability-modern-government-issues?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Public Sector Financial Management*](https://amzn.to/3FJOCDl?ref=plainfinance.net) (3rd Edition) by Coombs & Jenkins (2002) [*Public Sector Accounting*](https://amzn.to/3JDUvUU?ref=plainfinance.net) (6th edition) by Jones and Pendlebury (2010) [*Public Sector Accounting and Budgeting for Non-Specialists*](https://amzn.to/3yF3EGp?ref=plainfinance.net) by van Helden & Hodges (2015) The National Audit Office's introductory guide, [*Understanding Central Government's Accounts*](https://www.nao.org.uk/report/understanding-central-governments-accounts-introductory-guide-oversight-role?ref=plainfinance.net). IFAC promotes the adoption of accrual accounting by PBEs with its [Accountability Now](https://www.ifac.org/knowledge-gateway/supporting-international-standards/publications/accountability-now-explained?ref=plainfinance.net) programme [*Why Every Citizen Should Care About Government Spending*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtCDCT-vJfo&ref=plainfinance.net) The IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department's handbook for [*Implementing Accrual Accounting in the Public Sector*](https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/tnm/2016/tnm1606.pdf?ref=plainfinance.net) (Cavanagh, Flynn and Moretti, 2016). For more information about the IASB, and the IFRS in particular, explore the material on the website at [www.ifrs.org](https://www.ifrs.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) You can find the full text of all the IPSASs in the annually published handbook of pronouncements at the [IPSASB's website](https://www.ipsasb.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) [*IPSAS In Your Pocket* (2024 edition)](https://www.iasplus.com/en/publications/public-sector/ipsas-in-your-pocket-july-2024?ref=plainfinance.net) guide from the IASplus. [*Interpretation and Application of IPSAS*](https://amzn.to/3JjHSga?ref=plainfinance.net) by Aggestam-Pontoppidan & Andernack (2016). Schmidthuber, Hilgers, and Hofmann (2022) have produced [a literature review about the adoption of IPSAS and the implementation of accrual accounting based on IPSAS](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/faam.12265?ref=plainfinance.net). National Audit Office's interactive guide [*Good Practice in Annual Reporting*](https://www.nao.org.uk/report/good-practice-in-annual-reports/?ref=plainfinance.net) (2022) [*Seven Times Accounting Changed History*](https://intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au/accounting/7-times-accounting-changed-history?ref=plainfinance.net) by McCallum (2016) --- ## Chapter 9 The [International Auditing And Assurance Standards Board's website](https://www.iaasb.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) includes the [*2020 Handbook of International Quality Control, Auditing, Review, Other Assurance, and Related Services Pronouncements*](https://www.iaasb.org/publications/2020-handbook-international-quality-control-auditing-review-other-assurance-and-related-services?ref=plainfinance.net) *(in 3 PDF volumes that are free to download)* The [INTOSAI website](https://www.intosai.org/documents/open-access?ref=plainfinance.net) has a lot of useful material for those interested in auditing by Supreme Audit Institutions, including the International Standards for Supreme Audit Institutions INTOSAI's [*International Journal of Government Auditing*](https://intosaijournal.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) [*Measuring Supreme Audit Institutions' Outcomes: Current Literature and Future Insights*](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540962.2019.1583887?ref=plainfinance.net) by Elisa Bonollo (2019) The [Institute of Internal Auditors](https://www.theiia.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) is a starting point for lots of resources on internal auditing. The IIA also has a [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/c/IIAGlobalHQTheInstituteofInternalAuditors?ref=plainfinance.net) In early 2023 the Institute of Internal Auditors published a [consultation draft](https://www.theiia.org/en/standards/Standards-Public-Comment/?ref=plainfinance.net) of proposed Global Internal Audit Standards™ Rana, Steccolini, Bracci & Mihret's (2021) [literature review on public sector performance auditing](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/faam.12312?af=R&ref=plainfinance.net) Nerantzidis, Pazarskis, Drogalas & Galanis's (2022) [literature review on internal auditing in the public sector](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JPBAFM-02-2020-0015/full/html?skipTracking=true&ref=plainfinance.net). [*Efficiency, Economy and Effectiveness—but What About Ethics? Supreme Audit Institutions at a Critical Juncture*](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09540962.2018.1407137?needAccess=true&scroll=top&ref=plainfinance.net) by Louise Bringselius (2018) ### The Plain Finance Writing Guide URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/writing-guide/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T14:32:18.000Z Finance qualifications teach you to get the numbers right but they don't teach you to write well. So most finance professionals write the way they were shown — long reports, buried conclusions, tables nobody can read — and nobody ever tells them it isn't working, because everybody writes that way. This guide is the correction. It sets out, one principle at a time, how to write financial documents that take you less time and get read the way you intended. It's free. Start at the top and read it like a book, or jump to whatever you're stuck on. - [The rules in brief](https://www.plainfinance.net/the-rules-in-brief/) ## 1\. Your writing is worse than you think - [Do not mistake silence for approval](https://www.plainfinance.net/do-not-mistake-silence-for-approval/) - [Accept that nobody taught you this](https://www.plainfinance.net/accept-that-nobody-taught-you-this/) - [Count the cost of unclear writing](https://www.plainfinance.net/count-the-cost-of-unclear-writing/) - Write to find out what you think ## 2\. Before you write a word - [Know what you want your reader to do](https://www.plainfinance.net/know-what-you-want-your-reader-to-do/) - Decide the answer before you start - Assume they have ten other papers to read tonight ## 3\. The first page - [Put the bottom line at the top](https://www.plainfinance.net/bottom-line-top) - [Summarise the answer, not the contents](https://www.plainfinance.net/summarise-the-answer-not-the-contents/) - [Earn every line of page one](https://www.plainfinance.net/earn-every-line-of-page-one/) ## 4\. Structure - Order by importance, not chronology - Cut the background section - [Write statement headings](https://www.plainfinance.net/write-statement-headings/) - Give each paragraph one idea - Send the detail to an appendix ## 5\. Sentences and words - Say who did it - [Break up long sentences](https://www.plainfinance.net/break-up-long-sentences/) - Tell the reader why the number matters - Delete the words that mean nothing - Rewrite any sentence you cannot say aloud - Write for someone who was not in the meeting - Use verbs, not nouns made from verbs ## 6\. Numbers, tables and charts - Use a table when the reader needs to look something up - Cut the table to four columns - Round the numbers - Use a chart when the reader needs to see a pattern - Show one line and the threshold that matters - Delete any chart that needs a paragraph to explain it - Use colour once ## 7\. Presentations are written, not designed - Write the talk before you open PowerPoint - Give your answer in the first thirty seconds - Make the words carry the message, not the slides - Let slides illustrate, not duplicate - Make one point per slide - Never read your slides aloud - Write the handout as a separate document ## 8\. The document as an object - Treat typography as part of the argument - Do not fill the white space - Keep the defaults, and know the exceptions - Number things so they can be found again ## 9\. Process - Read it aloud - Run the checklist before it goes out - Use AI without producing slop ## Sign up for new entries every week The guide is being written in the open. Subscribe and you'll get each new entry as it's published, plus a weekly piece on writing clearly about money. Free. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### The rules in brief URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/the-rules-in-brief/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T09:18:25.000Z #### [Writing Guide >](https://www.plainfinance.net/style-guide/) Everything in this writing guide comes down to ten rules. Apply them to the next document you write and it will be better than the last one, whether or not you read another word. 1. **Put the answer at the top.** The first paragraph should tell the reader what the position is and what you want them to do. Write it last, once you know. 2. **Ask for a decision, not a note.** 'Invited to note' means nobody has to do anything, and if you ask for nothing that is usually what you get. Say what you want approved, authorised, or changed. 3. **Order by importance, not chronology.** You reached the answer by working through the analysis. The reader does not have to repeat your journey. Give them the best stuff first. 4. **Cut the background section.** The people who need the background already know it. The people who do not will not start reading now. 5. **Write headings that say something.** 'Financial performance' tells the reader nothing. 'Margins fell everywhere except the north' tells them the conclusion before they read the section. 6. **Say who did what.** 'It was decided' hides the decision-maker, and that is often the point. Name them. 7. **Tell the reader why the number matters.** A £1.4m variance is a fact. Whether it is a problem, and what happens next, is what the reader came for. 8. **Round the numbers.** Nobody decides anything on the strength of the third decimal place. Write £1.4m, not £1,437,216. 9. **Write the talk before you open PowerPoint.** Slides are not a plan. Work out what you are going to say, then create slides that illustrate your message. Don't make slides that are walls of text. No one can read and listen at the same time. 10. **Read it aloud.** Every sentence you stumble over is a sentence the reader will stumble over. It is the cheapest edit available and almost nobody does it. ## Sign up for new entries every week The guide is being written in the open. Subscribe and you'll get each new entry as it's published, plus a weekly piece on writing clearly about money. Free. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. #### [← Back to the Writing Guide](https://www.plainfinance.net/style-guide/) ### Do not mistake silence for approval URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/do-not-mistake-silence-for-approval/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T09:19:08.000Z #### [Writing Guide >](https://www.plainfinance.net/style-guide/) # ## The principle You send out a report. Nobody objects. No one emails to say it was unclear, or hard to follow, or wrong. You conclude it was fine. It was not necessarily fine. Nobody complained, which is a different thing. Silence tells you no one raised an objection. It does not tell you anybody read the report, understood it, or acted on it. The absence of complaint is the weakest signal there is, so don’t regard it as praise. ## Why it fails in practice Readers do not complain about unclear writing, for a plain reason: complaining costs them something and gains them nothing. To say a paper is confusing is to risk sounding as though they were not smart enough to understand it. Easier to skim, form a rough impression, note it and move on. The worse the writing, the more likely that is what happens, and the quieter your inbox. The feedback runs backwards. Clear writing provokes questions, challenges and decisions. Unclear writing provokes nothing. You read the silence as success when it is closer to the opposite: the sound of a room that has stopped paying attention. There is a less comfortable reason we accept it. Silence protects the author. If no one raised a problem, the writing must have been fine, and any failure to act was the reader's fault, not the writer's. We are quick to accept silence as approval because the alternative points back at us. ## An example A monthly board pack carried the same sentence in its treasury section from March: on current forecasts, the cash headroom would be exhausted by October. The board noted the pack in March, in April, and every month after. The forecast did not improve. In September the finance director went to the bank for an emergency extension to the facility and got worse terms than the same request would have earned in March. Nobody had buried the warning or ignored it. It had been put in front of the board six times and noted six times. But a board notes the papers it has not acted on, and the writer read six months of ‘noted’ as six months of the board being on top of the problem. The board was on top of nothing. The sentence sat in a section the non-executives skimmed, written as a forecast rather than a request, so month after month there was nothing to act on, and nobody did. ## What to do instead Stop waiting for the signal because it is not coming. And if did come it would arrive too late to be any use. Assume instead that any report which drew no response failed to land and test it against this style guide. Would a reader who stopped after the first paragraph know what you wanted? Does the recommendation ask for a decision, or invite the reader to ‘note’ something? Could someone act on it without asking you a single question? Then ask a colleague for their view. But you need to ask the right question. ‘Was that clear?’ invites a polite yes, and is no more informative than the silence you started with. Few people will tell you to your face that your writing was hard work. Asking for advice works better than asking for feedback, because advice is about the next version, not a verdict on the last one. So, instead of asking what they thought of your document, ask what they would change. For example: ‘If you were sending this to the chief executive, what would you cut?’ ## Sign up for new entries every week The guide is being written in the open. Subscribe and you'll get each new entry as it's published, plus a weekly piece on writing clearly about money. Free. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. #### [← Back to the Writing Guide](https://www.plainfinance.net/style-guide/) ## Posts ### Two hours or two minutes URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/two-hours-or-two-minutes/ Last updated: 2026-10-07T10:29:11.000Z On 19 November 1863 the main speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg talked for two hours. He was Edward Everett, former senator, former president of Harvard and the most celebrated orator in America. He delivered some 13,000 words from memory. Can anyone quote a single line of it? The next speaker was President Abraham Lincoln, who had been invited to offer "a few appropriate remarks". Lincoln spoke 272 words in a little over two minutes. People still recite them in full. Lincoln's language is not what we would call plain English today. "Four score and seven years ago" is a long way round to 87\. He asks us to dedicate, consecrate and hallow. A modern editor would query all of it. Yet the speech has outlasted almost everything else said in that war. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4d/c2/4dc2d052-c0cb-41f5-a756-3f3ca51d7333/content/images/2026/10/gettysburg.png) ## The central idea Everett understood why. The next day he wrote to Lincoln: > I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes. That is the lesson. It is not about length. Everett's speech was a learned history of the battle, with comparisons to Marathon and the Wars of the Roses. Every part of it could be defended. None of it was the point. Lincoln had decided what the occasion meant and said only that. ## Short did not win the front page It is tempting to think Lincoln kept it short so newspapers would print it whole. The record does not support that. Papers printed Everett in full as well, and the Cincinnati Gazette gave him page one while Lincoln's remarks appeared on page three. Brevity did not even guarantee accuracy. The Associated Press version had Lincoln dedicating the living to "the refinished work". What brevity gave Lincoln was memory. A reader can hold 272 words in their head. They can repeat them, copy them out and teach them. Nobody can do that with 13,000\. Lincoln even predicted the opposite: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." He was wrong about his own words and right about Everett's. ## Most finance reports are like Everett's speech We write the full history of what we have done. We explain every variance. We set the decision in its context going back several budget rounds. Each paragraph is accurate and defensible, and the reader finishes without knowing what we want them to do. The problem is not that the report is long. It is that we never found the central idea, so we wrote everything instead. Cutting does not fix that. Cut Everett’s speech by half and you get 6,500 words without a central idea. The work comes before the writing: deciding what the report is for. ## Try this on your next report Before you write anything, write the central idea in one sentence. If you cannot, you are not ready to write. If you can, every paragraph that follows either supports that sentence or goes. Then ask whether your reader could repeat your point to a colleague without looking at the page. That is the test Lincoln passed and Everett failed. ## Sign up for Plain Finance The communication skill your qualification never taught you Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ### Nobody taught you Word and it shows URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/nobody-taught-you-word-and-it-shows/ Last updated: 2026-09-08T07:57:12.000Z I once spent a full day fixing the formatting on a 100-page policy document. Multiple authors had worked on it, each with their own understanding of how Word works. Some knew about Styles and used them properly. Others made text look like a heading by bumping up the font size and bolding it. Looking like a heading is not the same as being a heading, and the difference only shows up later: the table of contents had whole sections missing, because it only lists proper headings, not text that has been dressed up to resemble one. Some used page breaks. Others hit Return repeatedly until the next line landed on a new page. That held up fine until someone edited a paragraph earlier in the document, and the text reflowed into nonsense, with long gaps opening up between lines for no visible reason. And most of them had copied text in from somewhere else — an email, an old version, another document entirely — and pasted it straight in, formatting and all. Word doesn't just paste only text. It brings the source document's fonts, sizes and styles in with them, buried inside text that looks fine until you try to change anything. This is how a single document ends up with four fonts and styles that clash with each other, none of it visible to the person who put it there. The fix for that last one is simple. Paste using Ctrl+Alt+V and choose 'Merge Formatting', so the text takes on the formatting of the document you're pasting into, not the one it came from. It takes a couple of extra seconds and would have prevented most of what I spent that day fixing. None of the authors had turned on formatting marks, the setting that shows every paragraph break, space and tab as a visible symbol. Every hidden return, every manual space, every fake heading was invisible to them the whole time they were creating it. They could not see the problem because the tool was set up to hide it. A day spent fixing formatting is a day not spent on the finance content the document actually exists to communicate. Multiply that across a team, across every long document that passes through several authors' hands, and it stops being a curiosity and starts being a real cost albeit one that is hidden — unless you need to hire an external person to fix the document. This happens because document craft is never taught. Finance professionals spend years on technical standards and qualifications and almost no time on the tool they use to draft every report, paper and briefing. Everyone should know how to apply styles instead of faking their appearance, paste text without dragging its old formatting in behind it, and view the marks that show what's actually holding a document together. None of it is difficult. It has simply never been on anyone's curriculum. ### Unclear writing is expensive URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/unclear-writing-is-expensive/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T14:25:34.000Z The cost of unclear writing is real and it is large, but it never appears on an invoice and nobody is asked to account for it. The writer pays first, in the hours spent drafting and redrafting a document that does not land. The reader pays next, in the time spent decoding it, in the queries sent back to the author, and in the poor decisions they make when they give up and act on a guess. The organisation's customers and suppliers pay, too: an invoice that cannot be understood is paid late, or wrong; a specification that is misread produces the wrong delivery. Each is an outcome the writing produced, and a worse one than the writer meant. The costs are usually invisible, but occasionally someone measures them. Joseph Kimble, an American law professor, spent decades collecting the evidence. His book [*Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please*](https://cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781531024543/Writing-for-Dollars-Writing-to-Please-Second-Edition?ref=plainfinance.net) summarises about 50 studies of what plain language does for the organisations that adopt it. The [US Veterans Benefits Administration](https://department.va.gov/plain-language/?ref=plainfinance.net) rewrote a single form letter and tracked the calls to one regional office: over a year, they fell from about 1,100 to about 200\. That is 900 calls no one had to make or answer, from improving one letter at one office. Read the number the other way round and it tells you what the original letter had been costing all along. Every one of those 900 calls was a person who could not understand what the agency wanted, and a member of staff who had to stop and explain. Put each call at 10 minutes and that is 150 hours a year gone on one letter. Multiply it by every letter and form the agency sends, and the true cost runs into many thousands of hours, before you count the frustration of the people who could not follow the letter, or the trust they lost in the body that wrote to them. The board reports and business cases you write are not benefits letters, but the mechanism is the same. Unclear writing does not stay on the page; it turns into things that happen. Start counting, in your own work, the costs you have not been noticing. - The next time a paper of yours generates a run of clarifying emails, count them, and count the minutes each cost you to answer. - The next time a decision you asked for is deferred, ask whether the reader failed to grasp what you were asking. - The next time you spend an afternoon on a third draft, ask whether the first would have worked had you settled the reader and the answer before you began. Once you can see the cost, writing clearly stops looking like extra effort spent on top of the work. It is the cheaper option. ### The longer version is sometimes easier to read URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/break-up-long-sentences-2/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T08:20:11.000Z I keep a note of sentences that are harder to read than they need to be. Most come from documents that are otherwise careful and correct: it is the writing that lets them down, not the thinking. Here is one I added last week, a definition of fraud. > Fraud is any intentional act characterised by deceit, concealment, dishonesty, misappropriation of assets or information, forgery or violation of trust perpetrated by individuals or organisations to secure unjust or illegal personal or business advantage. Read it once and you probably caught the gist. Read it again and try to hold all of it at once — the six kinds of act, the two kinds of actor, the purpose tacked on at the end — and you feel the effort. Nothing in it is wrong. It is simply doing too much before it lets you stop. One sentence, thirty-four words, no full stop until you reach the end and have to reassemble the whole thing in your head. A readability formula scores it at grade 25, well beyond any general reader. Writing like this is easy to produce and hard to notice. A long, clause-heavy sentence borrows the cadence of a legal definition, and that cadence sounds authoritative and complete. It flatters the writer. The catch is that the completeness sits on the page and not in the reader's head, and the reader is the one who has to do something with it. The usual advice for a sentence like this is to cut: trim the adjectives, strike a phrase, bring the word count down. So here is the version I would offer instead. Notice that it is longer. > Fraud is dishonest behaviour intended to gain an unfair or illegal advantage. It can involve deception, concealment, theft of assets or information, forgery, or abuse of trust. Individuals or organisations commit it for personal or business gain. Thirty-seven words, three more than the original, in three sentences. It scores grade 12, thirteen reading levels easier than the one it replaced. It is easier to read, and it got there by getting longer. That is the part worth pausing on. Plain English is not the same as short English. What made the first version hard was never its length. It was that one sentence carried three ideas at once and made you hold all of them before it stopped. Splitting it into three — what fraud is, what it involves, who commits it — lets the reader take one idea at a time. The words per sentence fell from thirty-four to twelve. That is the number that matters, not the words on the page. This is why the delete-key reflex so often disappoints. You cut and cut, the word count drops, and the writing still reads like treacle. Cutting words from a badly built sentence gives you a shorter badly built sentence. The fix is structural, and structure sometimes costs a few more words. You can go a long way in the other direction, where the setting allows it. The whole idea will compress to five words. > Fraud is theft through lying. That scores about grade 1\. A child could read it. It throws away the detail a formal definition needs, so it would be no use in a policy or an audit report. But it marks the far end of the scale, and it makes the point plainly: the clearest version of an idea is rarely the one with the most words in a row, and just as rarely the one with the fewest. For the reports most of us write, the aim is neither the shortest version nor the simplest. It is the one a busy reader takes in without having to work at it. Sentence length is most of what stands between those two things. So the next time you tighten a draft, do not begin by counting words. Find your longest sentence and count those instead. Past about twenty, it is probably carrying the load of two or three, and your reader is paying for it. Look for the joints — the 'characterised by', the 'perpetrated by', the point where the sentence turns and a new one wants to begin — and break it there. Give each idea its own full stop. Then judge the result by the only test that counts: whether a reader gets it first time, not whether it came out shorter. Often it will be shorter. Sometimes, as here, it will be longer. Either way, reach for the full stop before you reach for the delete key. ### Write headings that carry the message URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/write-headings-that-carry-the-message/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T08:20:10.000Z Busy readers skim headings and reads little else. Think of the committee member turning to your report the night before the committee meets, the chief executive rushing through a briefing note between meetings, or the finance director trying to catch up with a backlog of unread emails. They run an eye down the screen and stop where something catches. Nothing catches their eye most of the time. The headings in a finance document tend to name a topic and no more: Financial performance. Budget position. Key risks. A reader who skims the document only those learns what the sections are. They learn nothing about what the document says. Headings can do far more than mark the joins. The three types of headings explained — **label headings, question headings** and **statement headings** — below come from [Colleen Trolove](https://www.colleentrolove.co.nz/?ref=plainfinance.net) at the [School of Unprofessional Writing](https://boom.unprofessionalwriting.com/all-access/?ref=plainfinance.net). ## Good headings show your structure and soften a dense page A heading does two things at once. It makes the structure visible. The reader sees how the parts fit before reading a word of the body, and finds the part they need without hunting for it. It makes the page less daunting. A wall of text is off-putting before anyone starts. Headings break it into sections a reader can face. That matters more in finance than in most writing, because the subject already asks something of the reader. Do not make the layout ask more. ## Aim for a heading every one to three paragraphs A heading every one to three paragraphs is more often than most writers expect. Finance writers under-use headings because they treat them as scaffolding for long documents. They are not that. They are for any document a reader must navigate under time pressure, which is nearly all of them. A 500 word email needs them as much as a 50 page board paper. ## Label headings earn their place when readers need to find things Label headings exist so a reader can find something, not learn something. Board and committee papers are the case for these. Members read a lot of papers and value knowing that Background, Financial implications and Recommendations sit in the same place every time can be helpful. Repetition of plain, predictable label headings beats interest here. But recognise their limits. Label headings point but they do not tell. Reach for one only when the reader's real need is to find things, not to learn them. Do not use them as the easy default when a statement heading would work better. ## Question headings work only if you answer them straight away A question heading mirrors what the reader is asking in their mind. "Can we afford the new case management system?" is the question in the reader's head, so putting it on the page meets them where they are. But a question heading carries an expectation that you answer it in the first line that follows. The answer could be yes, no, two, sometimes. Whatever the answer, once given you can then expand on it. "Yes, but only by delaying the depot refurbishment", and the reader has the shape of it before the detail arrives. A question you pose in a heading and then circle for three paragraphs does the opposite of what a heading is for. Withholding the answer will frustrate the reader. Use question headings only when you are ready to answer at once. ## Statement headings are the ones worth the effort A statement heading states a fact rather than naming a subject. It is the type of heading that delivers the most to the reader, and is the one finance writers use least. Compare "Reserves" with "Reserves run out in 2027 on current spending". The first tells you where to look. The second tells you what you will find when you get there. Or compare "Capital programme" with "The capital programme is £4m over budget and slipping". One is a filing label. The other is the news. The payoff from label headings is the fact that a reader who skims the headings and reads nothing else will learn real facts about the document in a matter of a minute or two (a lot less time for short documents). If the same document had label headings, the reader would learn only which topics are covered in the document. **Same document, different result, decided by how you wrote the headings.** ## Read your headings on their own to test them There is a quick check for anything you write. Ignore the body text and read the headings as a list (you can do this using the outline view in Word if you apply heading styles to your headings). If the headings read like a table of contents, a set of topics, they are naming rather than telling. If they read like a summary of the argument, they are carrying the message, and the reader who skims them is in good hands. --- ### Pretty beats easy to read URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/pretty-beats-easy-to-read/ Last updated: 2026-08-11T08:33:01.000Z Look at a typical business report. The effort is obvious. The charts are in the brand colours. The KPIs sit in little speedometer gauges. The risks are a grid of red, amber and green. There is a table so dense the total has to be picked out in bold. It has been designed. And it is still hard to read. That is the pattern in a lot of financial reporting. It looks like communication, but the design works for the organisation's image, not the reader's understanding. The brand colours, the polish and the sheer length say the writer took trouble. None of it helps the reader see what changed, by how much and what to do about it. That takes longer to find than it should. There is now an international standard aimed at exactly this. [ISO 24896](https://www.iso.org/standard/88366.html?ref=plainfinance.net), published in June 2026, sets a consistent notation for the charts, tables and text in reports, presentations and dashboards. It builds on the ISO plain-language standard, ISO 24495-1, and draws on years of work by the [IBCS Association](https://www.ibcs.com/iso-24896/?ref=plainfinance.net). The idea is simple. If everyone shows the same thing the same way, readers stop relearning the format on every page. It is a good idea. I still don't think it will change much. One barrier is cost. The ISO document costs 135 Swiss francs. Most people who write reports will never hear of it, and of those who do, few will pay a three-figure fee to read it. But cost is a weak explanation, because the same notation is [available from IBCS](https://www.ibcs.com/ibcs-standards-free-copy/?ref=plainfinance.net), published for free under a Creative Commons licence. The substance of what the ISO sells is available for nothing from the body ISO took it from. Free has been there for years. It has not fixed reporting either. So the barrier is not price, and it is not awareness. Suppose the notation were free, well known and built into the software people already use. Most reports would still come out polished, on-brand and hard to read. The reason is not that finance people are careless or vain. It is that the incentives all point one way. A report that looks authoritative signals competence. A report in the house colours signals that the writer belongs. A full page signals effort. Nobody's brief says "make it plainer, even if it looks less impressive." So the standard competes with the wish to look good, and looking good usually wins. A standard helps the person who already wants to be clear. It gives them rules to point to and a reason to hold the line. What it cannot do is create the wanting. That has to come from the reader. Reports get clearer when the people who receive them stop accepting the ones that are hard to follow. They get clearer when "I couldn't work out what this is telling me" is treated as the writer's problem, not the reader's failing. They get clearer when a board or a chief executive rewards the paper that made the decision easy over the one that looked the part. Change the thing that gets praised and the reports will follow. Leave it alone and no notation will help. ISO 24896 is worth having. But the hard part was never the notation. The hard part is deciding that a report the reader can follow matters more than one that looks impressive. That is a choice an organisation makes, not a standard it adopts. --- ### Data your reader will understand URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/data-your-reader-will-understand/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T07:57:01.000Z Open almost any board report pack and you will find one. A table that fills a whole page: thirty budget lines, three years of comparatives, variances in pounds and again in per cent, all set in eight-point type so it fits. Somewhere in that table is the one number the reader needs to act on. If only they could see it. I hope I don't need to tell you this is not the best way to present financial data. The cause is easy to miss, because it is you. You built the table, and every row and column means something to you. The reader meets it cold, with seconds to spare, and sees a wall of numbers. The problem is the same whether those numbers are in a document or on a PowerPoint slide: too much data, badly ordered, with no help for the reader. The fixes are the same, too. ## Dos **Simplify the data.** I keep telling writers to cut unnecessary words. The same goes for numbers. Do you need 25 lines in a P&L, or will 4 or 5 do the job? Do you need 5 years of comparatives? Do you need every figure to the pound when the story is about millions? Every row you keep is a row the reader has to read or skip, and most get skipped. Cut until only the load-bearing figures remain. **Write a headline, not a title.** It is tempting to label a table factually: ‘Sales revenue by division, year to date.’ This is factually correct, but a waste of words. Think like a newspaper editor and write the headline of the story the table tells: ‘Sales revenue is 5% below budget’ or ‘Division X is growing fastest.’ Now the reader gets your message before reading a single figure, and the numbers confirm it instead of having to be decoded. On a slide you say the headline aloud and it is gone. In a report it sits on the page and does the work every time the reader's eye passes it. **Tell the reader where to look.** In a talk you can reveal a chart piece by piece and set the pace for the room. In a document the reader sets their own pace, so the only lever you have is what you put on the page and in what order. Use it. Order the rows so the most important sits at the top, not buried in ledger order or alphabetically. Emphasise the figure that matters, in bold or with a shaded row, so the eye lands there first. Put your conclusion in the prose and let the table stand as the evidence, not the other way round. ## Don'ts **Make one table do several jobs.** A table answering three questions at once leaves the reader unsure which one you care about. Give each point its own small table or chart. There is no penalty for adding another table; there is a real penalty for crowding one. **Bury a big table in the body.** Detailed tables belong in an appendix. If the analysis genuinely needs 30 rows and a dozen columns, put that table at the back, reference it, and in the body give the reader the handful of numbers that carry your point. The body is where you tell the story; the appendix is where a reader goes to check your working. The test for any table is simple. Could a busy reader take your point from it in five seconds? If not, it is not finished. ### The right way to write links URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/the-right-way-to-write-links/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T06:58:59.000Z A hyperlink is a decluttering tool. It lets you move supporting material out of the sentence and behind a word or phrase, so the text stays clean and the reader who wants the detail can still reach it. This works for a quick email as much as a full report. The question is not whether to use links but how to present them. The crude option is to paste the full web address into your text. It has one virtue. Even a reader who is only scanning can see that a link is there. But a raw URL is rarely short or readable, it breaks the flow of the sentence, and it often gives no clue where it leads. A shortening service such as Bitly will fix the length, and a paid plan can brand the link to your organisation, but a short URL is still a string of characters sitting awkwardly in your prose. Better to attach the address to some anchor text: a word or phrase in your sentence that carries the link. Now the sentence reads normally, and the formatting tells the reader there is something to click. Getting the anchor text right takes a little care. Here are six tips to help you. - **Keep it short.** Five words or fewer. One or two words can work, but a reader moving quickly may miss them. - **Describe the destination.** The anchor text should tell the reader where the link goes. Never use "click here". It describes the action, not the destination, and makes the reader hunt around it to find out what they are clicking. - **Use a verb where it fits.** "Read the guidance" or "see the consultation paper" gives an action-oriented link. Where a verb does not fit, the title of the document works as anchor text instead. - **Use links sparingly.** Include only the ones that add something. A link in every sentence is as tiring to read as a page of raw URLs. - **Keep the formatting consistent.** Your app's default link style already works. If you change the colour or font, change it for every link in the document. Otherwise the reader cannot tell what is a link and what is not. - **Make the anchor text stand on its own.** People using a screen reader often call up a list of a page's links, stripped of the surrounding sentences. "Click here" and "read more", repeated down the list, tell them nothing. Anchor text that names its destination is what makes a link accessible. ### Accounting needs words as well as numbers URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/accounting-needs-words-as-well-as-numbers/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T07:01:18.000Z The monthly accounts land in a manager's inbox. The figures are right. The statements are complete. The accountant who prepared them has done the work and moved on, on the quiet assumption that the numbers speak for themselves. The manager will see what they show. They will not. A column of figures does not carry its own explanation. The manager sees a variance but not why it happened, a balance but not whether to worry, a total but not what to do next. The accountant sees all of that because they have been living in the detail. The message that is obvious to the accountant is not obvious to the reader. This is the part of the job that too often goes undone. Producing the statement is the half we train for. Explaining what it means—what has changed, what it tells us, what should happen next—is the half that decides whether any of it has the right effect. And it is done with words. The belief underneath everything I write here, is that accounting needs words as well as numbers. The numbers have to be right, of course, but having the right figures is only the start. The work is in explaining it. And here is where things go wrong a second time. When accountants reach for words, too often they recycle the stock phrases handed down by their predecessors. ‘It should be noted that.’ ‘The overspend is attributable to.’ The language is inherited rather than chosen, and it is not aimed at the accountant’s reader. The old language signals that a professional has written something professional-sounding. It does not explain anything to anybody. The unspoken excuse is that this is how finance writing is meant to be. Plain words would look unserious. But the reader is often not another accountant. And even when they are, they would rather read a clear sentence than a foggy one. No qualified accountant secretly prefers a long, hedged, jargon-filled paragraph to a short plain one that tells them what they need to know. Nobody does. The inherited style serves the writer's sense of belonging, not the reader's understanding. The skill I am encouraging accountants and auditors to develop is not writing in any decorative sense. It is caring who the reader is, working out what they need to take from the numbers and saying it in words they will absorb. That is harder to do than re-using the familiar cliches. It is also the whole point. Numbers do not speak for themselves. They never have. Someone has to speak for them, in plain words, to the reader they are intended for. ### The skill nobody trains for URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/the-skill-nobody-trains-for/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T07:26:29.000Z Every accountancy qualification tests technical knowledge: bookkeeping, IFRS, audit standards, tax, treasury. None of them test whether you can write a paper that changes a decision, or explain a number to someone who's already made up their mind. By the time someone reaches CFO, or chief auditor, or partner, communication has quietly become the job. The technical work still matters, but someone else usually does most of it. What the senior person actually does, most days, is write, edit what others wrote, present, and persuade. I spent 19 years in public sector finance, the last three as a finance director. Nobody trained me for that shift. I learned it by getting it wrong in front of committees who had better things to do than decode my paperwork. Here's what I'd have found useful to know earlier. ### **Write for the decision, not the record** Most financial documents are written to be defensible rather than useful, covering all the bases so no one can say something was omitted. That's a different aim from helping the readers decide. Before you write anything, ask what decision or action the document needs to produce and structure it backwards from that. ### **Put the conclusion first** Accountancy training teaches you to build an argument from evidence to conclusion. Most readers want it the other way round: conclusion first, supported by evidence (that is available for them to read if they want). This one change does more for a document's usefulness than any amount of polishing. ### **Say what changed and why it matters** Numbers on their own don't communicate anything. A variance, a forecast, a balance means nothing until someone says what changed and why the reader should care. That sentence is usually missing, and it's usually the only one that matters. ### **Practise on real documents** CPD schemes rarely address this because it's hard to test. The only way to get better is to take something you've actually written, it could be a report, a briefing paper or a business case, and rewrite it with a specific reader in mind, then compare the two. None of this is complicated. It's also not taught, which is why so many technically excellent finance professionals reach senior roles and then struggle with the part of the job no one warned them about. ### Do you have a writing problem? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/do-you-have-a-writing-problem/ Last updated: 2026-06-12T11:30:07.000Z Most accountants don’t think they have a writing problem. There’s a good reason for that, and it’s not complacency. The professional training system never showed them they did. To pass accountancy exams, you need technical accuracy. Marks go to correct calculations, sound judgements, appropriate recommendations. A few marks go to presentation, but not many. The system rewards getting the right answer, not explaining it well. So you pass your exams, get a good job, get promoted. At no point does anyone measure how clearly you write. At no point does the feedback say: your analysis is strong but your reports are hard to follow. Then you reach a level where your job is no longer doing the technical work. It’s explaining it, whether to a committee or board, a senior manager or politician, the general public. And nobody prepared you for that. The Association for Financial Professionals put it plainly: just look at the body of knowledge required for professional certifications to see how little priority the profession places on communication skills. The problem isn’t that accountants can’t write. It’s that the system spent years telling them it didn’t matter. ### Your next promotion may depend on your writing skills URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/your-next-promotion-may-depend-on-your-writing-skills/ Last updated: 2026-06-10T16:41:46.000Z In a 2024 survey, Deloitte asked 200 CFOs what quality they valued most when choosing their successor. [39% said communication skills](https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/leadership/cfo-role-finance-executives-advance.html?ref=plainfinance.net#:~:text=when%20asked%20about%20the%20quality%20they%20valued%20most%20when%20selecting%20the%20next%20CFO%2C%2039%%20of%20respondents%20cited%20good%20communication%20skills%E2%80%94the%20ability%20to%20explain%20results%20in%20clear%2C%20simple%20terms%2C%20which%20was%20the%20highest%2Dranked%20response) — the ability to explain results clearly and simply. It was the top answer. Not technical knowledge. Not financial acumen. Not strategic thinking. Communication. Every board paper you write is part of that assessment, whether you realise it or not. The clarity of your writing, the structure of your arguments and the way you frame recommendations all signal to the people above you whether you are ready for the next level. Most finance professionals think of a board paper as a compliance exercise. Something that has to be done. But the people reading it are drawing conclusions about the person who wrote it. Your numbers might be right. Your analysis might be thorough. But if the paper is hard to follow, that is what they remember. ### Simpler is often better URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/simpler-is-often-better/ Last updated: 2026-07-09T10:25:21.000Z Tax Policy Associates has mapped 81 of the UK's 90 taxes onto a single interactive chart, ranked by revenue raised in 2024/25\. The other 8 yield nothing at all, so they don't appear. The various taxes on employment account for almost half of all tax revenue. Add on VAT and corporation tax and you’re looking at about 70 per cent of all tax revenue. The article itself is a model of clear writing on a complicated subject. It explains what the tax system is, why it grew this way, and what that means, all without losing the reader. I'm less convinced by this interactive chart. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4d/c2/4dc2d052-c0cb-41f5-a756-3f3ca51d7333/content/images/2026/05/UK-taxes-sunburst-chart-1.jpeg) The top level has lots of unreadbable segments and the totals near the centre are not easy to distinguish. It has drill-down features which the authors probably see as a gift to the reader, but they add friction. A simple bar or column chart, colour-coded by tax type, would let the reader see all 90 taxes at once, including the 9 that raise no revenue, which would appear as empty bars and make their own quiet point. Which raises the real issue: when we communicate financial information, simplicity is almost always a better starting point than sophistication. Interactivity can be justified, but the burden of proof is on the designer, not the reader. The [article is worth reading](https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2026/05/28/85-uk-taxes/?ref=plainfinance.net) for its content. It's also worth studying as an example of how to explain a complex system to a non-specialist audience. ### Reports no one reads URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/reports-no-one-reads/ Last updated: 2026-05-20T12:54:19.000Z Most public finance reports are written for the writer, not the reader. The structure follows convention. The headings mirror last year's version. The executive summary is four pages long. The recommendations are at the end. Nobody planned it that way. It just happened because the incentive was to produce the report, not to change anything with it. One question changes this: before you start writing, ask who will read it, what they need to decide, and what would make them stop at page two. That question reorders everything: length, structure, language, the position of the conclusions. Most public sector finance teams never ask it. The report gets written. It gets published. It gets filed. The cycle repeats next year. ### Trust your reader URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/trust-your-reader/ Last updated: 2026-05-11T07:57:53.000Z Most accountants and auditors don't trust their readers. And it shows in their writing. They repeat themselves, use jargon when plain words would do, and explain things twice, just in case. This backfires. When readers get a dense, jargon-heavy document, one of two things happens: • They struggle through it and miss the point • They don't bother reading it at all. Either way, the writer concludes: "See, readers can't handle this stuff." So next time they write even more, explain even more, and add even more caveats. The writer creates a vicious circle. The fix is straightforward: trust your reader. Your reader is not an idiot. They can follow a clear argument without you holding their hand through every step. Say what you mean. Say it once. Then stop. Your writing will be shorter, clearer, and more likely to be read. And when people actually read your work and understand it, you might find they're smarter than you gave them credit for. ### 4th edition URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/4th-edition/ Last updated: 2026-04-15T09:21:07.000Z I signed a contract today for the 4th edition of Financial Management and Accounting in the Public Sector. It will be published by Routledge in early 2028. The 4th edition will include new material on: - Gender budgeting - Sustainability reporting - The use of AI in public finance. These aren't fringe topics. They're reshaping how governments plan, report and account for public money. The foundations of public financial management, though, haven't changed. That's what the [3rd edition](https://www.routledge.com/Financial-Management-and-Accounting-in-the-Public-Sector/Bandy/p/book/9781032157306?ref=plainfinance.net), published in 2023, still gets right. If you're a finance professional wanting a solid grounding, or an academic looking for a course text, it's worth buying now. You don't need to wait until 2028.You can find it [here](https://www.routledge.com/Financial-Management-and-Accounting-in-the-Public-Sector/Bandy/p/book/9781032157306?ref=plainfinance.net). I'm proud of this book. Writing a 4th edition means it's still doing its job. ### Content first. Format second. Always. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/content-first-format-second-always/ Last updated: 2026-04-02T09:17:22.000Z Office workers spend 31% of their time in MS Office on formatting. That's more than a day a week spent on fonts and margins instead of thinking. The real problem is not the formatting itself. It's that people open Word or PowerPoint before the content is even clear. The blank page becomes a design project before a single useful sentence is written. The fix is simple: separate writing from formatting. For documents: - Write in a plain text editor first - No formatting options means no formatting distractions - Get the content right, then paste into your Word template - The template handles the formatting for you For presentations, the same logic applies. Write the presentation before you open PowerPoint. The words are the thinking. Get the thinking clear first. Then, when you do open PowerPoint (or Keynote or whatever you use), that text becomes your presenter notes, not bullet points plastered across the slides. The slides should be visual. The words live in the notes. I use [iA Writer](https://ia.net/writer?ref=plainfinance.net) for writing because it strips everything back to just the words on a screen. You don't need fancy tools. Any plain text editor works. Notepad is fine. The point is to stop letting formatting interrupt thinking. Content first. Format second. Always. ### Your finance report isn't unread because it's bad. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/your-finance-report-isnt-unread-because-its-bad/ Last updated: 2026-03-18T08:28:22.000Z It's unread because of three fixable mistakes. Most unread documents aren't ignored because the content is bad. They're ignored because of structure and presentation failures that are entirely fixable. 1. **Put your bottom line first.** You know the numbers inside out. So you present them in the order you built them. But your reader doesn't share your context. They need the conclusion first, then the detail. Start with what matters most. 2. **Cut everything that doesn't earn its place.** Page six. Paragraph four. After three tables. That's where the important finding sits. By then, most readers have stopped. Put your headline finding at the top, in plain language. 3. **Make what's left easy to read.** Walls of text, unexplained acronyms, and tables with no narrative. These don't signal rigour. They signal that the report wasn't written with the reader in mind. Do these three things and your documents will get read. Most people don't do them. That's to your advantage. ### Your slides are a window into how you think. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/your-slides-are-a-window-into-how-you-think/ Last updated: 2026-03-03T11:36:37.000Z Cluttered slides don't just bore your audience. They undermine the audience's trust in your financial judgement. I've sat through hundreds of finance presentations. The worst ones all make the same mistake: cramming too much onto each slide. Budget variance tables with 15 columns. Bullet points that wrap to three lines. Charts with legends nobody can read from the front row let alone the back row. Your audience stops listening. They start wondering if your analysis is as messy as your slides. Here's what works better: - **One message per slide.** If you're explaining a budget pressure, show just that pressure. - **Cut the clutter.** Remove gridlines, borders, and anything that doesn't help understanding. - **Make text readable.** With fewer words on a slide you can use a large font size. - **Use simple charts.** A single bar chart beats a complex dashboard every time. - **Leave white space.** Your slide doesn't need to be full to be valuable. I learned this the hard way. My early presentations tried to show everything. My later ones showed what mattered. The difference? People trust what I say because they can follow my thinking. **Your slides are a window into how you think. Make sure they show clarity, not chaos.** ### Flip your writing around URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/flip-your-writing-around/ Last updated: 2026-02-23T14:22:22.000Z The problem with most financial documents is that they're written backwards. The writer starts at the beginning of their analysis and drags the reader through every step until they finally reach the conclusion. It's exhausting and it wastes time. The way you solve a problem is not the way you should present the solution. Your reader doesn't need to see your workings: they need your answer. So flip it around. Start with what matters most. - If you need a decision, put your recommendation at the top. Then explain why. - If you're sharing information, lead with the key messages. Make them impossible to miss. - If you're not sure what the document is for, that's actually useful information. It means you can ask your boss or the person who'll read it what they actually need **BEFORE** you write it. Sometimes they don't know either. That's fine. It's a chance to clarify what's really needed before you waste time writing the wrong thing. ### The problem isn't the reader URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/the-problem-isnt-the-reader/ Last updated: 2026-02-20T10:46:19.000Z Jargon isn't the same as precision. Finance professionals defend technical language as if the two are identical. They're not. Some technical terms are genuinely necessary. Accrual, materiality, going concern. These have specific meanings. Using them with a finance audience is legitimate. But most finance jargon isn't like that. > As per the agreed parameters. > It should be noted that expenditure has trended upward. > The position going forward will require careful monitoring. None of that is precise. It's just formal. And formal isn't the same as clear. The worst jargon doesn't just obscure meaning. It allows the writer to avoid committing to anything. Significant variances have been identified sounds precise. But significant how? Caused by what? What happens next? It says a lot without saying anything. Plain English forces you to be specific. That's why it feels harder to write. You can't hide behind the language. The test I use: **could a reasonably intelligent non-specialist understand exactly what I mean?** If not, the problem isn't the reader. ### There's an important skill your accountancy qualification didn't teach you URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/theres-an-important-skill-your-accountancy-qualification-didnt-teach-you/ Last updated: 2026-02-19T15:38:45.000Z It's probably the skill that will define your career more than any technical knowledge. I'm talking about clear writing. I qualified as a CIPFA accountant in 1990\. I passed exams on accounting, audit, reporting, ethics. I learned how to prepare accounts and analyse budgets. But nobody taught me how to write a clear briefing note. Or how to explain a technical issue to non-finance colleagues. Or how to structure a report so busy people actually read it. That's a problem because finance professionals spend huge amounts of time writing. Board papers. Budget reports. Audit findings. Emails to senior managers who don't have time for jargon. If you can't communicate your technical expertise clearly, it doesn't matter how good your analysis is. The gap in professional qualifications is real. They teach you what to think, not how to communicate it. Which means you have to develop this skill yourself. ### What's stopping you from learning how to fix your reports? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/whats-stopping-you-from-learning-how-to-fix-your-reports/ Last updated: 2026-02-11T10:51:12.000Z Finance people know their reports are rubbish. Too long, too technical, too boring. Hard to read. Then they go back to their desks and write exactly the same way. I've been in finance for over 30 years. I've written two textbooks and taught at business schools. I've seen this pattern everywhere. People complain about bad writing. They agree it matters. But they don't change. Why not? Maybe they think good writing is a gift you're born with. Maybe they're too busy. Maybe they don't know where to start. Here's what I know: **writing clearly isn't magic**. It's a skill. You can learn it. When I was a young accountant I wrote dense, bureaucratic reports just like everyone else before me had done. I was copying the style I found in the files and no-one complained. I have gone from that to writing textbooks that people actually enjoy reading. I had to learn the principles and practise using them. The same principles work for board papers, budget reports, business cases and emails. Short paragraphs. Plain language. Structure that guides the reader. So here's my question: if you know your documents could be better, what's stopping you from learning how to fix them? Is it time? Confidence? Not knowing where to begin? Why not get in touch with me? I can help you. [Send me an email](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) ### Write headlines for your tables URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/write-headlines-for-your-tables/ Last updated: 2026-01-28T09:29:12.000Z Your tables are invisible. Not literally. But readers skip them. They see a block of numbers, a generic label at the top, and their eyes glaze over. They move on. You spent time building that table. You chose the data carefully. But without a clear message, it's just noise. Here's how to fix it: **stop labelling your tables.** Start writing headlines for them instead. A label tells the reader what's in the table. A headline tells them what it means. Compare these two: *Label:* "X division Q3 budget versus actual" *Headline:* "Revenue 10% above forecast in Q3" The first one makes the reader work. They have to scan the table, find the key figure, and interpret it themselves. The second one does the work for them. They get the message instantly, even if they never look at the numbers. This approach has two big benefits: 1. **It makes your document easier to read.** The headline reinforces the point you're making in the text. The reader doesn't have to decode the table to follow your argument. 2. **It helps skimmers.** Most people don't read reports word for word. They scan. If your headlines carry the key messages, skimmers can follow your logic without reading everything. Think of it like a newspaper. The headlines tell the story. The articles add the detail. Your tables should work the same way. ### Your writing should save time, not waste it. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/your-writing-should-save-time-not-waste-it/ Last updated: 2026-01-27T09:18:24.000Z Your readers shouldn't have to dig through paragraphs to find what matters. Put your conclusion first. Total costs go at the top. Decisions you need belong in paragraph one. This saves your reader time and effort. High impact for them, with minimal effort. That's what your writing you should deliver. Your opening sentence? It's doing more heavy lifting than you realise. I'll rewrite mine three or four times before it's right. That's not unusual. Keep working it until your first line carries your key message. Once you've nailed that start, keep the flow going. Each sentence needs to lead naturally into the next one. You're guiding your reader through, not making them jump around. **Above all, do not cram in every detail you can find.** Too much information is as useless as too little. Cut anything that doesn't directly back up your message. ### A word about formatting. Word and Google Docs make it easy to mess about with fonts and layouts whilst you're still writing. Resist that temptation. It's a distraction. Get the content right first. Make sure every word justifies its existence. Then, and only then, worry about how it looks. ### Edit your writing 3 times URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/edit-your-writing-3-times/ Last updated: 2026-01-26T14:44:20.000Z Most finance professionals write a report, read it through once, fix the typos, and hit send. That's not editing. That's proofreading. For finance professionals aiming for CFO roles, clear writing signals clear thinking. And clear writing requires good editing. Here's what real editing looks like: - **Pass 1: Structure.** Read for logic and flow. Does your argument make sense? Are sections in the right order? Cut anything that doesn't support your main point. - **Pass 2: Clarity**. Read for plain English. Replace jargon. Shorten sentences. Make sure a non-expert could follow your thinking. - **Pass 3: Polish.** Fix any remaining typos, tighten word choices and check the formatting. This is the only pass most people do. Why three passes of editing? Because you can't fix everything at once. Your brain needs different modes for different tasks. Try this technique with your next board paper or budget report or long email. Three passes. You'll see the difference. ### If your writing doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/if-your-writing-doesnt-work-on-mobile-it-doesnt-work/ Last updated: 2026-01-23T08:39:31.000Z The problem with public sector reports isn't the content. It's that we're still writing like it's 2005. We format documents for A4 paper and desktop screens. Then we email them to executives who read them on phones during their commute. - Your 40-page cabinet report? Viewed on a 6-inch screen whilst waiting for a train. - Your detailed budget paper? Skimmed between meetings on a tablet. - Your committee briefing? Read at 7am on a mobile phone over coffee and toast. Yet we still write dense paragraphs. Complex tables. Include footnotes that require scrolling. Sentences that span three lines on a phone screen. Let's face it. We should respect reality and write for mobile-first reading. The finance director reading your treasury paper at 6.30am isn't sitting at a desk with a printed copy. She's on her phone. Walking to her car. Trying to understand your recommendation before the 8am meeting. The elected member reviewing your budget proposal isn't at home with a highlighter. He's between appointments. Scrolling quickly. Looking for the decision you need. Mobile-first writing means rethinking everything: - Put your recommendation first. Not on page 12. - One idea per paragraph. Maximum. - Tables that work in portrait view. Not landscape spreadsheets squeezed onto a screen. - Headings every 3-4 paragraphs. So readers can scan. - Sentences under 20 words. Because long sentences break badly on small screens. This isn't about technology trends. It's about acknowledging how decisions actually get made. Your beautifully formatted PDF document with perfect margins and justified text? Unreadable on mobile. Your carefully structured report with a summary buried on page 2? Nobody finds it when scrolling quickly. Your detailed financial analysis in 10-point font? Requires pinching and zooming until people give up. We need to stop pretending everyone prints our documents and reads them carefully at their desk. They don't. They read them on phones. Between tasks. When they have 90 seconds before the next meeting. **If your writing doesn't work on mobile, it doesn't work.** ### Plain language isn't just about the words you choose URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/plain-language-isnt-just-about-the-words-you-choose/ Last updated: 2026-01-16T08:48:28.000Z Your readers don't have time to hunt for information. They need to find what matters in seconds, not minutes. That's why plain language isn't just about the words you choose. It's about how you present them. Think about the last report you read. Did you scan the headings first? Did you skip to the summary? Did you look for bullet points or tables? Your readers do exactly the same thing. Here are some tips to make your documents more readable: 1. **Clear headings that tell readers what's coming.** Not "Overview" or "Background" but "Why we need to change the budget process" or "Three risks we must address now." 2. **White space that gives the eye somewhere to rest.** Dense paragraphs tire readers. Short paragraphs with breathing room keep them engaged. 3. **Bullet points that break down complex information.** Lists are easier to scan and remember than long sentences packed with multiple ideas. 4. **Captions that explain tables and charts.** Don't make readers guess what the numbers mean. Tell them directly. 5. **Consistent formatting t**hat creates a visual hierarchy. Readers should know at a glance what's important and what's detail. Your job isn't to impress people with dense prose. It's to help them understand, decide, and act. Make it easy for them. ### Nobody reads your finance reports all the way through. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/nobody-reads-your-finance-reports-all-the-way-through/ Last updated: 2026-01-12T11:31:02.000Z That's the uncomfortable truth most finance professionals don't want to hear. Your readers are drowning in emails, back-to-back meetings, and competing priorities. If your opening doesn't grab them immediately, they'll skim the executive summary and move on. Here are 3 ways to open a finance report that actually gets read: ### 1\. Lead with something unexpected Don't bury the headline. If you've found something surprising or controversial, put it right at the top. "Our ICT project is 20% overspent" beats "This report analyses capital expenditure on IT" every time. Too bold? Frame it as a question instead: "Should we stop spending money on our ICT project?" ### 2\. Start with a relevant quotation Not some inspirational quote from a famous CEO. Use something real from your organisation. An internal audit report could open with a comment from a fieldwork interview. A budget report could quote a department head's concern. It makes the report feel immediate and grounded in reality. ### 3\. Describe a specific event Tell the reader what happened and why it matters. "Last quarter, three major funders delayed payments by 60+ days" is more compelling than "This report covers accounts receivable trends." All three approaches work for the same reason: they create a question in the reader's mind that your report then answers. ### How long is too long? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/how-long-is-too-long/ Last updated: 2026-01-08T08:59:27.000Z Yesterday, I received an audit committee agenda pack. 730 pages. Seven. Hundred. And. Thirty. Pages. For one meeting. I've been a council finance director. I've sat through countless committee meetings. I've written hundreds of reports myself. And I can tell you with absolute certainty: nobody reads 730 pages before a meeting. Not the chair. Not the non-executives. Not the finance director. When finance reports become doorstops, three things happen: - **First, important information gets buried.** That critical risk on page 487? The material variance on page 623? They disappear into the noise. - **Second, readers stop reading.** They skim. They skip sections. They focus on the executive summary and hope nothing vital was hiding in the appendices. - **Third, trust erodes.** When you consistently produce documents that are impossible to consume, people start questioning your judgement. **A document is too long when it contains information the reader doesn't need to make the decision you're asking them to make**. Not information that might be interesting. Not information we've always included. Not information that shows how hard we worked. The best finance reports follow an 80/20 structure: - **80% of the document** should be the core information that every reader needs. The financial position, key variances, significant risks, decisions required. - **20% of the document** should be supporting appendices for readers who need to go deeper. Most finance teams get this backwards. They produce reports where 80% is supporting detail and 20% is core information. Then they wonder why nobody reads them. --- *Want to write better, clearer, shorter finance documents?* [*Get in touch with me*](mailto:gary@garybandy.co.uk) *to learn more about document makeovers, communication coaching, and online learning.* ### New year, same financial communication challenges URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/new-year-same-financial-communication-challenges/ Last updated: 2026-01-06T09:28:51.000Z This week is an opportunity for change because everyone's starting fresh. Inboxes are being cleared. Priorities are being reset. Teams are regrouping. It's the perfect moment to change how you communicate financial information. Before the holidays, you probably sent reports full of technical language because "that's how we've always done it". This week, try something different. Pick one routine financial update and rewrite it in plain language. Here's how: 1. Remove jargon. Replace "adverse variance" with "spent more than planned". 2. Add clear action points. Tell readers exactly what they need to do, not just what happened. 3. Put the bottom line first. Don't make people hunt for the key message. See if anyone notices. My guess? They'll thank you for it. January is when new habits form. The communication patterns you set this week can stick. Make them count. Start with one document. One email. One report. Write it as if you're explaining it to someone who's just walked back through the door after two weeks away. Because that's exactly who's reading it. ### Fix your typography in 5 minutes URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/fix-your-typography-in-5-minutes/ Last updated: 2025-12-19T09:05:30.000Z The US State Department just switched from Calibri back to Times New Roman. Neither font is particularly good for reading on a screen. (Times is good for a newspaper, though.) But the bigger issue is this: font choice is only one small part of making documents readable. I see finance reports every week that use decent fonts but still look terrible. Dense paragraphs. Tight line spacing. Justified text with awkward gaps. Lines that stretch across the entire page. The result? Documents that are hard to read and look unprofessional. Good typography isn't about picking the "right" font. It's about getting four settings right: font size, line spacing, alignment and line length. Most people get at least two of them wrong. I've put together [a short slideshow that shows you the setting values you need](https://www.plainfinance.net/typography-101-for-accountants/) to fix the typography in your documents in under 5 minutes. No design degree needed. Just practical adjustments that work. ### Use the Minto Pyramid when you write reports URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/use-the-minto-pyramid-when-you-write-reports/ Last updated: 2025-12-17T14:07:12.000Z I've been writing finance reports for over 30 years. Most people do it wrong. They start with background. Build up slowly. Save the conclusion for page 47. There's a better approach. It's called the Minto Pyramid. It flips everything upside down: 1. **Answer first**. Lead with your conclusion. Don't make readers wait. 2. **Key supporting points**. Give 3-4 reasons why your answer is right. 3. **Data and details**. Now show the evidence. Tables, charts, calculations. Most finance professionals start at 3\. It's where you should finish. ### **Why It Works** Barbara Minto developed this at McKinsey in the 1970s. She found that busy executives need the answer immediately. If they agree with it, they move on. If they question it, they drill into your supporting points. If they still have doubts, they check your data. ### **What this means for you** Use it everywhere: - Board papers (conclusion in the executive summary) - Emails (answer in the first line) - Budget reports (variance explanation before the tables) Stop burying your conclusions. Put them first. Your readers will thank you. ### Answer these 3 questions in your introduction URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/answer-these-3-questions-in-your-introduction/ Last updated: 2025-12-08T16:20:30.000Z Every reader of your reports has the same three questions. - What's your point? - How do you know? - Why should I care? If your introduction doesn't signal you've got answers to all three questions, you've already lost your reader. Here's what that looks like in practice: ### What's your point? State your main message upfront. Don't make readers hunt for it. If you're recommending a change to budget procedures, say so in the first paragraph. ### How do you know? Give readers confidence early. Mention your evidence, your analysis, or your source. You don't need details, just enough to show you're credible. ### Why should I care? Connect to what matters to your reader. Will this save money? Reduce risk? Improve compliance? Make the link explicit. Most finance reports bury the answers to these questions. The introduction rambles through background. The main point appears on page three. The reader has to guess why it matters. A strong introduction does the opposite. It answers all three questions in the first few paragraphs. Everything else flows from there. Your readers are busy. They're scanning, not studying. Give them what they need up front. Get the introduction right and the rest of your report has a fighting chance. ### The AI revolution isn't your problem. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/the-ai-revolution-isnt-your-problem/ Last updated: 2025-11-21T16:25:51.000Z Accountants who can't write clearly won't survive the AI revolution. That's not hyperbole. It's what the data shows. [MIT research](https://news.mit.edu/2023/study-finds-chatgpt-boosts-worker-productivity-writing-0714?ref=plainfinance.net) found that AI tools improved writing speed by 40% for routine tasks. AI handles the mechanical stuff brilliantly. It drafts reports, summarises data, formats documents. What it can't do is interpret complex findings for non-financial stakeholders. Persuade a sceptical board. Explain why the numbers matter. Those skills are your competitive advantage. Think about your typical week: - Budget papers that need executive buy-in - Audit findings that require careful framing - Policy briefings for ministers or councillors - Emails to colleagues who don't speak finance. AI can give you a first draft in seconds. But that draft still needs your judgement, your understanding of the audience, your ability to make technical content accessible. The accountants who thrive in the next decade won't be the ones who resist AI. They'll be the ones who use it to handle routine writing whilst focusing on the communication that really matters. Clear thinking. Clear writing. Clear impact. If you can't do that, the AI revolution isn't your problem: your communication skills are. ### Don't let AI replace your thinking URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/dont-let-ai-replace-your-thinking/ Last updated: 2025-11-18T10:44:02.000Z At first I thought AI would revolutionise report writing in the public sector. Then I saw what it produces. The problem is AI is trained on existing content. If your organisation (and every other one) has spent years producing reports that are too long, unclear and unread, AI will learn from them and give you more of the same. But faster. Think about that for a second. You're not getting better reports. **You're getting mediocre reports at scale.** And that's a problem in the public sector where the audience is usually non-experts. They need clarity. They need credibility. They need context that only you understand. AI doesn't know your stakeholders. It doesn't understand your political landscape. It can't assess risk the way you can. Because AI is actually a very sophisticated autocomplete machine. It predicts the next word based on probability. It doesn't think. It doesn't reason. It calculates. That's useful for some things. But your most important reports? The ones that need to build trust and drive decisions? They need human judgment. They need your expertise. They need writing that reflects the nuance of your situation. So yes, you can use AI to speed up drafts. **But don't let it replace the thinking that makes a report actually worth reading.** ### How to write (finance version) URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/how-to-write-finance-version/ Last updated: 2025-11-17T14:32:03.000Z You may have seen on social media the David Ogilvy memo from 1982 about "How To Write" . I've taken the liberty of translating it for a 2025 finance professionals. --- *The better you write, the higher you'll go in finance.* *People who think clearly, write clearly.* *Good writing isn't a natural gift. You have to learn to write well.* *Here are 10 tips:* 1. *Read* [*Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less*](https://www.axios.com/smart-brevity?ref=plainfinance.net)*. Read it twice.* 2. *Write the way you talk. Naturally.* 3. *Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.* 4. *Never use jargon like synergise, operationalise, strategise, or impactful. They're hallmarks of someone trying too hard.* 5. *Never write more than two pages on any subject. If you can't explain it in two pages, you don't understand it.* 6. *Check your numbers. Always.* 7. *Never send a report or email the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning, then edit it.* 8. *If it's important, get a colleague (not an AI chatbot!) to improve it.* 9. *Before you send anything, make sure it's crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.* 10. *If you want action from someone, don't write. Go and talk to them.* --- The finance professionals who advance fastest are those who can explain complex matters simply. Master that skill and you'll stand out. You're welcome. ### When should you write numbers as words? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/when-should-you-write-numbers-as-words/ Last updated: 2025-11-11T11:11:44.000Z When should you write numbers as words and when as figures? Most people guess. But guessing leads to inconsistency, and inconsistency makes your writing look unprofessional. BBC News has a simple rule in its style guide: - Spell out numbers one to nine - Use figures for 10 and above - Always spell out numbers at the start of sentences. So inside a sentence you'd write "three people attended" but "15 people attended." And at the start of a sentence you'd write "Twenty people left early" not "20 people left early." Simple. Consistent. Professional. The full style guide covers exceptions (like percentages, ages, and measurements) and you can find it [here](https://bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/numbers?ref=plainfinance.net): Here's the thing: if your organisation has a style guide for staff to follow then use it. Most organisations don't have a style guide so find yourself a good one and stick to it. Some, including [BBC News'](https://bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/numbers?ref=plainfinance.net)s and [the Guardian's](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-style-guide-a?ref=plainfinance.net) are on the web. Others, like [the Economist's](https://profilebooks.com/work/the-economist-style-guide/?ref=plainfinance.net), are sold as books. It doesn't matter which one you choose. What matters is consistency. Because when your documents follow clear rules, they look polished. When they don't, they look like nobody cared enough to check. Pick a guide and follow it. Your writing will instantly look more professional. ### Writing in plain language could save your job URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/writing-in-plain-language-could-save-your-job/ Last updated: 2025-11-07T14:41:06.000Z Cory Doctorow nailed it: > AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100 per cent convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job. Here's the thing about accounting. AI can crunch numbers faster than you. It can spot patterns you'd miss. It can generate reports in seconds. But it can't explain what those numbers mean to a stressed-out public manager. It can't translate "defined benefit pension" into words they actually understand. It can't write an email that makes someone feel confident about their financial decisions. That's your edge. Not the calculations; the communication. When you write in plain language, you do something AI fundamentally can't. You build trust.You turn confusion into confidence. You make complex decisions feel manageable. The accountants who will survive aren't the ones who calculate fastest. They're the ones who explain best. Because when push comes to shove organisations will keep the accountants who make them feel understood. They will let go the ones who hide behind jargon and make them feel stupid. Plain language isn't just good writing. It's job security. Do you want to be irreplaceable? Stop writing like a robot and start writing like a human. ### Clarity isn't unprofessional. Confusion is. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/clarity-isnt-unprofessional-confusion-is/ Last updated: 2025-10-22T07:58:50.000Z Rainy Mondays hit different when you're staring at a 47-page financial report. You know the ones. Dense paragraphs. Jargon stacked on jargon. Sentences that loop back on themselves like a bad GPS route. Your coffee's cold. The rain won't stop. And you're on page 12 wondering what "synergistic" actually means. Here's the thing about plain language in finance: it's not about dumbing things down. - It's about respecting people's time. - It's about making complex ideas accessible without losing their substance. - It's about writing so clearly that even on a grey Monday morning, your reader doesn't need three cups of coffee to understand your point. The best financial communicators don't hide behind complexity. They cut through it. They replace "utilize" with "use." They break up walls of text. They explain concepts like they're talking to a smart colleague, not performing for an academic journal. Because **clarity isn't unprofessional**. Confusion is. And on rainy Mondays especially, your readers will thank you for getting to the point. ### Why finance reports get worse when we try to improve them URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/why-finance-reports-get-worse-when-we-try-to-improve-them/ Last updated: 2025-10-20T14:43:57.000Z Your boss hands back your draft report with red ink everywhere. "Can we add a section on market trends?" "Let's include more data." "We need another chart showing the quarterly breakdown." Sound familiar? Here's what almost never happens: "Can we cut this section? It's not adding value." There's a cognitive bias at play here. When we want to improve something, our brains default to addition, not subtraction. It's like making soup. Soup's too bland? Most people reach for more spices. More salt. More herbs. Rarely does anyone think: "Maybe I added too much water. Let me reduce it down." But reduction is often what makes soup (and reports) better. Financial reports fall into this trap constantly. Draft one is 20 pages. Draft two is 30\. Draft three hits 40 because everyone added their "essential" section. Nobody asks: What can we remove? Which paragraphs are doing the same job?What would happen if we cut this entire section? The result? Reports that are longer, denser, and harder to read. Not better. Just bigger. Here's the shift: Next time you're reviewing a report, try the subtraction question first. - Before asking "What's missing?" ask "What's unnecessary?" - Before adding another chart, ask "Which chart could we delete?" - Before expanding a section, ask "Could we cut this in half and say the same thing?" Because clarity isn't about how much you include. It's about how much you dare to leave out. ### Clear writing saves time and money URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/clear-writing-saves-time-and-money/ Last updated: 2025-07-08T07:45:23.000Z Most people don’t realise how unclear their writing is. Clear writing isn’t just about grammar or big words. It’s about stripping away the clutter so your message gets through. If your writing is cloudy, your meaning gets lost. Take a fresh look at your last email or report. Was every word needed? Did your main point stand out? If not, what’s getting in the way? Writing in plain language isn’t easy but it’s worth it. Your reader will understand your meaning the first time they read your words. They will do whatever it is you are asking them to do ... because they understand what it is you are asking them to do. This saves money. First, because time isn't spent reading unclear writing and asking for clarifications. And second, because fewer mistakes are made less time and money is spent fixing the consequences. ### Typography for accountants 101 URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/typography-for-accountants-101/ Last updated: 2025-07-01T10:13:11.000Z Matthew Butterick has a great website and book called [Typography for Lawyers](https://typographyforlawyers.com/?ref=plainfinance.net). Inspired by that, here is lesson 1 of typography for accountants. You can make your documents clearer and easier to read with some simple changes that will take you less than 5 minutes. The secret lies in making the body text look great because, let’s face it, there’s more of that than there is headings or tables. First, choose a good font (if you are allowed). This site uses Inter. I know some organisations insist on a standard font, and it’s likely to be a boring one like Arial or Times New Roman or Aptos (Microsoft’s latest default for its office apps). If that’s what you have to use you can still make your document look good and be easier to read. Here are the 4 things you need to set to get readable body text: 1. **Set the point size between 10 and 14** given point size does not make every font the same size so you will have to use some judgement to get it right. 2. \*\*Set the line spacing between 1.2 and 1.4\. \*\* The default single line spacing is too tight, and 1.5- or double-spacing is too loose. (Trust me on this.) 3. **Set the alignment to Left.** Justified text messes with the spacing between words and makes text harder to read. 4. **Adjust the margins to get the line length right.** Lines need to be approximately 65 characters long. That’s roughly 2½ alphabets: Abcde­fghijklmnopqrstu­vwxyzAbcde­fghijklmnopqrstu­vwxyzAbcde­fghijklm For A4 documents in portrait orientation you will need margins that are bigger than the default 25mm (1 inch). You might need 30 or 35mm each side. Set these 4 things and your document will look more polished and professional. ### What can accountants learn from writers URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/what-can-accountants-learn-from-writers/ Last updated: 2025-06-30T10:06:01.000Z What can accountants learn from writers? Great writers don’t just write—they read, a lot. They learn what works and what doesn’t and sharpen their own skills. Accountants who want to communicate more clearly should borrow this habit. Next time you read a finance report (or anything) written by someone else, be curious about it. 🔎 What makes it work? 💬 Is the language straightforward or full of jargon? 🧭 Is the structure logical? 📊 Are the numbers and charts easy to follow, or do they leave you scratching your head? 🌈 Does the layout or the choice of colours helps bring clarity? And don’t just focus on the good stuff. There’s just as much to learn from reports that miss the mark. Ask yourself: - What would you do differently? - How could it be clearer, simpler, or more persuasive? I’m always interested in seeing examples of finance writing that really work—or that could use improvement. Have you come across a report or document that stood out to you? I’d love to [hear about it](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com). ### Don’t write your finance reports like detective stories URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/dont-write-your-finance-reports-like-detective-stories/ Last updated: 2025-06-27T08:54:19.000Z Don’t write your finance reports like detective stories. Don’t make your reader sift through pages and pages of clues before the real findings and recommendations are revealed on the final page. This problem–cause–solution approach where you describe the problem/issue, then explain why it has occurred before stating your recommended action(s) works OK for short reports or emails on a single topic. For longer reports you need the telescope approach. This puts the most important information first. 1. Start with the summary, conclusions, and/or recommendations. 2. Follow this with analysis of the issues, context and evidence. 3. All the background material, the methodology, research findings, processes, etc comes last (possibly in appendices or in a separate document at the end of a hyperlink). Don’t let your next report be an unsolved mystery. Let’s work together to make your message clear from page one. ### How to write about finance URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/how-to-write-about-finance/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T12:22:37.000Z When you write about finance you need to be in the top left quadrant of the above chart. How do you do that? You put the bottom line up front. Tell the reader right at the beginning what your key message is. You’re not writing a mystery story. if the document is about costs, tell them the total cost at the beginning. If your report requests a decision put it at the top. If your opening doesn’t do that, rewrite it until it does. Sometimes you need several goes to get the beginning right. Once you have your strong start, every sentence should pull the reader forward from the previous one. And remember: too much content can be as damaging as too little. Keep it lean. The best writing is clear, direct, and free from anything that doesn’t serve the message. Get the content right before you think about formatting the document. One of the biggest problems with tools like Microsoft Word and Google Docs is that they show you what your document looks like while you’re still writing it. That’s a distraction. Fight the urge to tweak headings and fonts and the like unto you’ve got the words right. If you want your financial writing to be clear, concise, and impactful, I can help. [Send me a message](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com) if you’d like advice or support with your next report or presentation. ### AI = accountant insights URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/ai-accountant-insights/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T08:36:54.000Z The conversation about AI in accounting is louder than ever. But here’s what hasn’t changed: insight is the most valuable skill an accountant can offer. And insight requires real thought. AI can process data at lightning speed and spot patterns you might miss, but that’s not the same as genuine thinking and understanding. So, what should accountants focus on in 2025? 1. Deepen your understanding of your organisation’s finances. The more you know, the better your insights. 2. Hone your ability to communicate your insights clearly and persuasively. That means writing succinct emails and reports, and making presentations that your audience listens to. If you find yourself with extra time, by all means, explore how AI tools can help you do both of the above even better. But remember: AI is only as powerful as the thinker using it. Ready to set yourself apart? Focus on what AI can’t do—deep thinking and giving meaningful advice—and the rest will follow. ### Quick win: One sentence that saves everyone time URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/quick-win-one-sentence-that-saves-everyone-time/ Last updated: 2025-06-20T09:39:14.000Z _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Get the first page right URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/get-the-first-page-right/ Last updated: 2025-06-18T09:42:45.000Z The way people read has changed and so should the way we write. When newspapers first went online, journalists wrote articles in the same way they always had. This meant articles were often split across several webpages with a button at the bottom of each page to go to the next. Readers had to click the button to keep reading. Most didn’t bother.Website traffic stats illustrated what may have always been the case. Most people read the top part of an article and ignored the rest. Writers learned that much of what they wrote was never read. The words they sweated over just sat on page 2 or 3, unseen. Journalists had to change how they wrote. That's why online articles are shorter. They use single-sentence paragraphs and plenty of white space. There’s a lesson here for finance professionals. No matter how well you write, your message has to land on the first page—or it might not land at all. Next time you write a report, ask yourself: is my main message on page one? If it isn't, rewrite the report. ### A new name — same focus on writing that works URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/a-new-name-same-focus-on-writing-that-works/ Last updated: 2025-06-17T09:27:27.000Z _This post is for subscribers only._ ### Hell is other people’s slides URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/hell-is-other-peoples-slides/ Last updated: 2025-06-16T15:17:16.000Z For some people hell is other people. For me, it’s other people’s PowerPoint slides. We’ve all sat through bad presentations. - Too many words. - Tiny charts. - The presenter reading every word out loud. - Or looking at the screen, not at us. They're boring. They're hard to follow. They feel like they last forever. So why do so many people do the same thing when it’s their turn to be the presenter? I think it’s because most people have never seen a really good presentation. They don’t know what “good” looks like, so they just do what everyone else does. But good presentations do exist—watch any Apple event or a TED Talk. Search for videos of the late Hans Rosling. Here’s the key: don’t just do what everyone else does. Show your audience some respect and find out what makes a good presentation (clue: a clear narrative, images instead of text, and rehearsing). Then make a commitment to improve your performance. And if you want real help to get better, I’d love to help. ### The 3Ls URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/the-3ls/ Last updated: 2025-06-13T10:57:22.000Z Want to write finance content that actually gets read? Start with the 3Ls of financial writing: language, layout and look. - **Language** – Use plain English to explain your ideas and messages without dumbing them down. - **Layout** – Structure your content so the message is clear at a glance. - **Look** – Make your document or email visually inviting. White space, bullets, and bolding all help the reader. These small changes can make a big difference. Learn more in this downloadable PDF. [The 3Ls carousel.pdf902 KBdownload-circle](https://www.plainfinance.net/content/files/2025/06/The-3Ls-carousel.pdf "Download") ### AI can write finance reports but should you ask it to write yours? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/ai-can-write-your-finance/ Last updated: 2025-06-05T19:13:17.000Z In the public sector, written reports need to be clear and credible because the audience is usually non-experts. Yes, AI can generate reports fast. But it doesn’t understand your stakeholders, your risks, or your political context. And let’s be clear: AI isn’t actually intelligent. It doesn't think. It calculates probabilities to predict the next word in a sentence. It’s a very fast autocomplete service. Worse still, AI is trained on existing content. That could be content from the whole internet or just from within your own organisation. Either way, if most reports in the past have been too long, unclear, uninspiring, and unread, 𝙮𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝘼𝙄 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙜𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙢𝙚 — but faster. But you don’t need your most important reports to be average. You need them to be that’s clear and persuasive. The writing needs to reflect your judgment and build the reader's trust. That’s where I come in. If you’re a CFO or Chief Audit Executive who wants to raise the standard of your reporting [get in touch with me](mailto:gary@garybandy.co.uk). Let’s make your next report one that actually gets read and understood. ### Is your audience pretending to listen? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/powerpoint-allows-speakers-to-pretend/ Last updated: 2025-06-05T16:40:31.000Z > PowerPoint allows speakers to pretend that they are giving a real talk, and audiences to pretend that they are listening. (Edward Tufte, 2006) Ouch! Take a moment to reflect on your own presentations. Have you ever been in front of an audience (in the room or on the screen) and sensed they weren't listening to you? If you have sensed it, you were right; they weren't listening. And it was your fault for distracting them with your slides. All those words are an invitation to read – and humans cannot read and listen at the same time! Most people are so bad at creating slides that support their presentation that they would be better off talking without slides. That way, the audience would have to listen if they wanted to know what the presenter's message was. The key to changing your effectiveness as a presenter is to not to start with the slides. All that choosing of themes and re-arrranging bullet points is actually a substitute for thinking. You need to start by writing what you want to say. Revise and edit your "script" until it is as short and clear as you can make it. Then, and only then, should you think about slides. And the first question is, do I need any slides for this at all? If you decide slides will help, minimise the amount of text on your slides. Text causes people not to listen; images (photos, graphs, diagrams) help the audience remember what you say. ### If you don’t have time to make good slides, don’t make any. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/if-you-dont-have-time/ Last updated: 2025-06-05T20:42:28.000Z Most presentations would be better without slides. Because most slides compete against the presenter instead of supporting them. I know what it's like. A presentation is looming and you leave it late to create slides. And when you do finally open PowerPoint you do the obvious thing: you create slide after slide of bullet points. If you’re short on time, skip the slides. Those rushed slides are bad slides. They are bullet-heavy, text-dense, and hard to follow. They don’t help your audience understand your message because they can’t read and listen at the same time. Both tasks use the same part of the brain. If you give your audience something to read, they’ll stop listening until they’ve finished reading. That means your spoken words are tuned out just so they can skim a bullet list instead. **You might as well not be there.** Most professionals know their subject well enough to speak clearly for 5 or 10 minutes without visual aids. And if you did that the audience would stay with you. **If you don’t have time to make good slides, don’t make any.** Just talk. Your audience will listen and remember what you said. ### Don't have borders around every cell of a table URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/dont-have-borders-around-every/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T08:53:51.000Z All those borders are clutter. They get in the way of the message. The vertical lines obviously get in the way of a reader scanning across the rows. If you have your data in columns that are aligned (left for text, right for numbers) then let the white space between columns do the work of the vertical borders. That's all you need. And you don't need horizontal borders for every because the data is in rows. I often use them to separate the title row from the data but you could do that using bold text or a different font. The only concern is not to have ridiculously wide columns that mean there is too much white space between the items on a row. That will make it difficult for the reader to track across. Think Goldilocks. There needs to be enough white space but not too much. And, please, don't ever use zebra-striping of rows as an alternative to horizontal borders. That might make eye-tracking easier but brings a new question to the reader. Are the darker rows more important? Or the lighter ones? So, next time you add a table to a document, delete the borders from the default table and let the data breathe. ### A faster, better way to reply to emails URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/a-faster-better-way-to/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:17:58.000Z We don’t send original letters back with our replies—so why do we include the full text of every email in our responses? Email systems automatically create message threads. There’s no need to repeat every line of a previous message. Instead: 1. Highlight the sentence or two you’re responding to. 2. Hit return—only the selected text stays visible. 3. Type your reply below it. 4. Send. It’s faster, clearer, and easier to read. And if more people did it, we’d cut the size of email chains dramatically—saving storage space, money, and energy. Small habit. Big impact. 💡 Try it and see who follows your lead. ### Take the easy way URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/take-the-easy-way/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:27:53.000Z > Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious. So said Saint Thomas Aquinas. Let me paraphrase it: not every long document is worth the time it takes to write it and read it. Remember that when it comes to writing your next long-ish document. Think about whether you are making your job harder than it needs to be. Perhaps a short document will meet the need. Perhaps you can write in shorter sentences that take less effort for you to think up, and less effort for your reader to read. **There's nothing wrong with taking the easy way to get the job done.** ### Help your reader by having only 1 request per email. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/help-your-reader/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:33:06.000Z Have you ever received an email asking for a document, someone’s phone number, some suggested dates for a meeting, ***and*** your thoughts on a current issue? Emails like that are hard to respond to. You likely don’t have all the information to hand, so you end up replying multiple times. And maybe some of the requests never get answered. The message thread quickly becomes confusing and working out which questions have been answered and which haven't is a challenge to both the sender and the receiver. Don’t inflict this on your colleagues and friends. Send each of your requests in a separate email. It may take slightly longer, but both you and the receiver will benefit. It makes it easier for them to reply and for you to track which requests have been answered and which are outstanding. ### I'm on the Audit 15 Fun podcast this week URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/tldr-audit-15-fun-podcast/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T12:43:25.000Z The episode title is **TL;DR** and I talk about ways that internal auditors can improve their communication in terms of writing and presenting. It was a fun 25-minute conversation with host Jon Taber and includes lots of tips that can be implemented immediately. You can listen to the episode on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/0I4ryN4gpmvQOqn2yp53kn?ref=plainfinance.net) or [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/audit-15-fun/id1590407172?i=1000676487765&ref=plainfinance.net). In fact, you can also listen to it here ⬇️. ### Let's replace PDFs URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/lets-replace-pdfs/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T14:06:27.000Z Let's replace PDFs with documents that are readable on mobile devices. ### Use round numbers URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/write-round-numbers/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T14:12:02.000Z Yesterday the company that supplies our energy sent me an email to tell me the amount of my monthly direct debit will change. Both the old and the new monthly amounts are shown to the penny. This suggests a level of accuracy in their estimation models than is justified by the fact that my wife and I are almost £1,000 in credit with the company. Their estimate would be just as bad if it were rounded to the nearest pound, or even £10\. My point is this: **accountants can affect their reader’s perception about numbers by choosing the level of precision.** Generally I think that the numbers in most documents need only be stated to the level of 2 or 3 significant figures. This level of precision is helpful for readers because they can process the numbers more easily. But... If an accountant includes numbers to 2 decimal places, or to the nearest whole number, their figures will seem more thorough and credible, regardless of whether they actually are absolute facts. And usually they aren’t facts because accounting figures involves lots of judgements and estimates anyway. **Professional writing is better when it’s written in plain language with short words and sentences. It is also better when the numbers are rounded.** The use of round numbers in your writing about money is one of the things I talk about in my course at the The School of unProfessional Writing. C[heck it out](https://garybandy--shellydavies.thrivecart.com/all-access/?ref=plainfinance.net). ### Stripes are for zebras, not tables. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/table-shading/ Last updated: 2025-06-18T09:48:25.000Z Tables in reports are helpful for presenting information but you need to help your reader to see your message. Formatting your table can help but too much formatting works against you. All you’re doing is adding clutter. In particular, don’t use “zebra striping” (where alternative rows are shaded one darker, one lighter). You may think it makes your tables more organised as well as pretty, but it doesn’t actually help the reader focus on what’s important. Instead of zebra stripes highlight key numbers in bold or coloured text and learn to use white space. White space is your friend. It help separate sections without distracting from the data. Remember, the goal is to make your data understandable. Clear away the clutter from your tables. No zebras! ### The waste basket is a writer's friend URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/the-waste-basket/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T14:15:48.000Z This poster hangs above my desk. It is a reminder to be willing to delete bad writing. I hope my ratio of good writing to bad is better than 1:91 but bad writing is bad writing. The lessons for us all are: - Always read what you write. - Delete everything you don’t need. - Revise what’s left to be as clear and simple as you can make it. ### Writing in short sentences is not childish. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/writing-in-short/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T14:18:04.000Z We begin to write by using short sentences. As we grow so do our sentences. By the time we reach working age we think we need long, complex sentences to be professional. This leads us to a use jargon and unclear language. We end up writing without clarity and impact. Yes, long sentences can sound impressive—like something from a professor, journalist, or expert. But how often do you actually enjoy reading ***their*** work? Can you understand what they write without re-reading parts of it? Writing in short sentences is not childish. It's professional. It's effective. ### Accountants are human, too URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/accountants-are-human-too/ Last updated: 2025-06-25T13:06:58.000Z I was recently interviewed for the [Human, Too](https://accountancyhub.co.uk/podcast?ref=plainfinance.net) podcast. In the interview I talk about my career path, which began conventionally with jobs in accounting and audit in local government settings but, after 3 years as a finance director, it changed. The second half is more interesting. And later in the podcast I explain why I am focused on helping accountants and auditors to improve their communication skills, both as writers and presenters. Click the links to listen to my episode on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-20-with-gary-bandy-cpfa-author-and-consultant/id1745305645?i=1000669962579&ref=plainfinance.net) or on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/4nams36yzsdL5QhJ1WbLVV?ref=plainfinance.net). Below is a taster, where I am talking about the way presenters should control the audience’s attention. Feed them data bit by bit rather than all at once. Presentation tips: engaging the audience 0:00 /49.899683 1× ### Let's get rid of executive summaries URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/lets-get-rid/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T15:12:49.000Z Write shorter reports instead. Long reports usually have an executive summary that is maybe only 1 or 2 per cent as long as the report. Isn't this an admission that 98% of the report is not needed by most readers, if not all of them? One thing you can be confident about is that your most important readers–the decision-makers–will read only the summary. Shouldn't we all write shorter reports instead of long reports with summaries? That is, shouldn't we just write the executive summary? Writing 2 pages instead of 10 or 5 pages instead of 100 is hard. It means thinking about what are the key messages and writing them down concisely. It also means laying out the words (and graphics) in a way that makes it easy for the reader to understand your message. It means making good use of headings and white space. It means using clear diagrams and charts that replace text rather than add to the overall length. Where should you start? You could ask your readers if they read your last report but would you trust the answers to be completely honest? I think it would be better to be proactive. When you write your next report set yourself the target of reducing its length by 50%. See if anyone notices. If you don't get any feedback requesting you to write a longer report then you've got permission to continue. See if you can get the next one to be even shorter. ### Replace "but" with "and" URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/pro-writing-tip/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T15:18:03.000Z Remove the negative tone of your writing by using **and** instead of **but** to join two thoughts. When you do this you’ll sound more positive. We all know when someone says, “Yes, but …,” they are disagreeing with us. When we get feedback from someone that follows the “(comment 1) but (comment 2)” we know the but is the warning sign. Sometimes two clauses need to be joined by ‘but’. Most of the time, however, you’ll find that using ‘and’ works just as well. Compare these two: > Sales were up 10% last month **but** I know we can do better. > Sales were up 10% last month **and** I know we can do better. The second one is better. Replacing but with and works in speech as well as in writing. When your significant other suggests something to you, try starting your reply with: “Yes, and …,” to build on their suggestion, rather than knocking it down. ### How to type a decimal point URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/how-to-type/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T15:29:16.000Z Continuing my occasional series of typographic typing tips (I like that alliteration). Usually we use the full stop as the decimal point in a number but strictly speaking the decimal point should be at middle height of the digits not at the base. You want **123·45** and not 123.45\. What you need to type is called an interpunct or a dot space. The way to do this on a Windows computer is a bit awkward. You need the keyboard shortcut Alt + 0183\. In Microsoft Word, you can also go to Insert > Symbol > More Symbols and scroll down to find the interpunct symbol. On a Mac it's easier because there is a system-wide key combination to type an interpunct: shift+option+9\. You can make things easier for yourself, and also make this work on a phone or tablet, by creating a text replacement snippet. I simply type "xdp" on any device and I get "·". #### PS. A word of warning for Excel. Whilst the interpunct is the correct punctuation mark to use in text, Excel does not recognise it as a decimal point. If you use it in a number in an Excel spreadsheet the app will treat all the characters as text. ### Q: when is a space not a space? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/q-when-is/ Last updated: 2025-06-26T15:39:05.000Z A: when it’s a non-breaking space. Q: What’s a non-breaking space? A: A non-breaking space is used when you want the text on both sides of the space to stay on the same line of text. Q: Why should I care? A: Mostly you don't need to care. The app you are writing in will take care of line breaks and wrap your text as you type. It is a problem though if, for example, you leave a space between a currency abbreviation and the number, or write large numbers with a space rather than a comma. You do not want to have something like this: The price is EUR 10.99 or this: £750 000 Q: What can I do to prevent that kind of thing? A: You can type a non-breaking space instead of a standard space. You do this in Word with the key combination **Shift+Ctrl+Spacebar**. Now, the whole number is treated like a single word and will appear together on a single line. #### Bonus tip You might run into a similar problem sometimes where your writing app breaks a line at a hyphen. Mostly that will be fine but you might want, for example, a word like co-ordinate always to be on one line. There is, you've guessed it, a non-breaking hyphen that works just like a non-breaking space. You type one by **Shift+Ctrl+Hyphen**. ### Understand how your reader reads URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/understand-how-your/ Last updated: 2025-06-27T10:11:41.000Z For everything you write you need to understand how your reader will read it. Some things are **read closel**y, word by word. Students can expect this for their essays. You can’t expect this for anything you write that has more than two paragraphs. Others are **skimmed**, with readers only reading the first sentence of paragraphs. If the document has been well-written they will get enough from these sentences to understand the full document. If you want to try it for yourself, read a long newspaper article. You’ll find journalists write paragraphs in this way. And most documents (including board papers that support key decisions) are **scanned**. When a reader scans, their eyes are jumping around the document trying to find the "good bits". Once you accept that most everything you write is not read there are two lessons for you to learn: 1. Make it easy for the reader to find the good bits (write headings that are headlines, text formatting, include charts/tables that are clear and understandable without reading the surrounding text). 2. Accept the rest of the document is for the historical record and not for reading. Include what you need to include but don't go too far since this material is unlikely to be read unless something goes wrong. ### Why I don’t write in MS Word URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/why-i-dont/ Last updated: 2025-06-27T10:14:04.000Z Excel changed the world by allowing users to format and beautify data, although this is often at the cost of clarity. This trend is worse with Microsoft Word, where users are bombarded with formatting options. That massive ribbon at the top of the screen is a siren calling to the user to mess about with styles and borders and colours, when they should be concentrating on writing. Historically, writers wrote the content; typists dealt with the formatting, and the limitations of typewriters meant that the writing remained clear. Today, everyone formats their own documents, but most don’t know what they are doing. They might write good words but present them in documents that are cluttered, making the content hard-to-read. Even Word’s Focus mode fails to eliminate distractions because that ribbon is just one click away. When I write, I prefer plain text applications. They strip away distractions because there is no formatting ribbon, allowing me to focus purely on content. I write my books and client reports in plain text, only converting them to Word for final formatting. By focusing on content first and formatting later, you can enhance both the clarity and impact of your writing. Embrace the constraints of plain text; it’s liberating and improves your creativity. **Try it: Write in plain text. Focus on your words. Format later.** ### Keep it simple, stupid. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/keep-it-simple-6841b808235189001bd3c5ce/ Last updated: 2025-06-27T10:21:40.000Z One of my former bosses always wanted "KISS" reports. **Keep it simple, stupid.** It's easier to say than do. Us technical folk think in technical terms but, here's the thing, when we communicate to non-technical people we need to simplify. Here's an example of what not to do. Recently I got an email from The North Face explaining a data breach. It began ... > On December 13, we detected unauthorised activities on a part of our IT systems, apparently carried out by external threat actors. Upon detecting the unauthorized activities, we immediately took steps to contain, assess and remediate the incident, \[…\] I think it is a fair assumption that only a small percentage of North Face’s customers work in IT. I don’t know how many of that group would talk about “external threat actors” or use a word like "remediate". The customers don’t care about how the company fixed the problem; they care about their personal data. I rewrote the opening 124 words in 63 words, and reduced the reading age from 12 to 7\. My version begins: > On 13 December there was unauthorised activity in part of our IT systems. We immediately shut down all the IT systems that might have been affected so that we could fix the problem. If you want your emails and reports to be understood by non-technical readers you need to write less and use simpler words. ### 4 tips for smart writing URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/tips-for-smart/ Last updated: 2025-06-27T10:38:24.000Z Why not write your next finance report the Axios way. The [Axios](https://www.axios.com/?ref=plainfinance.net) mission statement is “Axios gets you smarter, faster on what matters.” They’re focused on the news of course, but as an #accountant or #auditor, don’t you want to get your colleagues or clients smarter, faster? If you do, you need to apply Axios’s four principles to your own writing: 1️⃣ Rephrase sentences to be shorter and clearer. 2️⃣ Reformat paragraphs so what’s key stands out. 3️⃣ Remove filler words so readers stay focused. 4️⃣ Style your text to be quick and easy to scan. You can see what I mean by reading some of the news articles (US-focused) on the Axios website [https://www.axios.com](https://www.axios.com/?ref=plainfinance.net) or even subscribe to their daily newsletter. And if you want to see what your report would look like after an Axios-style makeover but don’t want to do it yourself, contact me. ### Choosing a report structure URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/choosing-a-report/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:41:16.000Z You can tell any joke you like but it’s best if you tell one that your audience laughs at. When it comes to writing a financial report you can use any structure you like but it’s best to choose one that works for the reader. Typically you might structure your report along the lines of: > Here’s a problem ➡️ This is the cause ➡️ Analysis of possible solutions ➡️ recommended solution The problem with this structure, for busy people at work, is that the important bit is at the end. They have to work through all your analysis to get to the answer. They just want to know the ending. They want to know what, if anything, they need to do. Or, if the report is for information, they want to know your conclusions. A better way is to focus on the needs of the reader rather than the vanity of the writer by bringing the end of the story to the front of the report. Tell the reader the recommendation first and then explain why. This means a structure along the lines of: > Recommended solution to a problem ➡️ Explain why ➡️ Suggested route to implement the recommendation Basically this is a What–Why–How structure. It has two key advantages: ✅ it frames an issue more positively because it starts with solutions (improvements over the status quo) rather than the negative experience of describing a problem or challenge ✅ it does not force the reader to go through a lot of detail to get to the bit that matters. Try this technique next time you are planning the structure of a report. ### A tip about writing abbreviations. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/a-tip-about/ Last updated: 2025-06-27T10:43:06.000Z Have you ever thought about how you write abbreviations? Accountants and auditors will often find themselves using technical terms and long titles that it is best to abbreviate after their first use. Some abbreviations, such as BBC, UK and USA, are so well-known they can be used without ever writing the full term. Maybe you have seen or heard the abbreviation “TLA” (three letter acronym) because so many terms are reduced to 3 letters. Strictly speaking, TLA is an initialism, because it is pronounced as separate letters: T-L-A. An acronym is an abbreviation that is pronounced as a word. Radar and NASA are acronyms. The problem is, how does your reader know when an abbreviation is pronounced as letters and when is it a word? This is where you could help them. You could adopt the style used by, for example The [Guardian ](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a?ref=plainfinance.net)newspaper's, where initialisms are written in capital letters, and acronyms are written with an initial capital only, except where they have become so commonplace that they are all lower case (such as awol). In the finance field, this would mean VAT, IFRS, SDG and NAO would be all capitals. However, it would mean writing Cipfa, Ipsas, Issai, and Ifac. This is not how those organisations write their abbreviated names but it does make it clear to readers who are not familiar with them how to pronounce the abbreviation. I’m not telling you to make a change. The most important thing of all is consistency. Switching from CIPFA to Cipfa in the same document will confuse the reader. ### Q: How can you make your writing 50% better? URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/q-how-can/ Last updated: 2025-06-27T10:45:45.000Z A: Cut out 33% of the words. I've been reading a series of articles by Jason Zweig, a writer for the Wall Street Journal. The figures above are his. He is a strong advocate for cutting your writing. As he put it: > > The point of cutting your writing isn’t to make it shorter. The point of cutting it is to make it better. He goes so far as to outline his method for cutting words. Here it is: 1. Include everything you want to include in your draft. 2. Keep a copy of the draft for posterity. 3. Find the weakest paragraph and delete it. Then the next weakest. Do that until you can find no more weak paragraphs. 4. Next, delete the weakest sentences. 5. Then delete all the adverbs. If you choose the right verb you don't need an adverb. 6. Last, there could still be some minor nips and tucks you can make to tighten up what's left. Note that this strategy starts with a chainsaw and ends with a scalpel. In my experience as a teacher, too many people start with the scalpel, deleting a word here and there. That approach is not going to yield a dramatic improvement in the writing. Don't underestimate the power of editing. It makes all the difference in communicating your message effectively. ### Accountants need to be communicators not reporters URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/accountants-need-to/ Last updated: 2025-06-30T12:14:15.000Z [CIPFA](https://www.cipfa.org/?ref=plainfinance.net) includes communication and impact as one of the key competencies for public financial management professionals. That means developing skills in telling stories with financial data. As luck would have it, late in 2022 the World Bank published [*A Guide to Data Storytelling in the Public Sector*](https://cfrr.worldbank.org/publications/data-guide?ref=plainfinance.net). The opening chapter begins with this quotation from Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google. > The ability to take data — to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualise it, to communicate it — that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades. The Guide explains the elements of a data-driven story are: - **The Data** — processing and preparing data for analysis and communication - **The Narrative** — to communicate insights extracted from data, its context, and recommended actions - **The Language** — making the story accessible through simple and understandable language is vital when being inclusive and communicating with a diverse audience - **The Visualisation** — representations of the data and narrative to communicate the key message clearly and memorably. ### Financial reports have not changed in 30 years URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/financial-reports-have/ Last updated: 2025-06-30T12:23:49.000Z When I began working as a trainee accountant there were very few computers in the office and they were not on individuals’ desks. They were on tables because to be used on a shared basis. Most people in the Accountancy team did not use them at all. They used calculators and created spreadsheets manually on A3-sized analysis paper. And when they had to write a report or a letter or memo they did it by hand. These pages then went to a typing pool to be transformed into something neat and presentable. The top copy, on white paper, was sent off to the recipient and the yellow copy was filed away. No-one questioned that important things had to be typewritten, on paper, and stored in metal cabinets. Fast forward more than thirty years and the means of producing reports and letters is vastly different. Everyone has their own computer and smartphone. They create their own documents because there are no typing pools. They can even use their voice rather than their fingers to compose the text. And the vast majority of all these words are conveyed to their recipients in digital form. No longer is there one file copy but there could be 5 or 10 or a 100 copies held in dark data centres. It’s all so very different, and yet it’s just the same. The reports that accountants and auditors write are still formatted into A4 pages with margins. They still demand the receiver to read them ... although we all know that they probably only skim the document looking for the good bits. There are more fonts and colours available than in the days of typewriters but that is as much a curse and blessing because lots of people don’t know the first thing about effective typography and graphic design. I’m sorry to report that very many of the documents I see would be much improved if their author had been constrained to a single font and black text. (This is especially true when it comes to tables within documents, but that will have to be the subject of another article.) My point in this article, though, is to call for accountants and auditors to embrace modern technology to improve their communication. There are so many opportunities to communicate financial information that are more effective than the conventional written document. I think there are two dimensions to consider. One is the content and the second is the delivery. In terms of content, less is more. Too many of us write too much. There is the temptation to write everything we know when we should be writing only what the reader needs to know. Paper reports were comprehensive, with appendices, etc. because it was hard for the reader to find the background information. They wanted it attached so that they could refer to it. That’s not the case now. **Why include any text in your document that already exists somewhere else?** Just include a link to it. This reduces the size of a document and makes it clear to the reader what is essential (the main text) and what is incidental (the linked material). In terms of delivery, there are lots of ways to communicate these days that are better than a digital document that looks like a paper one. Let me give some examples. - **A webpage.** I don’t literally mean encoding a webpage but using one of the web-based writing apps like [Craft](https://www.linkedin.com/company/craftdocs?ref=plainfinance.net) or [Notion](https://www.notion.com/?ref=plainfinance.net). These apps create documents on the basis of blocks, which could be text, images, files, whatever. These apps are particularly focused on collaboration, allow many people to work on a document simultaneously. When you’ve finished a document you send its URL to your client/audience. They can read it in a browser on any device and, if they really want to, they can download it as a PDF. - **A presentation.** I don’t mean sending a PowerPoint file instead of Word one. A set of slides is not a presentation; a presentation requires a presenter. What I mean is record a short presentation as a video (with or without slides) and send a link. - **A podcast.** There are lots of apps for recording and editing audio so it would be fairly easy to record a verbal report. Busy people could listen to your report at times when it would not be possible to read. (To be fair, there are services now that would read a text report but no-one would do that unless the report is short because the text reader can't skip the boring bits!) - **An interactive PDF**. If you are going to use PDFs you could at least make them interactive. PDFs support hyperlinks to move around them and to link to external URLs. You could include links to background documents or you could link the data in a table directly to general ledger so that the reader/user could drill down to more detail if they wanted. PDFs also support embedded audio and video files so you could embed a video of a presentation in place of the summary of a longer report. Do you use any of these methods to communicate financial information? Or do you do something else? [Let me know](mailto:pencil.wilts.1a@icloud.com). ### Fix your line length URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/fix-the-line/ Last updated: 2025-06-30T12:34:07.000Z Here’s an instant tip to make your document easier to read. Set the margins and font-size so that the length of each line is around 65 characters. That’s two and a half alphabets. abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklm A line length of about 65 characters is optimal for reading. Lines that are much longer than this are harder to read, involving more movement of the eyes and possibly the head, too. That is why newspapers and magazines set their text into columns. Well-designed websites do, too. Unfortunately, the default template in Microsoft Word (11 point text with narrow margins) gives a line length of about 90 characters. You should fix that. I recommend you change your default document to have left and right margins of 30mm. Depending on the font you use you will need to set it to 13 points (e.g. Aptos and Arial) or 14 points (e.g. Times New Roman) to get the number of characters close to 65\. If you are creating a landscape document, unless the font size is very big you’re going to need to put the text into columns (or a table) to keep the line length reasonable, and readable. ### 3 tips to write faster URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/tips-to-write/ Last updated: 2025-06-30T12:38:05.000Z Here are three ways to write faster and make fewer mistakes. 1. **Use keyboard shortcuts.** Keeping your hands on your keyboard to do routine things like select, copy and paste text, open and close documents, apply formatting styles is much quicker than mousing to the File or Edit menus 2. **Use text expansion.** If there are phrases or sentences or paragraphs you write often it is going to save you a lot of time, and avoid typos, if you automate them. Text expander apps allow you to type a trigger phrase of just a few characters and see it replaced by the full phrase, etc. You might save yourself an hour a week or more. 3. **Use your voice.** You speak faster than you can type. Voice to text transcription is built into computers, tablets, smartphone and watches so why not use it to "write" your first drafts. You'll save a stack of time and the more you use dictation the better the software will get at transcribing what you say. ### Don’t use pie charts URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/dont-use-pie/ Last updated: 2025-06-30T12:41:40.000Z Let me explain why you should avoid pie charts — and donut charts — in most documents and presentations. Pie charts are easy to create and they’re colourful and you might want to include lots of them in the reports and slidedecks you write. But there are lots of problems with them: - they are difficult to interpret when there are more than 2 or 3 slices in the pie, especially if some of the slices are very thin - adding data labels makes them more cluttered and using a table for the data would be clearer - putting pie charts side by side does not show trends. In most cases I think you would be better off with a column or bar chart, or a table. ### Write headlines for your tables URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/write-headlines-for/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T10:40:46.000Z A picture paints a thousand words. A table of data could save you (and your reader) hundreds of words. But your table is a wasted opportunity if the reader doesn’t get your message from it. Or worse, skips over it. Here’s a tip to make the tables in your documents have more impact: **instead of giving a table a title that simply describes its content, write a headline for it that summarises what the table means.** For example, instead of "X division Q3 budget versus actual" go with "Revenue 10% above forecast in Q3." By doing this you make it easier for the reader to interpret the table and you also reinforce the message you are (presumably) making in the text. #### An added bonus If your reader is only skimming your document they can get the key message from the "headlines" you've written just like someone skimming a newspaper. In fact, just like with a newspaper, your headline might draw them in to read more. ### How to format a chart URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/how-to-format/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T10:46:25.000Z How to format a chart TIP: Remove the clutter from your charts. If you want your reader to get your message you need to make your message clear. Don’t just copy and paste a chart from Excel into a Word document or presentation. You need to format it first. Here's how. [Formatting a chartFormatting a chart.pdf2 MBdownload-circle](https://www.plainfinance.net/content/files/2025/07/Formatting-a-chart.pdf "Download") ### 3 ways to grab the reader of your finance reports. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/ways-to-grab/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T10:50:01.000Z If you want the receivers of your finance reports to read them then you need to grab their attention at the top of your document. If you fail to do that they’ll skim your report (at best) or just do something else. Here are three ways you could start a finance report that will keep the reader reading. ✅ **Make an unexpected or controversial statement** (followed by supporting evidence). If making a bold statement is too much for you, you could instead re-frame the statement as a question. We should stop making product A becomes should we stop making product A? ✅ **Use a quotation** that summarises your message. The quotation could be an epigraph from literature (or a web search) but not necessarily. A great way to start an internal audit report would be a quotation gathered in the audit fieldwork that highlights a key risk or gives assurance to the reader. ✅ **Describe an event** that has happened and why it matters to your organisation. This does not have to be a controversial event, just something that is important to the reader. ### You don’t have to use long words to be professional. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/you-dont-have/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T10:53:26.000Z I think somewhere during the journey towards a professional accounting qualification we adopt accounting-speak. Some of the words we learn are very specific, technical terms and we have to use them. I’m thinking of words like depreciation and recognition. But there is tendency amongst accountants to overwrite and use pretentious words. We write facilitate instead of manage; dialogue instead of talk about; apologise instead of say sorry. The end result is writing that is longer and more complicated than it needs to be. We do it to sound professional. We do it to justify our fees. We do it because we can. We do it because we don’t care whether our reader understands our message. I urge you, though, to cut out the ten-dollar words. Use short words. Write so that your reader gets your message. If they understand what you are telling them about money they will know you’re a professional. ### This is how I declutter tables in documents URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/this-is-how-6841b808235189001bd3c5d7/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T10:57:41.000Z When you’ve got a lot of data to include in a document it often makes sense to put it into a table. The default table style in Microsoft Word puts a fairly thick black border around every cell in the table. This is both ugly and a hindrance to your reader’s ability to read the table. To deliver your message you need to declutter your tables. In this video I show you, in under 60 seconds, how you can format a table to remove the clutter and allow your reader to focus on the data. 0:00 /1:02 1× ### Learn this simple trick to save time writing emails. EOM. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/learn-this-simple/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:46:15.000Z If you have a short message to send you can save yourself some time by putting the whole message into the subject line. This is also better for the receiver since they do not need to open the message unless/until they are going to reply to it. The trick here is to use the abbreviation **EOM** at the end of the subject line. EOM means end of message. For example: **Subject**: Please send the revised budget figures by Friday. Thanks. EOM. Or: **Subject**: For info: Latest version of Project X report. EOM ### Bad writing wastes time URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/bad-writing-wastes/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:09:47.000Z Bad writing costs your organisation a lot of money, too. A few years ago Josh Bernoff did some research into the [*Sad State of Business Writing*](https://bernoff.com/blog/new-research-on-business-writing-infographic-and-report?ref=plainfinance.net). He surveyed business people who write at work and got over 500 responses. Amongst his conclusions were these gems: - Bad writing was costing the American economy about $400 billion a year (that’s 2 per cent of GDP) - 81% of respondents said that poorly written material wasted a lot of their time - Only 38% agreed that their writing teachers at school/college prepared them well for business writing. The survey was done in 2016 in America but I’m sure you recognise this wherever you are, and whatever sector you work in. I am sure you receive emails that ramble and don’t get to the point. And people send you reports that should have been edited for length and be clearer about what action management (you?) should take. Then there are all the websites and marketing materials filled with jargon. How much of your working week is spent trying to make sense of badly written documents? Ten per cent? Twenty? If everyone in your organisation could be ten per cent more productive that would make a huge difference, wouldn’t it. So, what should you do? First, as Bernoff said: > treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. That means: 1. **When you have written something, treat it as the first draft**. Take some time to review it from the reader’s perspective and edit it accordingly. 2. **Make sure that the title of the document/subject line of the message and the first couple of sentences nail your message**. This is because people’s attention spans are short. They skim documents rather than read them deeply. Don’t bother with a flowery or obsequious introduction because the reader may not go beyond it. 3. **Write what you mean**. Cut out the jargon and management-speak. Using plain language and shorter sentences will be easier for the reader to consume. After all this, you may be thinking that you’re a good writer even if you see problems in what other people read. Well, first: do you have any evidence that you are a good writer? Perhaps you should ask for some feedback. Second, if you really are a good writer, what can you do in your organisation to improve the standard of writing by your colleagues? Because if you can improve the overall standard of writing it will give your organisation a serious boost of productivity. ### Accountants overcomplicate everything URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/accountants-overcomplicate-everything/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:11:47.000Z Richard Feynman said, > If you can't explain something to a first year student, then you haven't really understood. Feynman was talking about physics but I think the same sentiment applies to accounting and finance. Except, instead of a first year student you should be able to explain finance to a non-financial manager. If your audience is not made up of qualified accountants you need to use simpler language. With a non-financial manager you can’t hide behind terminology like amortisation and volume variance. The manager might think or pretend they know what those terms mean because accountants have been using them but can you be sure that they actually do? Much better to explain what you mean in simple terms. I think this advice applies whether you are writing a report about a new proposal or giving a presentation about the balance sheet. One way would be to talk about the balance sheet in terms of what it really means for your organisation. If you use phrases like non-current assets and contingent liabilities you deserve people stop listening! Lastly, invite the audience to ask questions about anything they don’t understand. That way you will both be able to learn something. ### 3 ways to make your writing clear and concise URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/ways-to-make/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:15:38.000Z You’ve read many times the advice to keep your writing clear and concise. But how do you do that? Here are three things you can do on your next piece of writing. **First it means being a brutal editor of your work.** Re-read your work before you “publish” it. For each sentence ask yourself, can I delete this whole sentence. If you can’t delete it, could say the same thing in fewer words? “Please send me the data by Friday” is 11 words shorter than “I would be grateful if you could send the data to me by close of business on Friday.” Second, **remove the adverbs.**\*\* Adverbs are words that modify or describe a verb. Most of them (not all) end in -ly. Often you can both shorten a sentence and make it clearer by replacing the verb and adverb combination with a more accurate (and often more expressive) verb. For example, instead of “manage effectively” you could have command or supervise or regulate or execute or succeed, depending what your intended message is. Third, **don't say the same thing with different words**. If so you can delete at least one word. Here are some examples: - global pandemic - new innovation - close proximity - in my opinion, I think that - necessary requirement - added bonus. After taking out unnecessary sentences, adverbs and repetitions you will have a much more concise document. Give it a try. ### Writing tip: short not shallow. URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/writing-tip-short/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:23:34.000Z Your reader has limited time. Do them a favour with your emails and reports and keep them as short as possible. If a document is short (it fits onto 1 page or 1 screen) the reader can read it and remember what you want them to remember. If you include everything in your email or document (all the context and your reasons for writing it, etc.) there’s a risk they will **remember nothing**. This is because they either won’t read it at all, or they’ll skim it looking for the important parts. That they’ll likely miss. You need to know what matters to the reader and include only that in what you write. You could do this by adopting the rules of Axios’s Smart Brevity™ method: 📍 **Stop being selfish.** Write for the reader, not for you. 📍 **Grab their attention.** Put the most important thing first so the reader remembers it. 📍**Write like a human.** Use the words you would use talking to a friend, not jargon. 📍**Stay scannable.** Use white space and bullets rather than large blocks of text. 📍**Enough is enough.** Leave out everything you don’t need and write as few words as possible. It would be pretty easy to create your own templates for reports and emails you write regularly. I’m sure your clients, managers and colleagues would appreciate receiving smarter and briefer communications from you. ### Four alternatives to boring audit reports URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/four-alternatives-to/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:28:33.000Z The technology for writing internal audit reports has changed since I wrote my first one in 1987 but not the content or structure. I wrote my first audit reports in the 1980s by hand and they were then copied by a typist before being sent to the client. Modern technology hasn’t done much more than remove the typist from the process. But internal audit reports don’t have to be a mass of text with the occasional table. Internal audit standards don’t say auditors have to write a report; they say auditors have to communicate their findings. Here are some better ways to do that, using more of the power of the computers we have and not just typing out text in Microsoft Word. 📄 **Webpages**. Use [Notion](https://www.notion.so/?ref=plainfinance.net) or [Craft](https://craft.do/?ref=plainfinance.net)or a similar web-based app that allows documents to be created from blocks. The most basic block is text but the apps allow for other webpages, media, files, databases, calendars and all sorts of things to be embedded into a document. It also has ‘toggle headings’ where the content can be shown or hidden at the click of disclosure triangle. Apps like this are great for collaboration so audit team members could all contribute to a report. It also makes it easy for audit managers to review reports before they are issued. Once ready, all that needs to be sent to the client is the URL. They would get an interactive document that looks just as great on a smartphone as it does on a computer 0r large screen. ℹ️ **Infographics**. One way to shorten audit reports is to replace all that text by images and charts. Probably the best way to implement this approach would be to have templates created for the common outputs that can be quickly completed by audit team members. 📺 **Video**. This could be an internal auditor talking direct to camera or a recording of a short slide presentation. A lot more information can be conveyed by the auditor without resorting to creating a slide deck of (boring) bullet-points. 🎤 **Audio**. It’s a video without the pictures. It’s a much smaller file to send. You can make them on your phone. What’s stopping you from adopting any of these? ### Warm up before you write URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/warm-up-before/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:30:18.000Z Top performers warm up before they perform. This goes for writers as well as athletes and singers. John Steinbeck wrote with Black Wing pencils on yellow pads. He started the day sharpening his pencils and writing letters. I’m sure the letters mattered to him and their addressees but this was how he warmed-up for his real writing. I’ve told this to countless students when discussing my expectations of their essays. I tell them because I know many of them will approach their essay in a totally different way. They will open a blank Word document, type their chosen essay’s title and begin writing. What they write at first is their reasons for choosing the essay topic and/or the context of the essay. Eventually they get to the point (well, to be honest, some of them never get to the point!) The reason I tell my students the story is to encourage them that, almost certainly, they can delete their opening paragraphs and end up with a better essay. I’m telling you this for the same reason. Next time you write a long narrative (a report or a client letter or email, say) re-read it before you send it. Chances are you can delete your opening and improve it. Your audience will thank you for getting to the point sooner. ### Leaders need to be good writers URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/leaders-need-to/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:33:38.000Z Recently I read [an article by Adam Bryant](https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Leaders-need-to-be-good-writers-too?ref=plainfinance.net), a former editor at the *New York Times*, in which he explained that an effective manager requires strong written communication skills. Two of the biggest traps to avoid are: ❌ **Treating writing as different from speaking**. Don’t use words and sentences in your written communication that you would not use in speech. ❌ **Writing as if your audience is as much of an expert in the subject as you are.** You need to approach communication from the audience’s point of view and write in a way that means they understand your message. Bryant was writing about leaders in general but I’m sure these two tips are just as relevant to anyone working in finance. Indeed, if you are in a junior role and have aspirations to be a leader then now is the time to develop your writing skills, not after you’ve got a leadership role. ### 3 ways to make your writing clearer (in 3 minutes) URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/ways-to-make-6841b808235189001bd3c5e1/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:50:25.000Z Over the holidays I came across an article by Jane Rosenzweig in the *Harvard Business Review* that happens to have been translated by HBR into this short video. If you like this video why not follow Jane Rosenzweig’s [Writing Hacks on Substack](https://writinghacks.substack.com/). ### How to make your writing more concise URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/perfection/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:44:36.000Z > Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. You’ve read many times the advice to keep your writing clear and concise. You get concise sentences when you take out the words you don’t need. But how do you do that? First it means being a brutal editor of your work. Re-read your work before you “publish” it. For each sentence ask yourself if you could say the same thing in fewer words. Are there jargon words you could replace? Are there adverbs to remove? Often the best way to do this is to replace the verb and adverb combination with a more accurate verb. For example, instead of walk slowly you could have dawdle or amble or creep. Have you said the same thing with different words (tautology is the technical term from the Greek for same words)? Here are some examples: - innocent bystander - global pandemic - new innovation - close proximity - in my opinion, I think that … - necessary requirement - added bonus After taking out jargon, adverbs and tautologies you will have a much more concise document or email or whatever. Try it the next time you write something PS. The quotation at the top is by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (the guy who wrote *The Little Prince*). ### Less is more (influential) URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/less-is-more-influential/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:43:14.000Z Last week I wrote that perfection comes from including only the essential. Let me explain one way to apply that thinking to an audit report or similar (as taught to me when I worked at a Big Four firm). Let’s say that the work being reported has identified 10 issues. Naturally some of those will be more significant or important than others. One approach may be to list all 10 issues as findings with reasons/evidence, implications and recommendations. To be more convincing convincing you might list them in descending order of significance. This seems a persuasive way of reporting the findings. The trouble is, the items at the bottom of the list (or several pages into it) are weak, either because the implications of the findings are \*relatively\* trivial and/or the evidence behind the findings is not as strong. This relative weakness gives the recipient of the report an opportunity to be critical. They could resist the inclusion of those findings, either explicitly or implicitly. This can then result in their view of the overall report being diminished, potentially to the point where they can justify to themselves that the report can be ignored. What my audit partner taught me was to include only the strongest handful of findings and recommendations. That way, the one at the bottom of the list is still significant and well-evidenced, making the whole report more impactful. If you feel that the minor items must be included in the report consider putting them in an appendix. That way they are reported but you are signalling to the reader that they are not essential to understanding the report’s main message(s). ### Add a touch of Hemingway to your next finance report URL: https://www.plainfinance.net/hemingway-finance-report/ Last updated: 2025-07-03T11:48:32.000Z What did the authors Raymond Chandler, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway have in common? Well, aside from being American, they all had a writing style that was direct; they did not waste words. Sometimes I like to read a book with a lyrical style but for the most part I prefer the direct style of Chandler and co. When it comes to writing financial reports I encourage you to adopt a plain, direct style. If you do not then, at best, your reports will be over-written and, at worst, you will obfuscate the message you are trying to communicate. (I suppose I should, on that basis, permit over-writing if your intention is to obfuscate!) It is easy to fall into the trap of over-writing. When I first qualified as an accountant I wrote letters that included phrases like “I would be grateful to receive your remittance at your earliest convenience.” Now I would write, “please pay promptly,” or, better, replace promptly by a deadline date. This is much easier to understand, and takes fewer words, too. None of us are in the league of Nobel prize-winning authors but we can improve through practice. When we write something of any length we can always read over it with a view to simplify it. These days we can also use technology to help us. Recently I came across a web service called [Hemingway](http://hemingwayapp.com/?ref=plainfinance.net). All you need to do is paste the text you have written into Hemingway and it will assess the reading age needed to understand it and highlight sentences that are long and complicated, and words that can be replaced by simpler words. If you’re interested, the first draft of this post had a reading age of Grade 10, 5 of its 17 sentences were hard to read, and 3 sentences were very hard to read. Using the app I fixed four of those problem sentences and got down to Grade 8. If you want some help to improve your writing it is worth checking out [Hemingwayapp.com](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/?ref=plainfinance.net). As well as the free web version, you can pay for a desktop version for Windows or macOS. ![Hemingwayapp screenshot](https://storage.ghost.io/c/4d/c2/4dc2d052-c0cb-41f5-a756-3f3ca51d7333/content/images/2025/06/hemingwayapp-screenshot.png)