Rules are meant to be broken

So we’ve had lots of posts in the past month or so talking about communicating in writing. Tips, techniques, and “rules” — things that I do anyway that work for me.

So, all of that said, rules are always meant to be broken (I may have issues with authority).

These rules are made for breaking

But, regarding writing, you should always be sure when you aren’t following the rules of convention of your organization that you are actually breaking them, as in intentionally, not just ignoring them out of ignorance.

You can break the familiarity rule in writing intentionally and with powerful effect. If what you are writing about is different — perhaps radically different — from the norm, you may want your style and format to reflect that difference. You can use this approach to say to your readers even before they open your document that what’s between the covers is different and powerful, something to which they’ll want to pay great attention.

Bending the appearance rules is often effective

You can do this in small ways, such as with color or choice and layout of type on the page.

For example, if you work for a financial company that is trying to attract a new clientele for its electronic services, you might choose to write your technology proposal in a sans serif font with more vibrant colors in the report to contrast with the staid colors and serifed fonts of their usual internal documents.

You can also do this in big ways, such as by preparing an all-electronic multimedia document rather than a paper artifact.

Don’t go overboard

No matter what you do though, in general you don’t want to torment the rules, just bend them gently.

You probably wouldn’t ever want to depart from standard usage and punctuation rules, for example, in a technical document (e. e. cummings was successful, but he didn’t work in the documentation department at Celera Genomics). And remember that your goal is to communicate, so don’t get so absorbed in being new and different that you leave your audience confused and suspicious.

Their way first, then yours

In general depart from the norm only infrequently, when it really matters, and only after you’ve demonstrated a clear command of the usual way of doing things.