Selected Tips for WOVE Communication

Written Communication

• Motivate your readers early by engaging them with a worthwhile question, problem, or issue.
• Provide a meaningful title and subdivide your writing with reader-oriented headings.
• Organize your writing to prove a point, not just talk about a topic.
• Give details you can touch, see, hear, smell, taste—a concrete world readers can experience.
• Conclude by summarizing key points, returning to your thesis, or engaging readers in a key example, then ending with a short, dramatic sentence to clinch your main point.

Oral Communication

• Say upfront why you’re speaking and why the audience should care.
• Keep the structure simple and give the audience key words as anchors.
• Rehearse and rehearse until you become comfortable with both your message and your body.
• Make facial expressions, gestures, body language, and tone of voice show that you value your subject and genuinely want to share ideas with your audience
• Conclude with confidence and clarity, focusing on your audience.

Visual Communication

• Use visuals to tell a story and involve your readers.
• Caption your visuals to integrate them with the text.
• Cite your sources.
• Modify your visuals to fit your purpose: resize, crop, frame, contrast.
• Use consistent color, line, and shape to create visual coherence.

Electronic Communication

• Invite interactivity.
• Edit electronic text for quick, efficient communication.
• Enrich the user’s experience with multimedia layers.
• Simplify the interface to help users make quick, wise choices.
• Think in terms of multisensory experience.