How to write quality content that readers understand

Strong medical writing isn’t just about accurately representing the facts – it’s important to focus on enhancing the quality of your writing and targeting your niche audience with helpful, useful and well-written content.

Writing quality content starts with improving the quality of thought

In the powerful essay,  ‘The Science of Scientific Writing‘, published in American Scientist back in 1990, authors Gopen and Swan wrote:

“Most people assume the difficulties many people have in reading medical writing are born out of necessity. Out of the extreme complexity of scientific concepts, data and analysis.”

The authors then went on to argue a very important point.

Improving the quality of writing improves the quality of thought. This, in turn, results in reader clarity.

This idea is a simple yet often overlooked principle of excellent writing.

Focus on improving the quality of your writing – not only on producing work that is factually correct – and you have a better chance of creating reader engagement.

How to write quality content: Strong vs weak writing

Strong, convincing writing involves:

• Writing with the intended audience in mind
• Writing clearly, with focus and direction
• Making a great first impression
• Showing an understanding of research and the body of evidence
• Correct spelling, grammar and punctuation
• Writing compliant health promotional materials (if applicable).

On the contrary, weak health and medical writing is:

• Hard to read – formatting/display as well as content and spelling/grammar
• Difficult to understand – lack of focus and direction
• Unclear – lacking confidence or overall positioning
• Unnecessarily complicated – vocabulary, long sentences, complex medical terminology
• Misleading – not representing the research or context adequately.

How to write quality content: Focus on reader clarity

When you’re writing medical content, don’t just focus on the facts and the evidence. Consider how you can improve the quality of your writing, starting with the basics:

• Learn how to write complete, grammatically correct sentences
• Study your own writing and know your strengths and weaknesses
• Know your intended audience – who are they, and how can you help them?
• Read other people’s writing – study industry best practices
• Listen to feedback and criticism, and learn from it
• Become an expert in your subject matter
• Quote health experts in your writing
• Be confident – believe in your skills
• Be original – focus on producing unique health content
• Study the craft of writing – as a writer, your learning journey is never ‘done’
• Stick to the typical formula of the type of content you’re writing (eg medical news, health feature, patient handout)
• Use evidence and detail to back up your points.

You can check out Health Writer Hub’s blog category on health writing skills for more writing tips.

 Writing coherently and concisely

Don’t forget to sharpen your writing during the editing process. Consider:

• Tense use
  • Present – generalisations, scientific facts, statements made by you as a writer
  • Past – used to report/describe past research findings
  • Present perfect (a past event that has present consequences), ie “Studies which have explored xxxx include … “
• Avoid vague words
  • Nouns (issue, thing, situation)
• Replace phrases with single words
  • “The medical writers ate their lunches” not “The group of medical writers ate their lunches”
• Use fewer words
  • “Because” or “as” instead of “due to the fact that”
• Avoid groups of words which mean the same thing
  • “Separate” instead of “separate out”
  • “In retrospect” instead of “looking back in retrospect”
• Avoid saying the same thing twice
  • “Evaluating these hypotheses would require further testing and additional research”
• Avoid awkward phrasing
  • “There are several theories, all of which have been put forward by …”
  • “Several theories have been put forward by…”
• Get a second pair of eyes, like Grammarly or Hemingway

What are some of your best tips on how to write quality content? Let us know in the comments.