Clarity
of purpose; content that's relevant to that purpose.
Be clear about
what you're trying to achieve. Try to include only what is relevant
to your purpose - and nothing more - just as in everyday life, we
should not be devious about our motives; nor should we belabor or
mislead people with extraneous words or actions.
Arrangement
and coherence; readability/listenability; economy.
Arrange your subject
matter in a reasonable order that reflects your thought processes;
provide signals that make the nature of the arrangement clear to the
reader/listener.
Make your communications
easy to read (or listen to). Eliminate ambiguity so that the readers/listeners
can easily - effortlessly, in fact - interpret your sentences and
discern the relationship between one piece and the next and between
each piece and the whole, so that all of their attention and mental
energy are saved for the message itself.
Strive for economy
- that is, optimal use of the resources of the language. Never repeat
without a purpose; use no more words than are necessary to fulfill
the speaker/writer's aims and the audience's needs.
All of these characteristics
- arrangement and coherence; readability/listenability; and economy
- reflect the principle that we should refrain from making unnecessary
or inappropriate demands on the time and attention of other people.
Appropriateness
of style and word choice.
Good communication
selects those items of vocabulary and those grammatical forms that
are appropriate to the audience's sensibilities, the writer/speaker's
purpose, and the type and topic of communication - just as in life,
we should try, to the extent possible, to make other people comfortable
by accommodating ourselves to their expectations and preferences.
