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WRITING TO CLIENTS

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IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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Prepared and presented to

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Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario

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by:

RYAN STANDIL
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Write to Excite
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2016
 WRITING TO CLIENTS
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IN THE 21 CENTURY

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DISCLAIMER

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This course material deals with complex matters and may not apply to particular facts and
circumstances. As well, the course material and the references contained therein reflect laws

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and practices which are subject to change. For these reasons, the course material should not
be relied upon as a substitute for specialized professional advice in connection with any

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particular matter.

Although the course material has been carefully prepared, neither the Chartered Professional
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Accountants of Ontario, the course author, and/or firm, nor any persons involved in the
preparation and/or instruction of the material accepts any legal responsibility for its contents or
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for any consequences arising from its use.

For the purpose of the course material, any reference to CAs or members is intended to refer to
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both the CA and the CPA designation.

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COPYRIGHT © Ryan Standil, Write to Excite

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication/course material may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (photocopying, electronic,
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mechanical, recording or otherwise)

Printed and bound in Canada, 2016

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RELEASE OF COPYRIGHT FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES

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The following pages may contain a few articles discussing various issues which may be of
interest to the participants. Although this material is by no means conclusive, these articles were
felt to be fairly representative of the major topics.
 Writing to Clients
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in the 21 Century

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Presenter: Ryan Standil

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ryan.standil@writetoexcite.com
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 Handout 1 – The Guiding Principle

In the 21st Century, clients constantly face distractions when they read. Buzzing
cell phones, daydreams, and conversations within earshot all compete for our
clients’ precious attention. If our writing does not grab a client’s attention, then
something else will.

Most often, clients have trouble paying attention when they have to read the
same sentence more than once. When clients are forced to reread material, they

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lose patience with the writer and may even question the writer’s expertise.

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Today’s program will explain how to keep a client’s attention.

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The terms “client” and “reader” will be used interchangeably.

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Today’s guiding principle is:
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Readers Should Never have to Read a Sentence More Than Once
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 Handout 2 – Use Examples

The clearest way to explain something is by way of example.

Read the memo below on physicians and patients, and then we will draw the
analogy to accounting:

When a physician or hospital recognizes that an error has occurred, the issue arises as

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to whether there is a legal duty to disclose this to the patient. Guidance may be found in

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the jurisprudence on disclosure for informed consent, where the Supreme Court of
Canada requires disclosure of material risks to patients. The case law suggests that

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errors which do not materially affect patients or their care may not have to be disclosed.

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Consider the situation where a surgeon drops a surgical instrument on the floor, but then

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immediately inspects it for damage, re-sterilizes it, and decides that it is ready for further
use. It is not clear that a patient in such circumstances must be informed of the error. On
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those types of occasions, the way instruments are handled and exchanged during
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surgery may have to be reviewed for avoidance of repetition, but, since the outcome and
risks of the surgery were not affected, and no injury to the patient resulted, disclosure
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may not be required.

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 Handout 3 – Repeat a Word from the Previous Sentence

To make your writing easy to read, you should repeat, near the beginning of a
sentence, some of the content of the previous sentence. When repeating the
content, you may use either the same words or an easily recognizable substitute.

The following example is helpful.

Original Paragraph:

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Some astonishing questions about the universe have been raised by

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scientists exploring black holes in space. The collapse of a dead star into
a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates a black hole. So much

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matter compressed into so little volume changes the fabric of space

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around the point in profoundly puzzling ways.

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Revised Paragraph:

Some astonishing questions about the universe have been raised by

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scientists exploring black holes in space. A black hole is created by the
collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble.
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Around the point, the fabric of space is changed in profoundly puzzling
ways, because so much matter has been compressed into so little volume.
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Look how much smoother the revised paragraph is. That’s because of the
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placement of the repeated words. Namely, in the revised paragraph:

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• the words “black hole(s)” appear in the first sentence and again near the
beginning of the second sentence, and
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• the word “point” appears in the second sentence and again near the
beginning of the third sentence.
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Compare the revised paragraph to the original paragraph, where the repeated
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words were near the end of the sentences.

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Much of the content for this page was taken from “Forget the Wind-Up and Make the Pitch”, by
John I. Laskin