How to write about numbers and facts: an excerpt from "Clearly, Understandably" - a new book by Maxim Ilyakhov

Comparison

There are facts and numbers that we meet every day, so we understand without problems - we have something to compare with. For example, meter eighty is a tall person. Everyone knows this, because in our life we talked about it: “He is one meter eighty! Healthy!"

And there are facts that do not apply to our daily life or work. For example, if I tell you that a camera has a sensitivity of 128,000, then for most people it will be meaningless thousands. This is a fact, but it does not make it clearer.

When it comes to such facts, you can directly give the reader something to compare with: "The maximum sensitivity of 128,000 is 10 times more sensitive than the previous generation model."

Sometimes it takes a long time to introduce the reader to the situation, so that he learns to compare the required numbers. Here's an example from corporate life. Imagine that you are working in the training department of a large company - say, a manufacturer of household chemicals. The training department is responsible for ensuring that employees know how to work: they know the products, communicate with customers correctly, and do not violate safety practices.

You have an annual performance report for the entire company. You speak:

In the past year, we have launched 20 new courses.

Impressive? No? But it is not clear, because we do not know how much it is - 20 courses. If your colleagues from other departments did not follow the fate of the training, these 20 courses do not tell them anything either. Is it a lot or a little? Good or bad?

It seems like a fact, but not a fact …

To make it clearer, you need to give the reader a foothold: what do these 20 courses compare to?

A year ago, our employees could only be trained in three areas. One course was on our products. The other two are occupational safety and health. This means that if you had to learn something at work, you had to learn yourself by asking colleagues or poking around on the website.

During the year, we revised all the old courses and launched 20 new ones. Now you can learn any skill for the job, from the basics

chemistry to foreign languages. This is more than any company in our industry. And it's free for our employees.

Comparison is especially important in the media when authors write about large numbers. As soon as it comes to hundreds of millions, billions and trillions of rubles, it becomes difficult for the reader to understand these values. For him, that 10 billion, that 10 trillion - just abstract huge money. These values must be compared with something. Here is an example from a Tinkoff magazine article on pensions:

In 2017, Russia earned 5.8 trillion rubles from oil and gas. Is it a lot or a little? How to see …

You can compare this amount with the sum of all payments for pensions, benefits and other social affairs from the Pension Fund of Russia. The Pension Fund of Russia paid 8, 2 trillion rubles that year - 1, 4 times more than we earned from oil.

But we pay pensions from the fund, to which we make contributions ourselves. In 2017, we collected 4.5 trillion rubles in the fund, which is almost half what is actually needed to pay pensions. The remaining 3, 7 trillion we take from the "oil budget".

For comparison, the most expensive yacht in the world, according to 2017, costs 0.3 trillion rubles. And an ultra-expensive watch for 36 million is 0, 000 036 trillion rubles. How many hours and yachts do you need to subtract and divide up so that everyone has enough for retirement?

Scripts

In advertising, the facts themselves are not so important. Much more important is what the buyer can do with these facts. In another way, what is the use of them. This is the scenario: the answer to the question "How will the reader use this?"

Remember our camera: so what if it has a sensitivity of 128,000? So what if this is 10 times more than previous models? What's up with this client?

At ISO 128,000, the camera will produce crisp, detailed images even at night, under streetlights and candlelight. In this mode, it is convenient to shoot night landscapes, gatherings by the fire and family holidays by candlelight. Suitable for recording club concerts and shooting fireworks.

Scripts are easy to enter using customers as actors: what can our customers do with our strengths? How do they behave? How and when do they contact us? Here are examples of scenarios from different areas:

The hotel's restaurant is open 24/7 so that our guests can order delicious hot food even in the middle of the night after a tiring flight.
Dry cleaning works from 08:00 to 23:00: our clients bring their things in the morning before work, and pick them up the next day after work.
Delivery of equipment in Moscow in two hours: if during the filming you need additional lenses or lamps, call us and we will immediately dispatch a courier.
Monitor with a resolution of 6K: it is comfortable to deal with photo and video processing, editing or designing on this one.
Two independent microphone arrays help suppress background noise up to 45 dB: you can comfortably sleep on the plane or listen to music on the train without being distracted by background noise.
The bimetallic crown is suitable for cutting on metal, tiles, drywall, wood and concrete.

Is it really necessary to chew every fact like that? Of course no. This must be done under two conditions: we want these facts to “light up” images in the reader's head; by themselves, these facts do not "ignite" anything.

Imagine that we are working in a company that connects people to the Internet in Krasnodar (such companies are called Internet providers). We installed new equipment, and now we can give people the Internet speed not 400 megabits, but two and a half times more - 1 gigabit. For us, this is a technological breakthrough, we are the first in the city with such a speed.

We can make an advertisement with the following text:

The fastest internet in Krasnodar: honest gigabit straight to your apartment.

This ad will resonate with two categories of people: IT people and people who are trying to choose the most expensive for themselves. We will place advertisements in the "Luxurious Krasnodar" magazine and on the forums of Krasnodar IT specialists. So the right people will have the right pictures in their heads.

The rest of the people will be puzzled by this ad: “Why should I go even faster? Everything is pretty fast for me already. For them, you need to come up with a scenario when they really need gigabits. Something like this:

Mom is watching the series in 4K. The kid is streaming in 4K. Dad is watching sports in 4K. The cat is Skype in 4K. Nothing slows down. This is how honest gigabit from K-Telecom works.

This can be expressed in text, filmed video, draw a diagram. The main thing is to convey to people the scenario when such a connection speed will be useful to them.

Rounding for clarity

Sometimes you have to work with numbers like 32, 5%, 26, 9%, 14 minutes, 28 minutes, 248,010 rubles and the like. The problem is that such numbers are difficult to decipher. The reader must see the number, break it down into digits, read it, compare it with something - and only then, perhaps, he will understand it.

If this is not financial statements, but just an article to understand the situation, it is useful to round such numbers to the nearest clear designation:

32, 5%; 34%	third, every third, one in three
24, 9%; 26, 1%	quarter, every fourth, one in four
18%; 22%	fifth part, every fifth
14 minutes; 17 minutes	quarter of an hour
28 minutes; 32 minutes	half an hour
56 minutes	hour
248 420	quarter of a million
510 801	half a million
1 495 430	a million and a half
985 784 090	billion

Here we round the number to the nearest verbal designation: every fifth, quarter, third, half, three quarters and the like. We sacrifice mathematical precision, but we win in clarity: “billion” is much easier to remember than “985-something-million”.

How much it is permissible to round off is a debatable question and depends on the task of the reader. For example, in a popular finance magazine, I can round off like this:

It was. The company's share that day was sold for $ 109.79, and the total capitalization reached a record $ 10,019,818681.

It has become. The company's share was sold for almost $ 110 that day, and the total capitalization reached a record 10 trillion. This is more than the shares of all other companies in the industry combined.

But, if the magazine is intended for specialists, where people check with quotes and read analytics, I would no longer be scattering numbers.

Or I'm writing a story about a trip to Milan on an important matter. It so happened that I recorded all the events of the trip to the nearest minute, so I have the following lines in my notes:

Train from the airport to Centrale station: 1 hour 09 minutes. Waiting in line for a taxi: 11 minutes. The road to such-and-such square: 8 minutes.

In the text, I will not bombard the reader with these facts. I will write in a much simpler way:

You can get from the airport to Milan train station in an hour by train. It goes with several stops, the cars are not the cleanest, and the contingent is different, so keep an eye on things.

When you arrive at the station, go out to the square and follow the signs to the taxi - there you will have to wait ten minutes in line, but you will get into an official, clean and safe car. It took me an hour and a half to get from the airport to such-and-such square.

Not the most interesting story, but understandable thanks to the rounding. An hour, half an hour, ten minutes, an hour and a half - it is easy for us to work with these values.

Make it easy for the reader.

The book is dedicated to communication - the art of conveying your thoughts and ideas to the audience. Maxim Ilyakhov tells how to tune the reader to the perception of information and turn a boring text into an exciting one, how to use examples, analogies and metaphors, as well as diagrams and illustrations. “Clear, understandable” will be very useful to everyone who writes letters and creates presentations, sells and educates.