Rather in same way that many people read magazines in dentists’ waiting rooms, they will flick through brochures and leaflets and stop to take a longer look at bits that grab their attention. Alternatively they’ll flick all way through and then go back to bits they’ve noticed and that have interested them. They’re just as likely to flick through from back to front as they are from front to back.

What all this teaches us is that despite seeming logical, writing for brochures and leaflets in form of a story that starts at beginning, goes through middle and finishes at end, is not necessarily best way forward. Obviously you can’t make every page stand alone with a message on it that says “in case you’re flicking through backwards or only want to read this page, here’s a summary of our corporate profile again.”

But there are some tricks you can use to get this random reading pattern to work a bit more effectively for you, rather than against you.

A lot depends on type and style of brochure or leaflet you want to write, of course. In my experience, generally speaking more specific purpose of a brochure or leaflet more likely readers are to read it properly and thoroughly.

If a leaflet contains assembly instructions, or a brochure contains technical specifications of equipment, there’s a good chance that readers will start at least near beginning and then work through towards end.

Once again, that’s because readers will only get their full value from leaflet or brochure – “what’s in it for them” – by reading it properly. Where you get worst random grasshopper reading, however, is with less specific documents like “welcome” leaflets or “corporate” brochures. So let’s look at how we can minimize problems with those.

Despite all of above, often it is still worthwhile to organize your content in a reasonably logical order. Many people do absorb brochures in usual order, and even if they don’t they still expect to find introduction at beginning, substantiations in middle and conclusion at end. This approach is useful for moderately subject-specific document, like a leaflet about a new service or a brochure about a new line of garden furniture.

The trick here is to put main points in as crossheadings (some people call them sub-headings) in bold type, so that someone scanning document will get gist of your message even if they don’t have time to read body text.

You should also ensure that crossheadings make sense in their own right and that understanding them is not wholly dependent on their being read in any particular order. Body text should support and expand on each crossheading and lead reader towards next one, but without creating a “cliffhanger” (in case reader is going in wrong order).

For more general subject matter – most likely to be skimmed, scanned, flicked through, read upside down or otherwise not absorbed properly at all - here’s some advice from US writer John Butman from “Writing Words That Sell” which he and I co-authored some years back. This is what John calls “chunking:”

“Chunking means that story you are writing is not, in fact, a story at all … it doesn’t have a sequential flow. It’s a string of tiny stories, each with its own message. Each chunk is relatively separate and each page or page-spread is also reasonably separate. This approach means that you need to be careful about antecedents – you can’t refer to something mentioned on page one, because reader may have started reading on page twelve.”

I find that John’s “chunking” approach works particularly well when there is a lot of visual material, with “chunks” of text acting almost like expanded captions to illustrations. With “chunking” you may also use crossheadings, but their importance in telling story by themselves is not as critical. Crossheadings here, then, can be more cryptic or abstract provided that they are relevant.

And a quick word about style, particularly if you are writing a “corporate” brochure or leaflet: this medium, equalled only (perhaps) by “corporate” website is most prone to suffer from curse of “corporate speak.” Sadly it would be very easy for me to illustrate what I mean just by including excerpts here from corporate brochures I could find in offices of both small and large companies based in city where I live. The curse of “corporate speak” lurks everywhere regardless of environment, rather like cold viruses or headlice.

Catalogues

Many people fail to realize that catalogues should be written. Often their objective in creating a catalogue is to cram in as many products as they can with descriptive copy kept to a few mis-spelled words in tiny type squashed into a corner. These people are on-paper equivalent of “stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” species you encounter in retailing.

However in a retail environment customers can usually pick up products, have a good look at them, read on-pack copy and find out all they need to know, so fact that they’re in a no-frills environment doesn’t matter too much.

When a product is pictured in small, two-dimensional environment of printed page it’s not only no-frills but also very lonely, unless product has support of some well-chosen words to inform readers and encourage them to buy it.

Considering that for many businesses and other organizations their catalogue is their only shop window – or at least represents, potentially, a very significant revenue stream – you would think that everyone’s attention and skill would be focused on its written content as much as its other elements. But no.

All too often catalogues look as though their copy has been written by a well-meaning secondary/high school pupil who can look forward to a glorious future as a street sweeper.

Yes, of course some products that get sold via a catalogue do not need a lot of description and only words you need to include are choice of colours/sizes/quantities etc. But what about “how to order” messages?

I don’t know about you, but if I’m thinking of buying something from a catalogue there’s nothing that puts me off faster than having to spend a lot of time figuring out how to fill out form, who to make cheque out to and where to mail it, etc.