Make better documents

Anil Dash distills recurring advice he gives people about making everyday business documents — resumes, reports, budgets, slide decks — more effective. His framing: we almost never explicitly teach people how to use the ordinary tools of business communication, so most working documents are worse than they need to be.

The piece runs through ten practical rules. Start from empathy: know your audience and their context, and open from shared ground rather than a defensive preamble. On formatting, restraint is the theme — use bold sparingly, italics rarely, never underlines, and at most one or two colors or fonts. Over-formatting signals the author doesn't know what matters. White space is never wasted; bullet points aid skimming; clip art and stock photos are visual noise.

Structure advice: front-load your most important points (lists imply priority; explicitly say if ordering is chronological), state conclusions up front rather than building dramatic tension, provide outlines and consistent wayfinding so readers can navigate, and close by restating shared mission to give the audience confidence you have their interests in mind.

On process: learn your tools well enough to apply consistent styles (inconsistent formatting makes audiences hunt for meaning that isn't there), constrain questions to answerable choices rather than open-ended philosophical prompts, and name files with the recipient's future search in mind — include your name, date, and topic, avoiding names like "Meeting with Sam" or _final_final suffixes.