How much thought goes into the documents you create? If you get the feeling that some of your work products are bloated, take a look at our latest article on over-doing it when creating a document.

When you create a document, do you include a cover page? Formal header and footer? Appendices? This sounds pretty standard, right? However, do you actually need to include all of these things in EVERY document? Probably not.

I’m not advocating lowering the standards of your work products. The point I’m trying to make is that before you create a document, you should determine what you need to include based on what you are trying to accomplish. Why does it matter? What harm could a few extra pages do? Here are some of the possible consequences:

• Miss your deadline - If you get caught up too much in extra sections when you don’t need to, it is easy to miss your deadline. Before you know it, your work is due and all you have is a table of contents and a cover page.

• Your point is missed - By including unnecessary sections in your document, you may make your main point unclear to your audience. This basically defeats the purpose of writing the document in the first place.

• Forget important content - This is another pitfall; You might forget important content that you didn’t have time to focus on because of these unnecessary additions. You need to make sure all of your base content is there and then worry about the extras.

Now that we’ve established the consequences, how do you go about avoiding them? This is a tough question as the answer is very dependent on your situation. However, here are some questions to ask yourself when creating your document:

• Who is your audience? - This can be the deal breaker. Are you writing for a co-worker or for a client? In general, you want to keep it very formal when writing for a client. If it’s a co-worker, you might not have to get so formal. This isn’t always the case, but it’s definitely something to consider.

• Is it really necessary? - This is a question you should ask yourself before you include a section (such as an appendix). A good example of this would be a table of contents. If you’re writing a two page document, do you really need a table of contents? Most likely not. If you can’t answer a definitive “Yes” to this question, you’re probably better off leaving this section out.

• Does it make your point clearer? - Another big concern of yours should be to make sure that everything that you add to your document makes your point clearer. Using the table of contents example above, if you add it, will it make your document easier to navigate? If you add an appendix, does it make your information easier to understand? These are the questions you should be asking.

Remember this: How much you should have in your documents is highly situational. Sometimes you may need to put in what you think are unnecessary sections just because that’s how your company does it (if you disagree, you should suggest a change). However, when you have a choice, try to keep the above tips in mind.