At a communications training session a few weeks ago, the presenter stated the following: “Eliminate excess information. Make your writing elegant and add emotion.”
If we took what he said to heart, this column would end here. But I need to write a few more words, so I’ll elaborate.
Often we write too much. We go on and on, well past the time we lose our reader. I remember working for U.S. Department of Energy close to 20 years ago and a higher-up sought my help with a memo. She wrote a directive for her field staff. It was three pages long, laced with acronyms and it took a detective to decipher her message. She knew it was bad and asked for my help editing and cleaning it up.
I walked back to my office, chopped it down, eliminated excess information and redundancies, activated some verbs, added some appropriate adjectives, then strolled back to her cave with a one-pager. I handed it to her. She looked at me after reading it quickly, and said, “HOW DID YOU DO THIS?”
“It’s my job,” I replied. That’s what writers get paid to do: Make sense of things. Focus on what’s important. Write elegantly and add emotion.
It’s not easy, so if you struggle taking apart dense language, seek out the writer on your staff or hire someone from the outside. It will help you get your messages across to your audience far more effectively than a three-page gobbly gook memo that makes your eyes glass over.
If we took what he said to heart, this column would end here. But I need to write a few more words, so I’ll elaborate.
Often we write too much. We go on and on, well past the time we lose our reader. I remember working for U.S. Department of Energy close to 20 years ago and a higher-up sought my help with a memo. She wrote a directive for her field staff. It was three pages long, laced with acronyms and it took a detective to decipher her message. She knew it was bad and asked for my help editing and cleaning it up.
I walked back to my office, chopped it down, eliminated excess information and redundancies, activated some verbs, added some appropriate adjectives, then strolled back to her cave with a one-pager. I handed it to her. She looked at me after reading it quickly, and said, “HOW DID YOU DO THIS?”
“It’s my job,” I replied. That’s what writers get paid to do: Make sense of things. Focus on what’s important. Write elegantly and add emotion.
It’s not easy, so if you struggle taking apart dense language, seek out the writer on your staff or hire someone from the outside. It will help you get your messages across to your audience far more effectively than a three-page gobbly gook memo that makes your eyes glass over.