Write with Clarity and Conciseness
Writing with clarity and conciseness means to get right to the point. Write exactly what is meant without inserting double-speak and present content in the simplest terms possible.
Read below or watch the video here:
Six steps to write with clarity and conciseness:
1. Organize key points before you write. You should already have performed this step when you ranked your key points or completed your planning worksheet. Either of these methods will provide you with a basic outline to write your communication and ensure that you stay focused on what you want to say, and keep your key points in the order you want to communicate them.
2. Let your speech guide your writing. Try to write the way you would speak in normal, everyday conversation. However, do not be too informal. Do not use slang and abbreviations - keep your writing on a professional level. Here are some tips to make your writing more reader friendly:
- Use simple words. Avoid using a big word when a small one will do. Your readers will appreciate not having to go to a dictionary to look up the meaning of unfamiliar words.
- Delete empty words. Avoid using a phrase when a word will do. Again, get to the point and reduce the time your readers need to spend to read your communication.
- Trim rambling phrases. Long, rambling sentences with lots of punctuation marks can confuse your readers. You do not want your readers to get a headache trying to decode your message.
3. Avoid repetition and platitudes. Make your communications easy to read and understand. A repetition is a word, phrase or clause used more than once in a paragraph or short communication. A platitude is an unoriginal, overused declarative phrase. An example of a platitude is “There is no I in team.”
The example on the left below is filled with repetition and platitudes. The writer’s use of repetition and platitudes adds nothing to the message. In fact, the repetition and platitudes actually make it difficult to understand the results of the review and how they will help the customer.
The communication on the right has the repetitions and platitudes removed. Notice how much easier it is to read and comprehend the writer’s message. Also, notice how bullets are used to remove repetition and make the customer benefits clear and easy to see.
4. Use active voice to make your writing simple, direct, clear and easy to understand. Verbs have two voices: active voice and passive voice. In active voice, the person or thing acting is clear and specific. The doer or agent of the action comes before the action or verb. The active voice always makes clear “Who is doing, will do or had done what.” In the active voice examples below, Ed, we and the LMS system are the actors.
In passive voice, the writer does not specify who is acting or the writer specifies the actor later in the sentence. Avoid using passive voice because passive voice sentences are usually too wordy and weaken the clarity of your writing.
5. Use action verbs to add clarity and power to your sentences. To put action in the verb, look for words that hide actions and change these words to action words (verbs). Many of these words end in “-tion,” and many are surrounded by “the,” “an” and “of.”
Compare these examples to see how putting the action in the verb makes a sentence more clear, strong and concise.
6. Keep sentences to an average length between 15 to 28 words, depending on the type of document you are writing.
- Emails, letters, memos and announcements: 15 and 22 words. An average shorter than 15 words per sentence means that your sentences are probably too choppy and do not flow well. The exception to this average is short email replies that may require less than 15 word responses.
- Longer, more complicated documents (reports or proposals): 22 to 28. An average over 28 words means that your sentences are probably too wordy.
Compare the 53-word sentence to the revision below. The revision’s message is easier to read and understand because of shorter sentences, bullet points and unnecessary words are eliminated.
Perform the following steps to determine the average number of words in a sentence using the Word Count feature in Microsoft Word and Outlook.
