It’s amazing how many duplicate terms have crept into business writing. These are second nature for many people, but picking them out can reduce document length and sharpen meaning. Let’s explore three areas: redundancies, prepositional fillers and jargon. Can you spot them in your writing? (1) Redundant Concise actual truth truth advance warning warning basic fundamentals fundamentals collaborate together collaborate commute back and forth commute component parts parts consensus of opinion consensus customary … [Read more...]
Keep It Brief
March 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Do you ever wonder how that one-page letter suddenly turned into a three-page diatribe? Or why that “simple” report transformed into an unreadable treatise. There are many aspects to the wordiness problem – but there are also ways to solve it. Here are three areas to watch. (i)“It and There” Disease. This writing clutter problem is usually found at the beginning of cover letters or documents. It involves the unnecessary use of an anticipatory construction at the start of a sentence. Since the real message of the sentence follows this anticipatory phrase, just drop the “it, there” … [Read more...]
How To Eliminate Clutter From Your Business Writing Part 2
March 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Verbs are the lifeblood of good business writing. If you choose strong ones, they’ll vitalize your writing. Select weak or “smothered” verbs, however, and your readers will suffer. A common problem with business writing today is smothering verbs by adding lifeless or dull phrases. For example, certain verbs, such as “to be/is, make, have and come” are often added on to verbs, with no effect beyond increased wordiness. Check your documents for the disease of smothering (is-ness, make-ness, etc.) and other similar constructions. Smothered Example: Cutting our department’s budget is another … [Read more...]
How To Eliminate Clutter From Your Business Writing
March 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Wordiness and clutter have a way of creeping into all sorts of business correspondence. We are going to look at several ways to avoid this trap. We’ll start with use of the active, not passive, voice. The passive voice is arguably the biggest enemy of concise business writing. Passive construction shifts the subject, or actor, into a position following the verb, or action, as seen in the examples below. While the passive voice is not wrong grammatically, it is cumbersome, wordy and often vague. Passive Example: It was determined by the committee that a response was necessary to the … [Read more...]
Go With The Flow
March 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment
How to Edit for Structure, Flow and Readability You’ve chopped through writer’s block; you now have your first draft ready. Great. It’s time to bring out the ruthless editor. Don’t assume what you’ve written is final just because it appears on the screen. Take a critical look at issues such as excessive wordiness, passive verb style, repetitive sentence structures, dense paragraphs and improper grammar/spelling. Take this opportunity to reorganize ideas, sentences and paragraphs to improve flow and readability. Here are some parameters of powerful writing to check against your … [Read more...]
