This section of the book focuses on making your message come through as clearly as possible. In most cases, this can be achieved by being concise.

The average introduction¹ for a practical business book is six pages. In this book, it’s two pages. Why? My belief is that the majority of people want a short introduction to get a feel for the book’s style before buying or reading on. I don’t believe anyone will say of this book: “the content was great but it really needed a longer introduction”.

A definition of concise writing

Concise writing achieves the correct reader response in the most efficient manner.

Note: this does not mean that you remove every non-critical word; you are unlikely to persuade a vendor to lower their price by simply writing “give me a 10% discount”.

Having said this, there are many cases where brevity is better. This chapter will look at:

• Eliminating jargon
• Cutting down on long words
• Reducing sentence length
• Cutting padding
• Culling lazy words
• Examples, similes and analogies.

Remember – if following a rule makes your writing less persuasive, break it.

ASON AND THE JARGONAUTS

If you work in business, you will use jargon. Jargon is another way of saying ‘business-specific language’. This doesn’t make it bad; in fact, without it, it would be almost impossible to describe some of the things we do. Where jargon becomes a problem is when it starts to obscure the real meaning.

The consulting industry has gained a reputation as the worst abusers of jargon. Consider the following:

In an increasingly global economy where competing on price alone is no longer a sustainable business strategy, companies need to add value through innovation, differentiating their offering through new product features and process functionality.

This company’s clients are small businesses which have probably never had a sustainable business strategy, let alone thought about differentiating their offering. What they probably meant to say was:

In an increasingly global economy, competing on price alone is no longer an option. Companies can add value to their products and services through innovation, beating the competition through new features and functionality.

Not a big difference, but an important one. The language is much more conversational and hence more accessible to those outside the industry.

Writing how we talk is a great way to cut down on inappropriate jargon. If you can’t imagine saying it to your audience, why would you write it to them?

Supersized words

Alongside jargon is the supersized word. Just as Morgan Spurlock suffered serious health problems from being fed a diet of supersized burgers,² so your reader will become sick if fed on a diet of overly long words.

I struggle with this. I’m proud of my vocabulary and want to show it off whenever possible. However, not everyone shares my passion for words. If I say ‘belligerent’ instead of ‘aggressive’, I’ve got to know my reader will understand. If they don’t, they will probably think I am being pretentious or just not get my meaning at all. If your audience does not understand you, you can’t persuade them. Appendix 2 contains a list of commonly used supersized words and some alternatives.

As mentioned earlier, break the rules when you need to. Some long words impart a very specific meaning. ‘Curmudgeonly’ and ‘cantankerous’ mean bad-tempered, but tend to be used to describe old people, especially men. As such, they paint a very specific image in the reader’s mind and could not be replaced without losing meaning.

Don’t just think it is long words that confuse. Words like ‘concur’, ‘viable’ and ‘deem’ are all great words but may not be suitable for your audience. Say ‘agree’, ‘possible’ or ‘think’ instead.

Words are like weapons. If you use a shotgun to kill a fly, you’ll end up with an almighty mess on your hands.³

SENTENCES THAT ARE TOO LONG WITH LITTLE PUNCTUATION CAN CAUSE THE READER TO LOSE INTEREST IN YOUR WORK OR STRUGGLE TO EXTRACT THE MEANING RESULTING IN YOUR WORK BEING LESS PERSUASIVE

If the heading weren’t example enough, consider the following:

An estimated 12 million man-days are lost annually to stomach bugs caused by bacteria growing in poorly stored product, difficult to clean portions of over & under counter dispensing systems used in food halls, restaurants, canteens & even in dispensing equipment in food processing plants throughout Europe. The main approach at present to minimise microbial growth is to use chill/freeze distribution & storage, but this method is costly, inconvenient, & potentially hazardous, with thaw/re-freeze risks all along the supply chain & risk at the ‘point of delivery’ through inadequate thawing & storage procedures & the practice of re-freezing unused product.

These two sentences clock up a staggering 100 words. By the time you’ve finished each of them, you’ve forgotten how they started. Bad punctuation doesn’t help the flow either.

As with all the rules, there are caveats. Punctuation can be used to allow for breath pauses; if the sentence has a high pace, you can cram a lot of words in. As a rule of thumb, however, you should average around 15–20 words per sentence.

Note the word ‘average’ in the text above. If all your sentences are the same length, the effect can be very hypnotic. That may be your desired effect but, in most cases, sending the reader to sleep is a bad thing. Due to its style (short, punchy, concise), this guide is currently running at an average of 10 words per sentence. However, this paragraph’s sentences are 8, 14, 19, 20, 14 and 10 words respectively. This makes the paragraph rise and fall, changing its pace.

Another rule for sentences is to keep them to one main point. Your reader is unlikely to remember more than that, even in a short document. You’ll find this naturally keeps your sentence length down as well. If you find you have a long sentence with multiple points, see if you can split them up.

So, now we know this, let’s revisit the paragraph about stomach bugs:

In Europe, an estimated 12 million man-days p.a. are lost to stomach bugs. These are caused by bacteria growing in poorly stored product and dirty dispensing systems in food halls and restaurants, and even in dispensing equipment in food processing plants. Currently, microbial growth is minimized through chill/freeze distribution & storage. However, this method is costly, inconvenient and potentially hazardous, with thaw/re-freeze risks all along the supply chain. Inadequate thawing & storage procedures at the point of delivery make matters even worse.

This paragraph now averages 16.4 words per sentence, with sentences ranging from 11 to 28 words. This, along with a few other tweaks, makes for a much more readable paragraph, subject matter excepted of course.

Sentences can be even shorter than 11 words. In fact, they can be as short as one word. See? Punctuation gives the reader a chance to breathe, pause and reflect. Very short sentences can be used to create high impact by forcing the reader to stop and absorb the meaning of those few words. Remember: conciseness brings clarity.

THE WRITER’S DIET – CUTTING PADDING

When writing as you talk, a lot of text will end up being redundant. This is fine in speech but can become tedious on paper. The same problem occurs if you try to sound too official – the meaning can get lost in a blubbery mass of padding. Consider the following text:

The committee for future funding carefully and deliberately assessed the latest new information that was sent by head office. The committee felt that the suggestion for the team to revert back to the original set of guidelines on funding did not represent forward progress as the key recommendations by the board were no longer fully covered.

Not very elegant I’m sure you will agree. So how do you spot padding? Use these tips to apply the axe accurately.

Adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives and adverbs describe nouns and verbs respectively.⁴ Both are vital parts of language but over-use can make your writing stodgy. For example:

“I slowly, painfully analysed the long, thick, heavy document sent by the young, keen writer in the marketing department.”

Tedious, isn’t it? By selecting better verbs and nouns, you can get across the same meaning but in a more engaging way.

“I trudged through the tome sent by the bright young thing in marketing.”

If ‘tome’ is too exotic, try a single adjective such as ‘huge’ in front of ‘document’.

‘The’ and ‘that’

Often these words are redundant in a sentence. For example:

“The director of AceCorp said that the new accounting system would eliminate the errors and the delays that have occurred recently.”

Eliminate a few excess words, a swift bit of re-jigging and you end up with:

“Acecorp’s director said the new accounting system would eliminate the recent delays and errors.”

Adjective before noun

No one talks about the ‘machine for milling’ if they can say the ‘milling machine’. By placing the adjective in front of the noun, you cut your word count and increase clarity. So remember, don’t use the rules for concise writing, use the concise writing rules.

CULLING LAZY WORDS

This may seem a little harsh, but your paragraph is not a charity. Only the fittest, strongest and best words should survive your editing process. Anything else should be ruthlessly dispatched.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules for this one. However, here’s an example to help you spot that layabout language:

I would like to point out that the received document was only received on the 24th October. Can I draw your attention to the terms of the contract, which clearly state that the document transmission should be completed by the 20th October at the latest. I sincerely hope that this contractual issue will not occur in the future.

OK, what can we change? Having said there were no rules, there are some guidelines. Look out for:

• repetition or redundant phrases;
• making something simple sound impressive;
• flowery niceties.

Note: repeating key points throughout a document is good practice. Just make sure the repetition is well spaced.

In this example, ‘received’ is repeated so we should be able to remove one of them. Also, the contract comes up twice so we should look at that. ‘Document transmission should be completed’. That sounds to me like someone trying too hard. Out it goes. ‘I would like to point out’ and ‘can I draw your attention to’ are definitely in the flowery niceties category.

Remember: Reader Response equals Result. The aim of this text is to tell the reader off and make sure the problem does not occur again. However, there are no consequences if it does, so maybe we need to add that. If we really want to achieve our objectives, we could write something like:

The document arrived on the 24th October. The contract clearly states it should have arrived by the 20th October. If any further documents are delayed, we will take our business elsewhere.

Although it has a direct tone, this is appropriate for a letter of complaint. With all those lazy words gone, you end up with a paragraph that really means business.

As always, break the rule to be more persuasive. Words that seem redundant can in fact be vital to creating a persuasive atmosphere. If this were not the case, adverts would say “Buy Brand X soap, it’s cheap and gets you clean”. Since they don’t, we can assume there is some value in some redundant words. All you need to do is question each phrase carefully to see if you really need it.

EXAMPLES, SIMILES AND ANALOGIES

It may seem strange to talk about analogies and examples in a section on conciseness. However, remember our definition of concise writing:

Concise writing achieves the correct reader response in the most efficient manner.

This book is littered with examples because it is much easier to show redundant words than to describe them. As discussed in Chapter 3, the brain is a neural network. Neural networks learn through relating events to existing experience patterns. If you can compare a new piece of information with an existing pattern, the brain is more likely to understand it.

For business writing, the most useful forms of comparison are:

Examples: surely I don’t have to give an example of an example? To be honest I’m not even sure how . . .

Similes: these describe one thing being like another. For example, “he walked off like John Wayne”. This is much faster and more evocative than describing exactly how he walked.

Metaphors: these state that one thing is another. These tend to be used more in literature than formal reports but still have their place. For example, in Chapter 6, the verb is described as “the workhorse of any sentence”. Clearly it isn’t actually a horse, but the phrase is more punchy than saying “the verb in a sentence is the word that produces the action and so can be said to ‘do the work’ in a sentence”.

Analogies: like similes, these are used to show similarities between two things. Generally, an analogy will provide more detail on the similarities than a simile, allowing you to make more obtuse comparisons. For example, “he wrote like a bad knife-thrower – if the punctuation did hit the page, it usually stuck in the wrong place, with predictably painful results”.

A SEVEN-STEP CONCISE WRITING PROCESS

This is a process you can follow to draft and edit documents when you have strict page or word limits. You may also find this works well for you in general writing. It was developed for writing bids for a UK government programme. Each section was strictly limited in length, meaning conciseness was king. However, the document still had to be persuasive; this was a funding competition after all. Although it doesn’t include all the techniques discussed so far, it covers enough for everyday use.

Step 1 – Bullets

Plan your document using your favoured technique (see Chapter 8). Get to the point where you have a list of section headings. Complete each section in bullet-point form, with each bullet expressing only the most important points.

Step 2 – Story

Check your bullet points to make sure they tell an effective story. Is there a better order to make the points in? Have you missed a logical step?

Step 3 – Expand

Draft out the document, adding as few words as possible to the bullet points to make complete sentences. The vast majority of added text should be supporting facts, not new parts to the story.

Step 4 – Read each sentence in isolation

• What does it actually say? Could this be misinterpreted?
• Do I need to say this? Does it add value?
• Are there other points made in the sentence that are not the main point? If so, can I remove them or move them into a separate sentence?

Step 5 – Read the section as a whole

Do the sentences flow together? Has adding words modified the story?

Step 6 – Close edit

Use some or all of the following techniques:

• Summarise – can one word or phrase replace a list of similar items? Look out for the word ‘and’, as this is sometimes an indication of unnecessary additions.
• Eliminate unnecessary jargon – would an ignorant genius understand it?
• Edit for sentence length – try to keep the average sentence length under 20 words and provide lots of variation.

If you have time:

• eliminate unnecessary adjectives/adverbs;
• remove ‘the’ and ‘that’ where possible;
• remove repetition – especially in multiple uses of the same description.

Step 7 – Re-read and proofread

Go away for a bit, come back and read straight through, out loud. Read in reverse and look for spelling/grammar errors.

A worked example of the writing process can be found in Appendix 7.

SUMMARY

Concise writing means being persuasive in the most efficient way possible:

• Take out unnecessary jargon and overly complex words.
• Keep your sentences to one main point, keep the average length down and vary their length.
• Cull any words that don’t help you be persuasive.
• Use analogies and examples to explain yourself more accurately and concisely.

This chapter has mainly covered editing techniques. Beyond learning the skills, the next most important is to know when to stop editing. A business document is a tool. If you need to drive in a nail, you need a hammer. You don’t need a top-of-the-range, perfectly balanced, laser engraved hammer. Stop editing when the document is good enough to do the job. After that, you’re just engraving your hammer.

1 All the body text up to the first chapter.

2 If you haven’t seen the film ‘Super-size Me’, I would thoroughly recommend it. Don’t watch it with a burger in your hand, though.

3 See ‘Examples, similes and analogies’ for more on analogies.

4 See ‘Grammar refresher’ in Chapter 6.