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Posts Tagged ‘concise writing’

October 12th, 2011

Boxed Wine and the Passive Voice

Take a look at how active language frees up space in this pair of sentences:

BzzAgent was hired by Black Box last fall … to “increase awareness … and impact sales.”

Black Box hired BzzAgent last fall … to “increase awareness … and impact sales.”

Black Box is a company that sells boxed wine. The first sentence downplays the company through the passive voice, and the second sentence spotlights it with the active voice.

Passive verbs clutter up the first sentence with two unnecessary words: “BzzAgent was hired by Black Box.”

It’s faster and simpler to use active language and discard these unnecessary words: “Black Box hired BzzAgent.”

Concise writing helps you keep readers’ attention, and busy readers appreciate focused sentences.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes one chapter on sentence mechanics and another on verbs. You’ll learn how to write for maximum impact in all your business documents.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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July 12th, 2010

Free PDF! Twitter: A Write It Well Guide

Twitter: A Write It Well Guide is an interactive, three-page PDF with tips businesspeople can use to maintain a professional tone on Twitter.

You’ll find suggestions for framing a 140-character Twitter post and for brainstorming several kinds of business tweets.

We also recommend several excellent online sources about Twitter, with the citations linked directly to the Web. View and download the full PDF!

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June 15th, 2010

Twitter: Tips for Concise and Professional-Sounding Tweets

Twitter is a forum for individuals and companies to share short Web messages with a public audience. (See this page for a rundown of the site and its terminology, and this page for an overview of business tweeting.) The 140-character limit for Twitter posts simplifies some writing challenges, but that limit also creates some risks. If you could use some guidelines for how to maintain a professional tone for your tweets, read on.

No Twitter guidelines can be carved in stone. The site is still new to a lot of people, it hosts a very wide array of users, and it evolves quickly. But here are four ways you can project a more professional image on Twitter:
  1. Ask yourself if a tweet is the right format for your message
  2. Use active language and contractions to keep your tweets short
  3. Give your readers all the information they need
  4. Be casual, but come down on the side of standard English

1. Ask yourself if a tweet is the right format for your message. It’s crucial in all business writing to save your readers time. Concise writing is mandatory on Twitter, and some messages just don’t fit naturally within the site’s 140-character limit.

So step back if you find yourself struggling too hard to stay inside the character limit, or if what you have to say just doesn’t fit in that short a format. Instead, try turning your message into a blog post or a page on your website, and then post a tweet including a link and just stating your topic – e.g., “Check out http://bit.ly/AAAAAA for my thoughts on the experts’ panel on HTML5 at last week’s conference.”

2. Use active language and contractions to keep your tweets short. Twitter’s a casual place. Its informality makes it natural to use contractions like “they’re” and “it’s,” even if you’re writing about your business. An apostrophe saves you at least one space and one letter. (If you could use a refresher course on the its/it’s and they’re/their differences, see our book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide.)

You can also save space in tweets by avoiding passive language – e.g., by tweeting “The committee will announce the winners tomorrow” rather than “An announcement of the winners will be made by the committee tomorrow.” With spaces and a period, that second statement has 70 characters. The first only has 49. The active language saves space, saves readers time, and also sounds more dynamic.

3. Give your readers all the information they need. Whether you’re writing a tweet or some text for your website, put yourself in your readers’ shoes and ask yourself if they’ll have enough context to follow your idea.

How much context is enough? That depends on your message and your audience. The important points are to remember that your tweets are visible to the public, and not to sacrifice clarity any time you whittle down your tweet to 140 characters.

4. Be casual, but come down on the side of standard English. The New York Times cautioned in an article in April that a “small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their time policing other people’s tweets – celebrities and nobodies alike.” These people target and publicize “tweets with typos or flawed grammar, or written in ALLCAPS.” So sloppy language in a tweet can be risky. And maintaining standard spelling and punctuation on Twitter can help you stand out in a good way.

Twitter works best when you balance careful writing and informality. It’s always fine to type an ampersand (&) instead of “and,” and someone breezing through Twitter may prefer “info” to the long word “information.” But it’s risky to use more nonstandard spellings. Some people have a pet peeve against the spelling “tomorrow nite” (while “tomorrow night” is only one character longer), and some readers will simply be confused if you tweet “I can’t w8!” instead of “I can’t wait!” The safest rule of thumb for tweeting is to balance standard English with a casual tone.

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If you’d like more information about Twitter, stay tuned! Later in June, we’ll post a free PDF on writeitwell.com with more tips on tweeting. We’ll include a list of exemplary tweets and resources. We’ll also explain how four different kinds of recommendations provide a handy structure for your tweets if you’d like to try Twitter, but aren’t sure what to say.

Our book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide includes sections on determining your message, using concise language, using apostrophes and other punctuation correctly, and writing effective e-mail. Whether your format is 140 characters or 140 pages, our book can help you maintain a professional image for all your business writing.

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June 1st, 2010

Twitter: When to Splurge with Letters

All this month’s blog posts will be about maintaining a professional image on Twitter. First up is a tweet from the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Twitter account:

Win 8 $100 gift certificates to participating Dine About Town restaurants. Details and contest entry at: http://sfg.ly/doQSZj

At 125 characters (with spaces), this tweet is short and sweet. It’s 15 characters under Twitter’s maximum 140-character limit. With this extra space to burn, we’d suggest two changes.

First, no colon is necessary after “at,” since you’d write “it’s at this webpage” instead of ”it’s at: this webpage.” Also, it might be clearer to spell out the number 8. Winning “eight $100″ certificates would be more immediately clear than “8 $100″ ones.

When you have the space, standard punctuation and full spellings make most tweets clearer.

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See our post “Twitter: Tips for Concise and Professional-Sounding Tweets” for more suggestions about maintaining a professional sound on Twitter. And later this month, Write It Well will post a free PDF with resources and further suggestions about how to get started if you’re interested in using Twitter for your business, but aren’t sure what kind of tweets you’d like to post!

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February 5th, 2009

How to Write a Summary

A friend of mine was talking to a literary agent about his novel. “Give me the two-sentence pitch,” she said. When he looked anxious at the thought of condensing his masterpiece to two measly sentences, she told him, “I’m here and happy to listen when you figure it out — but I’m just asking you the question everyone else will ask me when I try to sell your book.” 

We would all do well to take her point. Audiences aren’t ready-made. Usually, our first job as writers is to persuade people to read our e-mails, reports, and novels — with an engaging subject line, summary, or blurb. Of course, it can be tricky to write a short summary of something you’ve just written pages about, but executives and other readers often make big decisions without reading the whole report. Natalie Canavor and Claire Meirowitz have some summary-writing tips in the CW Bulletin. Their suggestions:

  • Give your summary a summary: make sure the title and first sentence are interesting and to the point.
  • List the key points that led you to your conclusion.
  • Don’t leave out your recommendations! After someone reads your summary and sees that you did your research, they’ll look to you for a concisely worded, educated opinion.

For more tips on writing concisely, check out Write It Well’s Professional Writing Skills.

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November 14th, 2008

Write to the Point

I like to prop my words on other useless words. I like to fluff them up. Maybe if I fluff my words enough, nobody will notice that I’ve actually expressed an opinion. I find myself writing, “I just thought I’d write to let you know that…” and “I feel that perhaps we ought to consider…” a little too often. Comfortable, empty words don’t make your position stronger. Do, of course, be friendly and diplomatic — but remember that direct writing helps your readers. Their job is easier if they don’t have to sort through props and fluff.

Some phrases that can get in the way:

  • I think that…
  • as far as I’m concerned…
  • the point I am trying to make is…
  • at the end of the day…

For more help on cutting the clutter, check out Richard Nordquist’s list of common redundant phrases.

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