Writing With Brevity And Clarity

A challenge most of us face is to write well. I admit it’s hard for me. Since most of us are not skilled writers, brevity and clarity are a must; yet most of the time we ramble in our writing. As Mark Twain said (who knew how to write):

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Writing Strumings (350 posts and counting) has helped me focus my thoughts. Interestingly, being a heavy user of twitter has as well—only so much one can say with 140 characters. And my background in advertising taught me to place a premium on creating a strong, crisp theme line, “The phrase that pays” as the late Phil Dusenberry called it.

I read an excellent blog post a few days ago from HubSpot titled, How to Write With Clarity: 9 Tips for Simplifying Your Message. It’s worth reading this post. I am a big believer in their points #1, 2 and 7 (I don’t know too many long words anyhow) . Here are HubSpot’s 9 Tips for your consideration

1. Know what you want to say.
2. Know who you’re talking to.
3. Define unfamiliar words.
4. Create a sentence outline.
5. Write one-sentence paragraphs.
6. Make your sentences short.
7. Don’t use long words.
8. Leverage writing tools.
9. Be consistent.