by There are about a quarter of a million words in the English language. Use them wisely.
Words matter. Even a single word can be important.
I knew a kid who got into Berkeley because his college entrance essay topic was, “Tell us about yourself,” and his answer was a single word:
“Succinct.”
And he got in. True story.
The best messages are the simplest.
Strong verb use, present tense and active voice are three steps to strengthening your voice. These are incremental moves you can take starting today.
Practice these in every type of communication you write, whether it’s messaging, articles or tweets.
Every word counts — especially in the age of 140-character communication.
The more words you throw at an idea the more bogged down it gets, the more bureaucratic.
Successful communicators intuitively pick up on this truth: It IS possible to be descriptive and get right to the point.
So, say it up front and make it interesting.
But how? One of the first rules of communication is, consider your audience… and write your material “to them.”
Who are they? Imagine a single recipient. What does she like? “How does he roll?”
Speak on the same level and in the same language as the audience. What are their hot buttons? What is the best way to transmit the message (text? Tweet?) so that it will be comprehended? Find out.
What do you want them to do? Ask for it.
That ought to help, especially against the growing threat to the written word…
Grackle brain. Who knows about grackles? They’re clumsy flyers and, dare I say, intellectually challenged collectors of brightly colored, random objects. They are the origin of “shiny object syndrome.”
Every one of us has Grackle Brain. I have read somewhere, and you’ve probably seen it too, that we’ve got 7 seconds to make an impression in an in-person meeting.
In the digital space it’s probably closer to 2 seconds.
And to make our jobs even harder, people are extremely inefficient at receiving information. Just because you’ve sent that message is not a guarantee that your recipient has comprehended it.
RESIST ROUTINE.
Numerous studies show that we only retain between 10 and 30 percent of what we hear.
Study says… retain… percent.
An often-cited UCLA study shows that whenever we interpret a speaker’s message, we determine 55% of that message through non-verbal communication—through facial expressions and body language.
We get another 38% of our understanding from the person’s voice quality (tone, pitch, and volume).
(And now we’re all on Zoom… we’re not even in the same room anymore. Think what that does to attention and to the non-verbal cues!)
And then there’s the actual message, which gets seven percent of our attention. That’s huge. That means we writers only get 7% of the pie – to start!
So how to overcome this?
The first thing is to anticipate and resist the routine in your writing.
Work on strong first sentences, the ones that could stop right there. Formulate thoughts that cut to the heart of the matter and resonate in the final paragraph. Avoid the cliché news “lede” and under no circumstances write that lede.
What if Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address had chosen simply to start with, “Eighty-seven years ago…” rather than “Four score and seven years ago?”
Speaking of brevity, Lincoln’s speech was so concise it was over before most in the crowd realized he had even begun. Here’s one of the greatest, most powerful speeches in American history, it weighs in at just 278 words and a mere ten sentences.
It’s always about clarity and relating. When creating a presentation, stop doing what every other person always does; make yours different. Same as with public speaking — in writing, resist being uninteresting.
Next, let active verbs activate your sentences.
Write with nouns and (active) verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. Partly by relying on the power of active verbs, we can convey emotion and immediacy far more effectively than we can with adjectives.
Active voice – always.
Choose action verbs and active voice.
Hear the difference between:
• “Mistakes were made”; and “I made a mistake.”
Active voice is shorter, more precise and offers greater impact than passive voice.
Likewise, use the present tense as often as you can. When we encounter the present tense, the brain says, “This is happening NOW.”
POWERPOINT – EMBRACE THE SUCK.
As writers, we often communicate in PowerPoint (and Keynote). PowerPoint is here to stay, and it clearly has its uses. But PowerPoint is not always perfect in the business world.
It relies on inductive logic. A typical PowerPoint presenter makes one point, then another point, and then another toward arriving eventually at a conclusion — a “Therefore.”
“Story” bypasses this approach.
Instead, it tells of darkening skies. Forces of antagonism are working against you. A “storm” is gathering and it’s going to rain on you (or your company). You are now the protagonist of a compelling story.
What is that journey going to be like? Your listeners lean forward.
Go to story, not to data.
but PowerPoint is going nowhere and remains critical.
MAKE CLARITY YOUR GOD.
People are all wild to coin a new term and have a word of the week. Consequently, readers must sift through a migraine’s worth of buzzwords and “solution speak” to retain a college reading level.
Don’t do this and please fight the good fight with clients who want to include jargon, hype or cliché.
The answer to making the message effective is to clear it of clutter.
There are about a quarter of a million words in the English language. Use them wisely.
Clear thought leads to clear writing. Clear writing begins with proper organization of the facts, active voice, and it concludes with concise, vivid details and a clean conclusion.
TELL STORIES.
So, how do we connect, defy convention, cut through the psychobabble and nattering formulaic crap out there?
By telling stories. Storytelling is the single most powerful way to deliver your message.
This doesn’t mean step up to your next corporate meeting and open with, “Once upon a time…”
What it does mean: strive for context. Give some relevance to the rote and the repetitious.
People crave connection but they do not relate to metrics. Instead they relate to: plot, circumstance, transformation and growth.
Stories and relationships come first; let the data support the narrative.
Got that? Story leads. Data is a backup singer.
TAKE ACTION.
It all comes down to creating smart messages and finding effective ways to transmit them in context for distracted, mobile audiences.
• Resist the norm and refuse cliche
• Be clear
• Make the effort to understand your audience
• Connect to them in the medium that is meaningful to them
• Grab with strong active verbs, present tense and active voice
• Tell stories.
Stuart Wade 