Words on a page

When I was in journalism school (and that was literally half a lifetime ago), the instructors constantly chivvied me and my classmates to write tight. That meant packing the most information into the least amount of space. It wasn’t easy, but when you did it, the result was like magic.

There’s a lesson there for writers. A lot of writing is like good journalism. There are skills that many kinds of non-fiction writing share with journalism. The key to being effective is to keep what you’re writing short, to the point, and easy to read.

Making the tough choices

You need to choose your words, and how you use them, very carefully. Especially today. We’re dealing with readers who have little patience for long, drawn out passages. They want to get the facts, quickly. The best way to do this is to look to the world of Web writing.

Even if your documentation isn’t read on the Web, you should absorb a key principle of Web writing: keep things short and simple.

One bit of advice that’s given to neophyte Web writers is to keep sentences short. A 20 word maximum is often bandied about. It’s hard to pack information into that space, but it can be done. How? Here are a few ways:

• Choose simple words
• Avoid jargon and buzz words
• Keep sentences active
• Don’t be afraid of one or two sentence paragraphs
• Write in the way you speak
• And don’t be afraid to prudently use lists.

Writing as you’d speak

Chances are, you’ve been taught to write in a more formal tone. For some writing — like business, academic, or technical writing — there’s not a whole lot wrong with that. None of those types of writing need to be scintillating prose along the lines of your favourite novelist. But articles, blog posts, and Web copy shouldn’t be dry and boring like an academic tract or the articles that are published in a certain periodicals.

Why not writing as you’d speak? Clarity can come from writing in a more natural, conversational way. You might have to break a few rules of grammar. That shouldn’t matter if your writing is clear and gets the point across succinctly. Just avoid the Well, without the umms, ahhs, and y’knows. Keep the pop culture references, clever turns of phrase, and jokey allusions that you might normally use when speaking to friends, family, or colleagues to a minimum. Use them where appropriate, but don’t peg your writing on them.

Practice, practice

You won’t be able to do this right off the bat. You’ll need to practice.

One bit of practice that I often use and suggest comes from the movie A River Runs Through It. When teaching his sons to write, the father (played by Tom Skerritt) had his boys write a draft. Then, he had them rewrite it by half. The shortened version was again trimmed in half. The key is to keep the same message and the same information in the ever-shrinking spaces.

When you try doing this, start with 800 words. Cut it down to 400 words, then 200. If you’re ambitious, try to go for 100 words. You won’t always succeed, but you’ll get better with practice.

And remember to keep the reader in mind while doing this. Your words have to make sense, even as you tighten them.

Related posts:

1. Making time to write what you want to write
2. Learn to write tightly by taking your cue from the radio
3. Conversation, cadence, and writing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under Web, advice, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.