4 Ways to Write Less and Communicate More
Communicating ideas with as few words as possible has never been more relevant today, particularly when crafting headlines to attract the attention of the increasingly distracted online audience (DOA).
Such a skill is not only useful for clients, who want websites that effectively convey a message, but for freelancers who want to drive attention towards their portfolio site as well. Read on to see the four techniques I use to communicate more with less.
Establish strong contextual foundations. You must establish the core ideas of your message immediately, so that you can refer to them later on without using as many words. By now, you already know what I mean with “do more with less” right?
Use abbreviations. “DOA” is obviously shorter than “Distracted Online Audience”. But it still communicates the same idea. The trick is to define your abbreviations early, preferably with parentheses after the term itself.
Take advantage of the Internet! The best thing about the web is linking; you can link to other web sites or pages to support your statements. Instead of explaining how using less words is more effective, I simply linked to an article that does so.
Do way with transitory phrases. Sometimes your writing will be more effective if you do away with terms like “In other words”, “Basically”, and “Above all”. Experiment to see which arrangement works best for your writing and its future audience.
The best do more with less. I’d like to believe that the best writing does more with less words.
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Freelance Writing, Ways to Work Faster
3 opinions for 4 Ways to Write Less and Communicate More
Writing with fewer words
May 5, 2008 at 3:09 am
[…] This blog post offers four nice bits of advice on doing more with less. advice, techniques, writing […]
Noel
May 7, 2008 at 8:54 am
I think this is excellent advice to any Tech. Writers. At the end of the day the readers want the information they need fast. Keeping your work short, neat and tidy is the best way of accomplishing this.
I used to make a lot of these mistakes when I started writing. But with a bit of practice and experience it became second nature to apply these four rules to my own work when creating a refined drafts.
Rico
May 7, 2008 at 10:34 am
Outlines are also particularly useful to tech writers. Since they have to feature the details, it helps to plan out how to progress from one factoid to another, while keeping an entertaining flow. Thanks for dropping by Noel! :)
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: