“If I have made this letter longer, it is because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” -Blaise Pascal.
I really like this quote as it spells out exactly the point I am going to make. The better you know the subject matter you’re writing about, the shorter and more direct your writing will be.
You see, it takes very little skill to put down in words everything you know about a subject, but reading everything you know about a subject is not what your reader is looking for. Your reader is looking to understand the message you are sending in as short a time period as possible because people’s time is precious to them.
For some subjects where there is a great deal of technical information, the piece you’re writing will have to be long enough to incorporate all the necessary details, but with subjects such as social media, that technical detail is not necessary unless you’re writing tutorials to teach new recruits and thus you can convey your message in as few words as possible.
We can break down the content you’re sharing into three categories. The heading, the content, and the message.
The heading should be relevant to the subject matter being discussed and not something that’s used to get people’s attention. “shooting at the cinema” will get attention, but if you are discussing how to make a Sunday roast, you will have a lot of disappointed readers.
The words you use should be the simplest possible in order for the piece to be easily understood. I have started to read a few articles in my time where I needed a dictionary to understand the language being used, and the only message I received was, “I must get away from this article as quickly as possible.”
The message should be relevant right down through the piece you are writing, if you flesh out your original thought with information that doesn’t complement the original statement, the reader is just going to get confused as to what the article is about.
The message of this post is that if you can communicate your message using twenty words, only use twenty words.
Quality not quantity is important in every aspect of business, including writing.
