Make your copy clear and concise

The easier your story is to read, the more people will read it

by Ann Wylie, president, Wylie Communications Inc.

“The dirtiest four-letter word in the English language: read.”

— Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Web site

Is your copy easy to read?

According to communication experts, that’s one of the two key questions people ask to determine whether to read a piece — or whether to toss it.

Here are four tips for crafting copy that’s clear and concise. Because the easier your copy is to read, the more people will read it.

1. Google clearer definitions.

Need to define a technical term in clear, easy-to-understand language?

Google can help.

Just type “define: term” in the search box. You’ll get a list of definitions for your term on the Web.

When customizing an on-site writing workshop for a utility company, I wanted to see whether there was a better way to define kilowatt hour, or kWh, for consumers. I knew that a kWh was the work performed by one kilowatt of electric power in one hour. It’s also the basic measure of electric energy use.

So I searched “define: kwh.”

As you might expect, many of the definitions weren’t very helpful. “One kilowatt hour = 3412 Btu Per hour,” for instance, didn’t move the definition forward. Nor did “The equivalent of 3,600,000 Joules.”

But I did find one helpful image: “A 100-watt light bulb burning for 10 hours uses one kilowatt hour.”

Add an image like that to your definition, and you can paint a picture in your readers’ minds, helping them to literally “see” the technical concept.

That’s what master writers aim to do. And Google can help.

2. Think packages, not pieces.

No doubt about it: Your readers would rather read a short piece than a long piece.

One good way to reduce the length of your copy is to focus each piece on a single message point. You say you have six messages? Then you have six pieces —not one long, unwieldy piece.

That’s what we call “redirection,” or breaking your story into multiple pieces. In addition to your main story, you might repackage your piece into:

• Sidebars
• Boxes
• Lists
• Related stories
• Web sidebars
• Freestanding vignettes
• Fun facts, trivia or other marginalia

You might even consider serializing your story, or breaking your piece into short chapters or segments to run over time.

3. Vary paragraph length.

Readers make an at-a-glance decision about your copy based on visual cues. Paragraph length is among the most important signals you send to readers about how easy and interesting your copy is to read.

If your paragraphs are too thick, the story looks slow and off-putting, for example. And if they’re all the same length, the story can feel monotonous, says Jacqui Banaszynski, assistant managing editor at The Seattle Times. She holds the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

So how do you know?

Print your copy out in columns and eyeball it, Banaszynski advises. If your paragraphs all look the same, you’re probably not getting enough rhythm into your piece.

In that case, recast some paragraphs to vary their length.

4. Make sure the subject is doing the verb.

PR pro Loring Leifer was surprised on reviewing an engineer’s contribution to a company newsletter to find that it was absolutely free of the passive voice. When Leifer praised the engineer, he said:

I know each sentence needs a subject and a verb, and that the subject should be doing the verb.

Let’s put it on a T-shirt! That’s as good an explanation as I’ve heard about how to write in the active voice.

Here are some other ways to activate the passive voice:

• Identify passive sentences —and get suggested rewrites —via Microsoft Word’s grammar check. It’s fine to do this, but a pro can spot the passive without tech support. Which brings us to …

• Understand the passive voice. Many writers, confused about the passive voice, believe every sentence that contains a form of the verb “to be” is passive. Not so. A sentence is passive only when it uses the object-verb-subject or object-verb structure. Otherwise, it’s just a sentence with a weak verb.

• Search for the words “was” and “by.” The “was …” or “was … by” construction is a clue to the passive voice.

Once you find passive sentences, activate the passive voice. Your sentences should explain who did what to whom.

Cut Through the Clutter

Want to master the art of making all your copy clearer and more concise?

• Read Ann’s “Cut Through the Clutter” manual.
• Get dozens of “Cut Through the Clutter” tipsheets on RevUpReadership.com.
• Find Ann’s out about Ann’s next “Cut Through the Clutter” teleseminar.
• Bring Ann to your organization for a “Cut Through the Clutter” workshop.
• Work with Ann to Cut Through the Clutter in one-on-one writing coaching.

About Ann Wylie

Ann Wylie is president of Wylie Communications Inc., a training, writing and consulting firm. She works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Wylie is the author of RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, and Wylie’s Writing Tips, a free e-zine. She has earned more than 60 awards, including two IABC Gold Quills, for her work.

Copyright © 2006 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.