Cut Through the Clutter

Stop wasting web visitors’ time with puffery, hype

Web visitors ‘get visibly angry’ at verbose sites

Here’s an interesting dichotomy: Killing time is the killer app for mobile devices. But mobile users are in a hurry and “get visibly angry” at verbose sites that waste their time.… Read the full article

Why avoid adjectives or adverbs?

They make journalists cry ‘hype’ & more

Why cut adjectives and adverbs from your copy?

Because modifiers:

1. Strike journalists as hype

Writing media relations pieces?… Read the full article

World technology literacy skills: bad and getting worse

21% of adults are technologically illiterate

Just 7% of adults around the world can manage conflicting requests to reserve a meeting room using a reservation system, then email people to let them know whether they got the room they requested.… Read the full article

Write like Churchill — in one-syllable words

‘Short words are best, and old words when short are the best of all’

What do you notice about this passage, excerpted from an article in The Economist?… Read the full article

Don’t commit verbicide: Choose verbs, not nouns

Action words streamline syllables

This just in, writes one of my favorite correspondents, sharing a sentence his subject matter expert has written:

Somebody just kill me now, my friend writes.… Read the full article

What is clarity in writing

Stop these institutional mistakes for readability

Want to make sure you’re not eradicating clarity in your organization?

Slaughter these problems instead, suggest Martin J. Eppler, Ph.D.,… Read the full article

What closet tidying taught me about editing

Audition your words to go in, not out

When Lynn Wylie, aka Best Sister Ever, sent me an Unfancy blog post arguing that all you need to look great every day is a capsule wardrobe of 37 items per season, I scoffed.… Read the full article

‘Dear Mother’

Write a letter to make your copy conversational

“Good writers are visible just behind their words.”

— William Zinsser, author, On Writing Well

Eliot Fette Noyes was a Harvard-trained architect and industrial designer.… Read the full article

Less is more

The longer your piece, the less readers will read

Size does matter.

The longer your story, the less of it your readers will read — and the less likely they are to understand and act on it.… Read the full article