Tight writing

What would Hemingway do?

Find out with this app

Ever wonder how Ernest Hemingway, the master of tight prose, would have handled your annual report?

Now you can find out.… Read the full article

What would Google do?

Steal 4 SEO tips from the search giant’s own releases

Google issues few press releases: 13 in 2013, 17 in 2014 and just 10 in the first eight months of 2015.… Read the full article

Romance meets finance in this feature

Northern Trust goes beyond the pyramid

How do you organize a compelling feature?

Model this piece, which Loring Leifer wrote for Northern Funds’ marketing magazine, Northern Update.… Read the full article

Benchmark readability against the BBC

How does your clarity stack up?

The BBC covers the most serious news known to man — West Bank stabbings, friendly fire air strikes, Justin Bieber’s bad behavior — and does so in an average of 4.7-character words.… Read the full article

The long and the short of it

Build drama, create rhythm by varying sentence length

Short sentences are best.

But make every sentence simple and short, and your copy will read like “See Dick run” primers.… Read the full article

Conduct a sound check

Read your copy aloud

When Don Murray arrived in the newsroom for his first day on the job as writing coach for the Boston Globe, he turned to his new boss and said: “I can tell you who your three best writers are.”

Then the Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work proceeded to do just that.… 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

Quotes on conversational writing

What writers and others say

“A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.”

— Truman Capote, author and gadabout who wrote In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s

“The voice of most news stories is neutral and authoritative.

… Read the full article

Aim for one-syllable words

Churchill was right — short words are best

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

“‘Short words are best,’ said Winston Churchill, ‘and old words when short are the best of all.’

“And, not for the first time, he was right: short words are best.