A Few Tips on How to Write Better

Source: Marcom Writer Blog

Dianna Huff can help you deliver your messages with more clarity and brevity. Here are some excerpts from her blog post of April 15, 2009.

1. Keep yourself to a specific word count. Adhering to a word count means you have to really work at getting your message across quickly and in fewer words.
2. Don't fall in love with your copy. … writing is a hard process and once something is on paper, you're loathe to cut it because then you have to struggle to write more. Cut it anyway.
3. Hunt down redundancies. When I write fast and without effort, I find my copy is full of useless words that I use over and over and ideas that I communicate two or three or four times (just like this sentence, ha!).

   Here is how I can edit this sentence: When writing fast and without effort, my copy becomes bloated with useless words and repeated ideas.

4. Print the piece and look at it. While sitting with my client today, I realized that the Web content I had initially submitted really could use some pruning. The copy didn't look dense on my computer screen, but it sure did on paper.
5. Consider every word. When brevity counts, you have to consider every word on the page. Can you combine words and ideas? Can you cut prepositions? Can you use contractions? Can you eliminate whole sentences? Instead of saying, "She was born in Boston," simply state, "Jane Smith, a Boston native."

For the complete blog post, click here.

From Dianna Huff's B2B MarCom Writer Blog, http://marcom-writer-blog.com//. April 15, 2009, "Pruning Deadwood From Your Copy."