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Succinct writing takes practice, skill, and discipline. With practice, you get
better and better at demanding that every syllable, word, phrase, sound,
and image moves your story forward. With skill, you learn to identify
blather, happy talk, redundancies, and tangents that don’t belong in the
story. With discipline, you find the courage and strength to ruthlessly
annihilate all but the most vital parts of your work. Some of the best
writing of your career will die on the cutting room floor.
Stay Focused
With your red pen in hand, you’re ready to start crossing out words. But wait;
before you start slashing your words, look at the story as a whole and examine
its structure. You’ll most likely find that there are entire sections to cut—content
that wanders off and contains tangential information that
doesn’t support the main idea or storyline.
If any man wishes to
Before you look for clutter at the sentence or word level, first
write in a clear style,
scrutinize the design and structure of your story.
let him be first clear in
his thoughts; and if any Work with Architecture
would write in a noble
As an author, you become the architect and master builder
style, let him first possess of your Web content. You’ll first draw the blueprint, and then
a noble soul. you’ll build the story to fit the plan. Your blueprint can be an
outline, a list, a storyboard, or whatever works best for you.
—Goethe
Make sure the architecture suits the style and genre of the
story: For example, an architect’s design for a classic Crafts-
man bungalow might have built-in cabinets and furniture, but it won’t have
Greek columns or a portico. Your design for instructions might have steps for a
process, but it might not feature a comparison of products.
Chapter 10, “A Refresher on Rhetorical Modes,” suggests how you might plan
and organize several types of Web content. If you tenaciously stick to your plan,
you’ll already have the structure for your story cleanly built.
Be Positive
Your tone will be lighter and you’ll use fewer words if you write positive rather
than negative statements.
The following example illustrates how your word count decreases with positive
statements.
(5 words)
Some say English is a mutt, a blend of words from many languages and cul-
tures. And it’s still evolving!
TABLE 7.1 shows examples of word choices for a few common verbs and nouns.
Notice that the Anglo-Saxon words are short and powerful—only one syllable.
If you want to write with strength and brevity, choose Anglo-Saxon words over
their French and Latin or Greek counterparts.
Stephen King points out in his memoir, On Writing (Scribner, 2000), that
several great authors use simpler, smaller words. He illustrates this with a
sentence written by Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath:
“Some of the men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and
some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of
them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an
owner unless one were cold.”
King points out that although the sentence is 50 words long, 39 of the
words have only one syllable, and the other 11 have two syllables.
If you read Steinbeck’s novels, you’ll notice that he uses many Anglo-
Saxon words.
Chapter 7 : Writing Succinctly 87
Steve Krug, in Don’t Make Me Think (New Riders, 2000), pays homage
to rule number 17, Omit needless words, in The Elements of Style (Allyn
& Bacon, 1979) by Strunk and White. Krug, however, places a big black X
over the word needless, following the principle and omitting one word.
Remove Redundancies
It’s fairly easy to let words creep in that just repeat what is
When words are scarce
already evident from a similar word. Watch for phrases in
which words are often paired together. For example: they are seldom spent
past experience begin to initiate in vain.
cease and desist a burning fire —William Shakespeare
close proximity earlier, previous
basic fundamentals same exact thing
free gift
The following examples show inflated phrases and how you can shorten them:
In order to To
want to speed up, or The vase was bumped into by Jeffrey, Jeffrey bumped the vase, making it
anything that’s hard to and it got wobbly for a moment wobble and then crash to the floor.
say. It’s likely that you’ll and then went crashing to the floor. (13 words)
find words you can delete (21 words)
or refine.
WEAK STRONG
Readers also don’t want to be congratulated when they spend their hard-earned
money on products and services. The introductory text of many product user
guides starts out just so, congratulating viewers for their savvy purchase.
Although this acclamation might have been OK a decade ago, now readers
just find it arrogant, condescending, and annoying.
Chapter 7 : Writing Succinctly 90
Jakob Nielsen calls the introductory text on Web pages blah-blah text,
and he says, “Kill the welcome mat” (“Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?”
www.useit.com/alertbox/intro-text.html). Steve Krug, in Don’t Make Me
Think, calls it happy talk and says, “Happy talk must die.”
Generally, Web readers don’t care for small talk. However, there are a few
cases where sociable chit-chat works well, and you might be criticized if
you completely strip it out. For example, if your content is in response to
a hot line or technical issues, the reader might feel that your answers are
cold or curt without adding a little happy talk. The same is true if you are
a teaching assistant or teacher adding content to Moodle or some other
online forum. Students can interpret brevity as aloofness, or they might
feel as though you don’t like them.
Stop Hype
Don’t make your readers feel like you are a used car salesman or selling snake
oil. Your readers’ radar for sales pitches is sensitive, and they will shut down
in a heartbeat if they sense the slightest inclination of a sales pitch. Even if
you are selling products or services, describe and educate your readers with
a straightforward style and tone rather than marketing fluff and hyperbole.
Here are a few examples of product phrases that promote benefits without
exaggerated claims:
Offers a 3.5-inch display
Launches in 5 seconds or less
Uses standard AA batteries
Chapter 7 : Writing Succinctly 91
Challenges
The best way to get better at writing Web content is to write, write some more,
and rewrite. The challenges in this chapter focus on writing concisely.
Freewriting
The following freewriting challenges ask you to practice writing short, distilled
content. Freewriting works best when it is timed. If you tend to write quickly,
set the timer for ten minutes. If you tend to take a little more time, give your-
self 15 minutes. Remember that with freewriting you don’t need to worry about
accuracy, grammar, spelling, and so forth.
SIX-WORD NOVEL
Write a short, short story using six words. Hemingway wrote this one:
For sale: baby shoes, never used.
TWEET
Write three messages that you could post on Twitter. You’re allowed up to 140
characters.
Suggested Exercise
Exercises are longer projects that will take more time to complete. You can find
more complete instructions, learning outcomes, and criteria for critiquing your
work at www.write4web.com.
Up Next
Now that you have some pointers on how to write succinctly, you can move on to
the next chapter. Chapter 8, “Writing with Style and Good Grammar,” explains the
differences between having a style and writing with good grammar, and includes
some advice on how to avoid the most common grammatical errors.
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