Writing short is good

I decided I needed a short blog entry in between my long ones. Being a good writer is important if you want to be able to communicate ideas at work. And writing short helps.

The faster and more concisely you get to your point, the more likely your audience will understand your message.

We sound most authentic when we talk, and verbally, short, simple sentence construction comes naturally to us. When we write, authenticity gets buried under poor word choice. For example, people who use complicated words are seen as not as smart as people who write with a more basic vocabulary.

Writing short is not easy. Take the 270-word Gettysburg Address, for example. “Lincoln didn't just suddenly master elegant language. He wrote wonderful, down to earth language that was very concrete. But he rigorously trained himself to do that,” says Bryan Garner, editor of the Dictionary of Modern American Usage.

People pay attention to brevity, writes Janice Obuchowski in the Harvard Management Update. “If today the president got up and addressed the nation in 270 words, it’d be a top news story,”