Tushima Glucometer Final

Tushima Glucometer

3 Tactics That'll Make Writing Tighter as Easy as 1-2-3

One of my most memorable interactions in college took place in English 202, when my professor would have us come to the front of the class and share with him (while seated in a chair right beside his desk) what our thesis was for the assignment we'd be working on for the first half of the semester.

In nearly every case, my thesis was too long, something my professor had no truck with.

"Smith," he'd say, "if you cannot explain it in a sentence, you don't understand it clearly."

I'd always walk away wondering how on Earth I was supposed to distill my idea into one sentence.

It would be years later, while studying physics, that I encountered a similar quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein ["Unless you can explain it simply, you do not understand it fully"], before I finally understood the message my professor was trying to get across: "The better you understand an idea, and can distill its essence internally, the easier it is for you to share the idea succinctly and clearly to the reader."

We now live in a world overflowing with words, even as the time we have to read them gets shorter and shorter.

All around we hear, see, and read where people don't have time to write — yet when they do write, it's more essay than note. All the while, the folks consuming our content are crying out, "Give me the damn info, already!"

Ann Wylie, one of the preeminent writing and communication coaches in the world, agrees, writing in a recent newsletter: "The longer your story, the less of it your readers will read — and the less likely they are to understand and act on it."

In fact, she shares research conducted by Wilbur Schramm, who she calls the “father of communication studies,” highlighting the effect of story length on reading:
A nine-paragraph-long story lost three out of 10 readers by the fifth paragraph.
A shorter story lost only two.The short and the long of it: More people read further when the story is shorter rather than longer.
"That’s the 33% reading gap between a short piece and a longer one," says Wylie. "Bottom line: The longer your piece, the less of it they’ll read."

The short and the long of it
People read more of shorter content (Image source)