Speaker 1: Today, I'm going to give you a presentation on writing that's clear and concise. Questions at the end, please. Let me get through my spiel. So I want to share some tactics that have helped me in writing that is clear and concise. The overall theme of what I'm going to talk to you all about is how to write less in order to write with clarity. I learned these things from books, from practice, from online resources, and I want to share some of these strategies and drop some wisdom on all of you. We've all seen good writing that presents the most important information first. Sentences should be short. Long verbose sentences present too much information. They blur the main point. The text should be direct and concise and have an easy flow. This is an example of good writing, and we've all seen bad writing. Citigroup today announced a series of repositioning actions that will further reduce expenses, improve efficiency across the company while maintaining Citigroup's unique capabilities to serve clients, especially in emerging markets. These actions will result in increased business efficiency, streamline operations, and it optimizes consumer whatever, right? It's easy to pick on the banks, right? This is an example of what I would say is bad writing. Now, when I say writing, I actually mean specifically business writing. Things like emails, proposals, press releases, web copy, the words that are in applications, I don't really mean academic or scientific or rhetoric writing. However, I would offer that all types of writing with an emphasis on clarity, brevity, is more impactful, more compelling, more effective, more engaging, and appeals to wider audiences. Oh, no, but you're dumbing it down. You're dumbing down the scientific writing. No, it's actually about clarity for the audience. Your words should not make you sound smart, but the clarity of your words and ideas, it's your clarity that make you sound smart. So why is writing important? I believe that writing is important because it's an effective means of communication, obviously, and that clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. And clear thinking is how you articulate good ideas. And writing is everywhere, right? It's in emails. It's in proposals. It's in presentations. It's in text messages. And it's an important skill for all of us, especially of all of us in business, and especially managers and collaborators. And we're paid to be here, to be good writers and good, clear thinkers. That's why writing is important. 1986, it was a cold January morning on Cape Canaveral. Seven astronauts are aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. Shortly after liftoff, it explodes. Seven astronauts lose their lives. Why did this happen? Oh, my gosh. Why did this happen? It was the O-rings, right? No. This happened because of bad communication. NASA, of course, did an inquiry. The scientists knew what was going on. They sent memos, written memos, that explains this. This is a chart, of course, that shows temperature here and the number of failures that happened. These memos were, I'm sure, elegantly written. But they were not clearly written. If they were clearly written, the memo would have said, O-rings feel at cold temperatures. It's too cold today. Don't launch. But that never happened. And because of it, seven astronauts lost their lives. Now, this is kind of a sobering story, right? To just get at the point that clear words, especially written words, are important. With that, lighter note, these are the three things I'm going to talk about. Give you a whole bunch of cool pro tips. Share some resources. And then, of course, Joe G. over here, call to action. Ready for it? I'm ready for it. Okay. First, pro tips on writing. Use fewer words. Okay? Actually, before I get to that, this is just a sampling of a whole bunch of pro tips. This isn't meant to be a grammar exercise. It's just these are the tips that I have found useful. And the most important one is to use fewer words. When you use fewer words, it's faster to read. Each word has more impact. Fewer words usually means that you're clear and concise. And you pick really good words that have good meaning, right? Here's an example of a slide that probably has a lot of words on it. You get in there and cut them out, and then it becomes much more clear simply by using less words. Volkswagen, they had this really compelling ad. Didn't read it. But what it means is that their blue motion technology saves you money. Use fewer words. All right. Shorter sentences. Give the reader a break. With a long sentence, the listener or reader may have forgotten by the end of the time that the speaker or reader has reached the final few words that are going to be said or written, even though the listener or reader has been paying particularly close attention. Well, run on sentence. Use short sentences. They break up ideas for the reader. They're easy to remember, easy to understand, more powerful. Use shorter sentences. Limit the passive. Again, not a grammar lesson. The proposal had been sent on Thursday. No. I sent the proposal on Thursday. And one of the things that I like about eliminating the passive voice from writing is that it usually means fewer words. It helps with clarity, and it provides accountability. When you use the passive, right, remember that there is no subject in this sentence. The proposal was sent. No. I sent the proposal. It provides accountability to all of that. Limit adverbs. This is kind of grammatical. These words are adverbs. Don't adverbs describe a verb, right? These things just happen to weaken the overall message, which doesn't make for clear and concise writing. Avoid qualifiers. These are also things that weaken. I believe it seems that it's really get to the point. No big words. Why utilize big words when you can just use small words? It was a nascent product. I always hear this, like, in product management world. I don't know what nascent means. I looked it up. It was a new product. Jargon. Here we go. Jargon are terms that are used within a particular group, confusing to outsiders, and because of that are often unclear. And you have to be really careful with jargon, because it can make your audience feel dumb, like they don't get what you're saying. And in some ways, they can even be offensive. Avoid jargon if you want to reach a wider audience in your writing. Of course, the close second to jargon are these things called cliches. Specifically, cliches are terms that are used too much, and their meaning is diminished, right? Here's an example of some cliches. Get away from these. Say what you really mean. A particular pet peeve of mine, we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're not robots. We know what happens when the robots take over. Be human in your writing. Sorry, I sent the wrong file. You don't have to apologize for the inconvenience of it. This gets back to the accountability thing. Get to the point. Use fewer words, because it forces you to be clear and concise. Oh, here we go. Picking on Citibank again. These actions are logical next steps in cities' transformation. While we are committed to and our strategy continues to leverage our unparalleled global network and footprint, we have identified areas and products where our skill does not provide for meaningful returns, and we will further increase our operating efficiency by reducing excess. You get the idea, right? This is hard to read, unclear, and doesn't have any accountability in it. Has lots of jargon, right? This is actually the Citibank CEO in 2012 saying that life's hard. Perhaps he should have said something like, I approved recent layoffs to save money. I had to ensure that Citigroup stayed profitable. We grew too quick, too big. I didn't plan correctly for this year's financial market. I plan to. That's how you apologize. That's how you write clearly, in my opinion. Anyone know who this guy is? Hemingway. Hemingway said, write drunk, edit sober. He knew a thing or two about being drunk because he was an alcoholic, right? The point here is that when you're writing, get all your ideas on paper, right? Just get them out there, and then afterward, you go back and edit them, and that's where you can really contract your words there. And cut. Cut ruthlessly, right? We've seen this slide before. There are ways that you can come in here and just slice it all out and make life a little bit better. And then read it aloud. Just get back to that human thing. I don't think any normal human says, I apologize for the inconvenience. They just say, oh, shoot, sorry. So read it aloud. Listen to what it has to say. It helps make things more conversational, and conversations are easier to understand than really big words that are there. You probably also get some personality in your writing, too, if you are reading it aloud because your personality comes through. Now there's a whole bunch of other methods there. This gets into more of the grammar, but these things can also help with clear writing. At the end of the day, it all comes down to just find ways to use fewer words, because fewer words, writing less, is what helps you write with clarity. Caution. When you use too few words, you have to beware emotions, right? Especially when you write those really short, direct emails, you've got to be careful there. All right. Those were your pro tips. Resources. Hemingway Editor. He's a cool guy. There's this tool out there called Hemingway Editor, where you paste in your text and you get all these highlights that say where all the bad stuff is, things that are not clear, words that are too big, passive voice, all of that. It's a neat tool. I recommend doing it. If any of you have written Medium articles before, or particularly interesting business emails, pop it in here. They have a web version. Oh, security. They also have a desktop version, too, that's not connected to anything. But what's cool here is that at the right, you see this readability score. And again, as you write, you want to write for as many audiences as you can because that's what makes clear and concise writing. Their little algorithm here says that this is at a sixth grade level. And interestingly enough, there was a study done back in the 40s when newspapers were big, those things that are paper and have black and white words on them that we've all forgotten about. Newspapers did a big study where they're like, man, how do we increase subscribers and people buying the newspaper? And it turns out the way that they did that is they wrote at a lower grade level. And once they used plain talk, many newspapers reported a 45% to 60% increase in readership, which is pretty cool, just by lowering the grade level that's there. And again, that doesn't mean that it's dumber. It just means that it is more clear. Plain language, according to Wikipedia, is writing that is designed to ensure the reader understands quickly, easily, and completely. It avoids a verbose, convoluted language and jargon. And fun fact, many countries even require plain language in a lot of their public agencies and services that are out there. So there's like a reason for this so that everyone can understand it. So that's Hemingway Editor. There's this other book out there called The Elements of Style. It's a classic. It's half grammar, and it's also half advice for clear and concise writing. Check it out if you like books. There's a table of contents. It's a short read, 150 pages. There's this other cool tool out there. It's a website. It's called Four Sentences. And the problem is that emails take a really long time. You should treat it like an SMS, whatever. In less words, it just means make your emails four sentences. That's like a cool goal, right? So here's an example. This was after a recent security training. There's your four sentences. Boom. Approved. Call to action. The last part. So I told you pro tips. I gave you some resources. Remember, use fewer words. Write less to write with clarity. Try that the next time you have something to write. Have a drink. Write drunk. Edit sober. Check out Hemingway Editor. And that's what I have. Thanks.