Peter Grandstaff

Web Marketing for Your Small Business

Become a Better Communicator in 7 Minutes

Three Writing Books Worth HavingDo you think you can find 7 spare minutes each week? Do you think you could improve one of your most vital business skills with that time? Yes, I’m talking about communication. Whether you’re sending a text or drafting a formal letter, getting your thoughts across quickly and clearly can make a huge difference.

Your writing will affect the impression you make. It will impact how quickly people are able to start acting on your instructions and how well they’ll understand you. It’s easy to forget how much it matters.

Find 7 minutes in your week (or everyday if you’re up for it!) Use that time to read 500 to 1,000 words. Then, keep what you’ve read in mind during the week.

Anyone can read a book about writing. It’s what you do with that information that counts.

Take in just a bit of instruction and, if you actually incorporate it into your thought processes, it can make a huge difference. Do that every week and you’re sure to see steady improvement.

You won’t become the next Shakespeare this way. Practice can’t turn you into a virtuoso, but it can help you improve. Every little bit helps.

You’ll need a starting place for your 7 minutes. Here are some books that I’ve found especially potent.

  • On Writing by Stephen King – I just finished this one. It’s the reason writing is on my mind today. There are some interesting autobiographical parts with a very solid writing guide in the middle.
  • The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White – King’s book turned me on to this one. It’s full of short sections (perfect for 7 minutes) about all aspects of writing clearly and vigorously.
  • The AP Stylebook – This is more of a reference book, but I find that I can usually find something worth knowing by flipping through it for a few minutes.
  • Persuasion: The Psychology of Influence by Robert Cialdini – It’s not a writing book, but so much of business writing involves persuasion that I think it belongs here.

Of course none of the advice you’ll read is written in stone. Writing is communicating. The correct way to write something is the way that gets your idea across with clarity. Rules and advice help you do that better and with less effort.

Why don’t we make this post count as your 7 minutes for the week? For the next week, keep these things in mind when you write.

Omit needless words.

–William Strunk Jr.

Use short sentences.

— Kansas City Star style guide (where Hemingway got his start)

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

–Thomas Jefferson

Do you have a favorite writing resource? I’d love to know about it.

7 Secrets of Better Writing

Chances are that you do some writing from time to time. Maybe it’s just emails to your coworkers. Maybe it’s public-facing verbiage on your website. Maybe you correspond with customers, clients or donors. We do a lot with the written word these days, and it pays to remind ourselves how to do it well.

I’ve put together these 7 rules from a few different sources: Hemingway, Orwell and Bird. If you ask me, it’s worth brushing up on these sorts of things periodically. I should probably do it more often.

Use short sentences.
Hemingway was a master of this rule. He learned it from a newspaper’s style book. Short sentences make your writing easy to digest. That’s very important in our fast paced world.

Eight words make for an easy sentence. Sixteen words is okay. Thirty two is too much. Your reader may lose track and lose interest.

Use short paragraphs.
Nothing deters a reader like a wall of text. Break up your ideas into easy to digest chunks, and don’t make every paragraph the same length.

Break up your text.
There are a number of ways to make your text less intimidating beyond short sentences and paragraphs. For example,

  • Bulleted lists
  • Headlines and sub-headlines
  • Images
  • Bold or italic type

Be positive.
That doesn’t mean to always be happy. It means describe what something is rather than what it is not. Call something affordable rather than inexpensive. That produce is organic rather than pesticide free.

You can compare your offerings to your competitors and still be positive. Just talk about what your offering is rather than what theirs is not. For example, “Acme widgets are 32% stronger than Brand X widgets.”

Use the active voice.
This one will keep your sentences shorter and more potent. You wouldn’t say, “the championship was won by us” would you? No. You’d say, “we won the championship.”

Draw the reader along.
Make it easy for your reader to keep reading to the end.

Build curiosity. Don’t give everything away in a headline. Use curiosity to draw your reader along. What else?

Questions help. You can bridge two paragraphs by ending one with a question. Naturally the reader will go to the next for the answer.

Additionally, you can use carrier words. At the start of a sentence, these tell the reader that there’s something more to get. Examples include, furthermore, plus, also, finally, next and and. (It’s okay to start a sentence with and. You aren’t writing a term paper.)

Stay lucid.
What this all boils down to is clarity. Your writing should make sense and have a logical flow.

A good test is to ask a layperson to read your writing. Ask them if it’s clear. If not, revise.

Finally, I don’t know who said this, but here’s a quotation to keep in mind:

“Something written to please the writer rarely pleases the reader.”