Tricks for cutting dead wood Sometimes, you’re forced to be succinct. Take a 60-second radio spot. You’re not allowed to make it 61 seconds. So it’s only when you’re under extreme constraints that you should shoot for brevity, right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Economy of communication is perhaps the one rule we consider sacrosanct. And it applies to every medium in existence. Let’s talk about that a little bit in this purposely brief article. Nits to pick Here’s something that drives us absolutely bonkers: It’s when clients ask us to “add some hype” to something, devoid of any new or actionable input. Why would you even want to do that? The one-word (!) answer that leaps to mind is “insecurity.” We hold academia accountable for this, and it starts in grade school. You’re never rewarded for keeping it short; to the contrary, if your work isn’t “thick enough,” you’re penalized—and tortuous turns of tautology are revered. As if they’re any good. Don’t believe us? Read an article from any peer-reviewed journal. You’ll not only glaze over before Sentence 2, you’ll concurrently lose the thread, have no idea what’s being discussed, and certainly come away uninterested. And that’s tragic. One of the trickiest assignments we were handed was when the business school of an Ivy League university approached us to transform some of their scientific papers into blog posts for the general public. These things were nigh incomprehensible; honestly, what does “effect the affect” mean? We did a good job on these, and everyone was surprised at how engaging the final product was. If only the academics behind the great ideas and groundbreaking research knew how to speak in what most of us consider to be English! Broad-based application As we’d noted above, and if you’ll excuse the Lexus reference, the relentless pursuit of concision finds its expression in virtually every medium. It’s de rigueur in all forms of writing, from ad copy to business correspondence (Do you really want to waste that executive’s time by writing “Here is a recapitulation of our phone conversation from yesterday including key takeaways and salient points,” when “Here’s a recap of our call” will suffice?). Interestingly, its application transcends the written word. Ask any designer about the seemingly simple concept of “white space.” Chances are, you’ll get an earful. How do you do it? The surprising thing about cutting dead wood is that it’s hard. Especially if it’s your own writing. Which, of course, points up an organic solution: Find someone else to do it for you. They won’t be trapped in your voice, or married to your words. Their external perspective will help them immensely. If you’re forced to do it yourself, try reading the material aloud. It’ll feel clunky. Find, and underline, all the words and phrases that repeat or bog you down. Save each version as you whittle it away. This way, in case you cut too much, you can easily revert to the previous version. More importantly, this frees you psychologically from the worry of cutting too much as you go. It makes you a better editor. Are there exceptions to this rule? Yes there are. One of the reasons we’re such big proponents of rules like this (in our New York ad-agency days, we were known as “The Grammar Police”) is that when you know them inside-out, then you can creatively break them. Here’s one example we’ll leave you with: The run-on sentence. When we read text, we tend to subvocalize. That is, we don’t read out loud, but we read out loud in our mind and listen to our own voice as we do. Knowing this, you can use it to your advantage. Sometimes, you’ll want to leave the reader winded and out of breath, and if you don’t even give them the time, the comma, the semicolon, or the period to do so, you’ll have succeeded in a slyly subtle way. Need help? Of course we do this stuff all the time. As we’d mentioned, it’s not easy. If you have a big need to make short work of that next ad, website, presentation—whatever—just contact us. We’d be delighted to help you. In short order.
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