In Business Writing, Keep It Simple

Don't lose your message in a sea of big words

People who speak simply and clearly often switch styles when they must put the message in writing, resulting in long, convoluted sentences and a message that is lost. If people have to read your words twice, they often won’t bother. Try to make your sentences understandable on first reading.

A major corporation had initiated a new program throughout the organization, and was in the process of compiling a user manual. Each department was asked to submit draft wording for its own section of the manual. The cover memo from the Legal Department contained this sentence:

“In conjunction with the Internatioinal Project and the binder to be produced relating to issues of significance on relevant matters, please find attached for inclusion under the legal section of such binder information relating to the headings originally provided to you with respect to legal issues in connection therewith for insertion into the binder.”

Phew! That was just the cover memo—imagine how the manual section read! This sentence contains fifty-four words. The writer could have conveyed the same message, by saying: “Here is the proposed legal section for the X Project binder.” That’s eleven words—we saved forty-three words just by streamlining this single sentence.

English is a very rich language, and if we take the trouble to find precisely the right word, we don’t need a lot of qualifying phrases. Keep it simple!

Feel free to use this or other articles on this site in your in-house publication or online newsletters, so long as you make no changes, use the entire article, and add the following attribution at the end:

Helen Wilkie speaks at conferences and conducts corporate training sessions on all aspects of business communication. She is the author of Message Received and Understood! and The Hidden Profit Center. Contact her by phone at 416-966-5023, by e-mail at hwilkie@mhwcom.com  or browse her main website at www.mhwcom.com