Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Liposuction Your Writing


Between bursts of brevity in texts and Tweets, there’s a whole lot of bloviating going on in certain circles. Chances are, you, too, have encountered your fair share of Bettys and Bobs who write or speak verbosely. Writing or speaking in a long-winded fashion is exactly what bloviating means. Communicators who fit this mold would likely label Twitter’s 140-character limitation dysfunctional.  
What a pain to trudge through the jungle of excessive words, especially when fewer will do. Fat extraction in writing often yields the same message originally intended when properly applied.      
If you think the bloviating Bettys and Bobs are bad, those prone to sesquipedalian tendencies also fall short of communicating crisply. Multi-syllabic, that’s for sure, the word “sesquipedalian” characterizes people who rely on long words to showcase their communications IQ.
No one wants to hold a dictionary hostage for interpretation so as a favorite English teacher once advised, “a nickel word is sometimes more effective than one equivalent to a quarter.”
To conquer the communications game, always adhere to a clear and concise writing style and know your targeted audience.          
If the writing doctor has ordered liposuction, read these tips: http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2011/04/11/do-you-make-your-english-teacher-cringe/
See how the federal government has gotten its plain writing act together: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ274/pdf/PLAW-111publ274.pdf

No comments:

Post a Comment