Be Specific! How to Get to the Point in Everything You Write

You want your writing to have a clear message. You want it to be easy to read and reach more people.

But your pieces aren’t getting a lot of engagement, and your readers are confused about your main points. You’re having to verbally explain to people what you wrote, and you’re getting fewer and fewer responses to your novel-length emails.

Maybe you were aiming for your next writing piece to be strong, effective, and easy to understand . . . only to end up with a meandering piece of work whose true message is vague or completely unintelligible, as it is so obscured beneath prose that is both confusing and bogged down by adding unnecessary additions that it leaves the reader thoroughly questioning what they have just read and why, if they are even able to doggedly soldier on until the end of the piece, which—I must tell you—is improbable and unlikely.

Did you catch all that? Or did your brain zone out halfway through?

If you want your writing to inspire, influence, educate—and even entertain—getting to the point is a great strategy.

So today we’re sharing four ways you can improve your craft and get to the point in everything you write:

1Use Appropriate Sentence Length

Have you ever read a sentence that was so long that when you got to the end you’d forgotten what it was about? The longer a sentence grows, the more difficult it is for the reader to track what’s being said. You may be writing longer sentences to fit in more ideas, but this can result in your true message getting lost.

Make sure your sentences flow well, and express complete thoughts that are easy to understand. (While you’re at it, avoid sentence fragments and run-ons.)

Resist the urge to jam too many ideas or details into the same sentence. If your sentence is so long that its meaning isn’t clear or you’ve switched topics partway through, consider breaking it into two new sentences.

Example: For a writer, it’s important to find that special spot where you can be your most creative, whether that’s a coffee shop, library, park bench, or cozy chair, because this allows you to unlock your imagination and do the work you’ve dreamed of.

Solution: For a writer, it’s important to find that special spot where you can be your most creative, whether that’s a coffee shop, library, park bench, or cozy chair. This allows you to unlock your imagination and do the work you’ve dreamed of.

2Avoid Filler Words

Cutting out filler words can make your sentences shorter and easier to understand. Filler words and phrases are unnecessary words that clutter our sentences and don’t add meaning. For example:

• Basically
• Rather
• Just
• As a matter of fact
• At all times

We use these words to pad our writing, but when we use them too much they start to bog down our sentences and blow up our word count. They can even become a writing tic with overuse. I actually have to stop myself from using the words “actually”and “just” in just about every other sentence.

Here’s a tip: “‘Actually’ is a word that’s not actually necessary for most sentences.”

“If your sentence works without it, you just don’t need this word.”

Want to recognize common filler words? Here’s a handy list of words and phrases you no longer need.

3Be Precise with Your Words

Is your writing specific, descriptive, and direct? Or do you get feedback that it’s too vague or wordy? To get precise with your writing, you may need to use more words (to be descriptive), or fewer words (to simplify).

Vague: My mom’s aunt has some stuff for sale.

Precise: My great-aunt has a bookshelf and a writing desk for sale.

Wordy: The pigs from the fairytale lived in a house made of bricks

Concise: The Three Little Pigs lived in a brick house.

Make your writing strong and vivid by using specific phrases, instead of ambiguous words like:

• thing
• stuff
• good
• bad
• pretty
• ugly

If there’s a simpler way to say something complex, the simpler phrase is often clearer. For example: “airline staff” vs. “people who work for the airline.”

Avoiding redundancy is also key to precision in writing. Have you ever had an “unexpected surprise” or met a “very unique” person? Phrases that say the same thing twice are called tautologies. We may think we’re getting more specific, but in reality we’re using redundant filler words.

You can learn more about tautologies and tidying up your writing here.

4Use the Best Voice For the Situation (Active vs. Passive)

You may have heard that it’s always better to use the active voice, but the passive voice is also a great tool. The key is to use whichever voice will do the best job at communicating the meaning of your sentence.

The active voice can help your writing feel more direct and energetic. It’s a great way to quickly make your point. Say you’re writing a blog post about the actress Viola Davis. The active voice clearly showcases her accomplishments.

Active: Viola Davis won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

But what if you’re writing a recap of the 2017 Oscars? For that same piece of information, it could be more direct to use the passive voice because your primary focus is on the award—rather than the actress who won it.

Passive: The Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was won by Viola Davis.

In general, using the active voice will infuse your writing with greater energy and clarity, but sometimes the passive voice will be your best choice, depending on which part of the sentence you want to emphasize.

Still not sure when to use the active vs. passive voice? You can learn more here.

Monday Motivation Hack: Manage Your Morning

If you win the morning, you win the day.

Mornings set the tone for your day. If your habits are bad or simply uninspiring, they’ll steamroll your productivity and focus for the whole day. This week, we looked at what a range of successful people do in the morning. Groups included up-and-coming millennials, productivity hackers, and various kinds of leaders. Here’s a sampling of what they had in common.

1Start the Night Before

For many, the morning routine actually starts when they crawl into bed the night before. Prep for the following morning can include setting out clothes, double-checking the next day’s to-do list, or disconnecting from technology enough to ensure deep, healthful sleep during the night.

2Get Up Earlier

The majority of successful people are early risers. When you analyze the benefits, it’s easy to understand why—you’re less likely to get distracted and you have more willpower. Plus, it’s great motivation to sit down at your desk and feel like you’ve already accomplished a lot because, see, you’re pretty amazing.

No matter where I am in the world, I try to routinely wake up at around 5 am. By rising early, I’m able to do some exercise and spend time with my family, which puts me in a great mind frame before getting down to business. — Richard Branson

3Move

Whether it’s yoga, a light walk, stretching, or a full workout, almost everyone tries to do some form of movement to shake off the grogginess of sleep.

4 Hydrate and Fuel Up

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Not one “successful” morning routine we found skipped breakfast and hydration. Some were quite regimented (8 oz of water with lemon upon waking, without fail), while others were more casual. Regardless of what works for you, make sure you get water or tea and some food in the morning!

5 Meditate or Practice Focus

Tim Ferriss claims in his podcast that more than 80 percent of the people he interviews practice some kind of focus training or meditation. This practice can help set a calm tone for the day while also helping your brain focus throughout the day. His suggestions for success include finding the right format for you—even listening to a song with focus and intent can work wonders—then practice a minimum of 5 sessions before you decide to keep or toss the activity.

I made a deal with myself: If you don’t have 10 minutes for yourself, you don’t have a life. There’s no excuse. So I have 10 minutes, and I do this little ritual. —Tony Robbins

6 Set Your Goals for the Day

Almost everyone made time to revise their intention for the day. Many people did this mentally and only wrote down their priorities once they got to the office, but you can also set aside time to tweak schedules, to-do lists, and priorities on paper.

7 Practice Gratitude

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. — Marcus Aurelius

Expressing gratitude in the morning helps to set a positive tone for your day and keeps any burdens during the day in perspective.

8 Work

A significant number of people make time to check and send emails, write, or work on personal projects. Even though they worked on different kinds of tasks, without fail everyone who did some kind of work did it as a very consistent part of their morning.

Tips for Starting a Morning Routine

Imagine and Plan Your Ideal Morning

It can be tempting to take Tony Robbins’ morning routine and try to replicate it step for step. While this may be a good starting point, you are a completely different person, living your own unique life. A fantastic routine is deeply rooted in knowing yourself and what makes you feel confident, accomplished, and motivated. Spend time imagining your perfect morning and mapping out three to five goals for every morning.

Don’t Make It All or Nothing

Once you understand what you want to accomplish every morning, give yourself some flexibility. Tim Ferriss recommends that you aim for at least a 60 percent completion rate of your morning goals. Life happens, and you may not always have your perfect breakfast or be able to squeeze in a forty minute run; be gentle with yourself.

Ease Into It

Though it will be exciting to start your new morning habits, it’s probably a bad idea to go whole hog. It can be painfully time consuming to adjust your sleeping schedule, let alone start exercising and making a full English breakfast every day. Prioritize your goals and introduce one at a time. As you get more and more comfortable with your new habits, keep tweaking, but take your time.

Do you have a morning routine? What is it like?

Looking for more productivity inspiration? Check out last week’s Monday Motivation Hack—taming your to-do list.

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Whether it’s a to-do list that never seems to get done, a less-than-inspired morning routine, or a tendency to get distracted (damn you, social media!), we’ve all got a hole in our productivity armor somewhere. Every Monday, we’re going to be analyzing common bad habits that could be holding you back and offer a hack or two to help you get more quality output from your time. Our Monday Motivation Hacks will help get you into fighting shape and give you some new tactics to try out on the battlefield.

What Novel Are You? The Quiz

If you were a novel written during a special month, what novel would you be? Take this quiz and find out which classic novel corresponds with your personality!

In the quiz, you will be presented with multiple-choice questions. There are no right or wrong answers. Just choose the answer that most closely matches how you feel or what you think. Have fun!

Introducing the Diaeresis

The New Yorker is a quirky magazine. Sure, it’s a go-to when you’re looking to read high-quality writing, but the magazine’s style is full of peculiarities. There are the double consonants where you don’t expect them, as in the word “travelled.” There’s the spelling out of numbers, even the really long ones. And there are the words like “coöperate” and “reëlect,” which are written with two tiny dots over the second o and the second e. Hang on, what exactly do you call those two little dots? A diaeresis. The New Yorker is one of the rare publications that still use the diaeresis sign.

But what is this sign? Does it make sense to use it? And why does it appear so often in the names of hard rock and heavy metal bands, from Blue Öyster Cult to Motörhead?

What Is the Diaeresis?

The diaeresis—also spelled “dieresis”—is a type of sign that’s called a diacritic. (It’s important to note, that diaeresis is also a poetic break in verse; however, we aren’t going to cover that usage here.) Diacritical marks are added to letters to indicate that there is something unusual about the way they are pronounced. A diaeresis is used when you have two vowels next to one another that should be pronounced as separate syllables instead jumbled together as a diphthong. The word “naïve” is a good example. When you pronounce it, you can clearly hear how it’s divided into two parts—na- and -ive. The diaeresis tells you not to combine the two vowel sounds and pronounce the word as one syllable that sounds like “knave.” Essentially, the diaeresis tells you “hey, this vowel is pronounced separately from the other one.” It is occasionally used on vowels that stand on their own to point out that they should be pronounced even though logic might say they shouldn’t, as in the surname Brontë.

Should We Use the Diaeresis?

The short answer is no. The diaeresis is considered obsolete by most authorities in the English language. In some cases, the diaeresis is replaced by the hyphen. Where The New Yorker writes coöperate, other publications prefer co-operate, especially outside the United States. In other cases, you’ll find it written simply as cooperate. People generally know how to pronounce these words. But even if they didn’t, do you think that a diaeresis would be of any help now, when it’s been out of use for so long? So no, there is no reason to use a diaeresis unless it’s really called for as part of a name. So why do heavy metal bands still do it? Well, they actually don’t. The two dots above the o in Motörhead isn’t actually a diaeresis—it’s an umlaut. It’s also a diacritic, but it represents a completely different change in the pronunciation of the letter it marks. Using it in the names of heavy metal bands is a practice that’s so well established that you can read entire articles about the heavy metal umlaut—the umlaut that does nothing except look awesome.

“Which World Leader Do You Write Like?” Quiz

You have greatness in you. Cultivating it often takes role models, mentors, and loads of hard work. This fun quiz will help you find out which famous world leader you most resemble in your writing and may help you find an inspiring role model.

What world leader did you get? What others do you look up to?