How to Write Concisely: Masterful Verbal Skill in the Digital Age
Whether you are one of them or not, everyone is a writer. Writing is an essential skill between social media, dating profiles, blogging, and day to day tasks in most jobs. In How to Write Short, author Roy Peter Clarke illustrates the value of writing short writing short in our technology-driven world and shows you how to do it right.
This is part of the Lifehacker book review series . Not all life hacks can be described on a blog, so we decided to look at some of our favorite life changing books to dive deeper into the most important topics in life.
Roy Peter Clarke has taught writing for nearly 40 years at the Poynter Institute , one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the world, where he is also Vice President and Senior Fellow. He is also the author or editor of seventeen books on writing and journalism, including Writing Tools , Glamor of Grammar , Help! For writers and more recently, The Art of Reading X-rays . Pictures can be worth a thousand words, but with How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times, Clark uses life’s experiences in writing and teaching to show you that just a few words can be better than a thousand pictures.
Who is this book for?
You can find out if this book is right for you with two questions:
- Do you ever write anything ?
- Do you need practical advice from an expert on how to write better?
If you are unsure, let me help. The answer to the first question is yes. You probably write every day. Maybe it’s a loving text message, a caustic blog comment, or a status update about where you are, what you think or feel. In any case, you are the writer for whom this book is intended. Sure, journalists, bloggers, writers, and marketers can all benefit from Clark’s lessons here , but by no means just for professional writers.
You must answer the second question yourself. But it’s much easier to answer if you know that well-written copy can help you communicate better with friends and family, sell yourself to others, write better reports, take clearer notes, and even make you more fun. So is this book for you? Yes.
What do you get
“How to write short” is divided into two main sections: “How to write short” and then “How to write short for a specific purpose.” The first section consists entirely of tips, advice and lessons to help you write better headlines, magazines, reports, headlines, sales proposals, letters, notes, emails, or any other short form of writing. There are 22 short chapters in this section, and each has a heading that explains exactly what you are looking at. You will learn how to study short essays by professional writers such as essays, poems, and even tweets so you can improve your own, how to find the main focus and extract the most important information, and how other people read at a glance (and what that means for your own letter). You will also learn some of the most effective ways to express a lot with just a few words, how to choose words wisely, and how to cut out the excess words you use – all while looking at examples of professional writers you can imitate. … Here are some examples of chapters you’ll find in this section:
- As you explore the topic “No Reset”, you will learn that any letter can benefit from a set of formal writing techniques, even in an informal context. Even simple messages like emails, text messages, and Facebook status updates can be better understood and appreciated if you create your words rather than throw them away, whether you use slang, acronyms, or other idioms. More importantly, you’ll find that it doesn’t take much longer to create words than to discard them.
- In the Cut It Up section, you will learn that there is always something you can cut out of your letter without canceling the message. You will learn what is usually considered an abbreviation, such as adverbs, adjectives, intensifiers, etc. You will also learn a few simple rules (with examples) to follow when reviewing what is written.
In the second section, “How to Write Short with a Specific Purpose,” you will learn why all this happens and how to apply solid short notices in the real world. There are 13 chapters in this section, each of which is devoted to different aspects of life, in which writing is always present. You will learn how you can use concise writing to capture those you have lost or admire, how to make your writing funnier by moving on to flavor, how to sound wiser through effective use of words and sentence structure, and even how to write dialogue better. … Here are a couple of examples:
- In the Wise Jokes chapter , you will learn how to learn good jokes and apply the same principles to your writing. You will understand why brevity is the soul of wit, how to use juxtaposition to create the best sounds, and that a laughing word is often found at the end of a humorous joke.
- In the Selling chapter, you will learn how few words are needed to make your ideas, products, or services sound great. You will walk through famous slogans and advertisements and disassemble them to understand why short and cute words are ideal to stand out and earn stamina in someone’s mind.
Each chapter in the book offers examples of writing from real-life writers (from Oscar Wilde to Dave Barry) to explain and support the lesson. At the end of each chapter, helpful notes or summaries of the most important information in each chapter are provided, as well as quick written exercises to help you practice the advice. It might be tempting to skip straight to the second half of the book, which covers everything about real-world applications, but start at the beginning and work your way down to business. Clark deliberately brings you to this basics section and refers to what you learn in the first section.
One trick you won’t succeed
In the chapter “Entice,” Clark explains how you can use short letter forms to better market yourself in resume cover letters, introductory essays, and even online dating profiles . All of this is broken down into three stages:
- The Pitch: Where the writer tries to stand out from the crowd in a sentence or two at the top.
- Bait: Where the writer gathers evidence (anecdotes, preferences, humor) that he is worthy.
- The catch: where the writer ends up with an irresistible call to action.
Basically, you have 10 seconds to grab the reader’s attention, and then earn even more. It’s like a pop song – you want to hit them with a catchy crochet hook right from the start. Once you get their attention, list the words or reasons why you are worth their time. Remember that the first few sentences can either break you or break you. Keep things short and simple.
Our opinion
How to write short is a rare book. It’s certainly an important addition to any writer’s library, but it’s also a practical guide for anyone tweeting , commenting, sending emails to people at work, or sending multiple text messages every day.
There are tips here that apply to all walks of life today, and Clark’s language is clear enough for anyone to follow. You don’t need to be a grammatical snob to understand something. The presented tips are also easy to apply in practice. In fact, many tips are erased from you almost immediately after reading them. I can hardly write this damn review, because I so want to say something like “the book is useful not only for writers, it is worth reading.”
In addition, the author follows his own advice in everything, which, perhaps, I like most about the book. Everything is concise and reduced to the main. I never felt like I was mindlessly skimming over useless factoids or digging up boring personal stories that had nothing to do with the subject. Clarke introduces his personality, wit, and rare personal references as examples, but the book is by no means about him. The book is also not very short, but it flies by because each section is very easy to digest. This makes the book look like an accurate reference from a real expert, filled to the brim with practical advice that can be easily referenced. I would write more about this, but I practice what I have learned.
You can buy How to Writ Short: Word Craft for Fast Times in paperback for $ 12, or on Amazon Kindle for $ 10.