Use Short Words. Write simple sentences. Make Short Paragraphs. Repeat.

You talk using short words. You use second-person pronouns. You use lots of contractions. You speak in short sentences.

Then you start writing. You think you need to sound smart and intelligent. You think you need to impress people with your fancy words, like you did when you wrote your college papers.

Next thing you know you’ve got 40-word sentences that makes you look very intelligent.

Or do they?

That intelligent word salad you wrote that has all those 20-dollar, four- and five-syllable words? No one knows what you’re telling them.

That “leveraging” of your “utilization” of the English language for the “cascading messaging” you dropped on them drowned them in a waterfall of meaningless words.

Try this instead. Get in, get out and make things plain and simple. Make sure they know the “why” of what you’re telling them. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs in the active voice.

Prune your writing for vigor. Less is more. Always, less is more.

There's something bigger going on in your company

I worked with a company that was changing the way it operated. The strategy was interesting.

It was a huge company and their communications strategy was to send an email to all their employees telling them about this new way of doing things.

Here was the problem. The company told the employees to go read this very long, dense document that would explain everything. It literally read like an academic paper.

I read it many times. I’m still fuzzy on what it was all about.

That’s not a good approach.

It’s better to give employees an elevator speech.

Here’s why we’re doing this. This is where we’re going.

We’ll be great together. Now let’s get to work.

And hey, tell a story. People like stories.