Simplify To Clarify In Professional Communications

I possess two writing personalities, one for my writing career and another for my role as a teacher. These craft suggestions come from my work communicating with teaching colleagues, students, parents, and student teachers– those less interested in my poetic stylings than in getting information quickly and clearly. Here are seven tips to tighten your communications, directions, and presentations (some may even help with your fiction):

1) remove “that,” an overused and often useless word;

2) avoid starting sentences with dependent clauses;

3) use the active voice and avoid forms of “to be;”

4) present sequential steps as bullet lists;

5) simplify compound sentences through division or revision;

6) replace prepositional phrases using “of” with possessives, and

7) remove unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but something to help bring clarity in our world of fast-paced communications. One final piece of advice, keep texting and “social-media language” in texts and social media. In the professional world, we are, after all, how we write.

For those in the teaching profession interested in more examples of how to apply these suggestions to your teaching materials, please see my post “The Writer Within Every Teacher.”