Finding the Right Balance of Words

How well is your message understood?I look at the sentence it becomes obvious to me that
Most people tend to ramble on and on when writingwe havea couple of ideas that are getting buried in the
amessage. The reader becomes confused anddump of words:
communicationis lost. What you need to do is find the1.Meetings with management the second Thursday of
right balanceof words and the right words for thethe month.
balance.2.Meetings to discuss technology advances made by
The Right Balancecompetitor.
Good business writing is concise and to the point.3.Review of company vision.
The shorter your sentences and the shorterI'm going to leave out the information about the
yourparagraphs, the more likely your message willcompanyvision because I don't feel it has any
beunderstood. Studies have shown that as aimportance in the paragraph.
sentenceor paragraph becomes longer, theThe company vision is something that would naturally
comprehensiondramatically starts dropping. Here areoccurin the meeting discussion and isn't necessary to
somepercentagesillustrating my point:the purpose.
Sentence Length Comprehension Rate:The Right Words
8 words=100%,OK, now that we have our two basic ideas, we need
15 words=90%,to formulatethem into a logical, concise paragraph using
19 words=80%,short sentences.
28 words=50%.Here's what I would say instead:
Separate your thoughts by writing short sentences."Starting, in June 2005, the Product Management team
Don't try to string everything together using clauseslikewill meetthe second Thursday of every month from 1 -
and, but, and however. Just because your brain3 p.m. in room H-108.
maythink in run-on sentences, doesn't mean you needThe topic of discussion for the June meeting will be the
towrite that way. In fact, long sentences often loserecenttechnology advances made by our competitor."
theirdramatic impact. What was important becomesWe now have a 41 word paragraph consisting of two
lost in thesea of never ending words. For example,sentences. Thefirst sentence is 23 words and the
read thefollowing sentence:second sentence is 18 words.
"It has come to my attention that the second ThursdayAccording to our table, the first sentence is a little long.
ofthe month is the best opportunity for development toHowever, every piece of information in that sentence
meetwith management to review the latest technologyis importantto the reader understanding the message.
advancesbeing made by our competitor and the waysSo, we just need to breakit up into two sentences.
our company isprepared to deal with this direct attackHere's our final rewrite:
at our companyvision of always being the first to"The Product Management team will meet the second
introduce productsthat improve the lives of consumersThursday ofevery month. The first meeting is June 9,
and make it easierfor them to use everyday business2005, from 1 - 3 p.m.in room H-108. The topic of
products like theircomputers, PDA's, scanners, faxesdiscussion will be the recent technologyadvances
and photo copiers."made by our competitor."
Whew. What a mouthful. Try saying that sentence inWe now have a 40 word paragraph consisting of
onebreathe; it is 85 words. Totally off the scalethree sentences. Thefirst sentence is 12 words. The
ofcomprehension. We need to start eliminating somesecond sentence is 15 words. The thirdsentence is 14
words.words. Notice how just these few changes made all
What Is Your Purposethedifference in reading comprehension.
In order to rewrite our run-on sentence, we need toGet used to counting words when you put a message
firstdecide what our purpose was for writing thetogether. It's theeasiest trick I know to communicate
sentence. Wheneffectively.