Making every word count
Mar 13th, 2009 by Amy Southerland
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” - Thomas Jefferson
I’ve always loved this quote. When the mind that penned the Declaration of Independence has something to say about writing, I take note. This maxim is a great reminder that the best writing is precise and concise.
And it’s never been truer.
Why less is more - more than ever
We live in a world that is overflowing with words. People are inundated with information and messages from every direction.
If you want your voice to be heard above the cacophony, you need to get to the point. You need to express ideas in clear, compelling, memorable ways. For nonprofits, this means finding ways to communicate your impact in 100 words or less. It means getting out of the newsletter rut and finding ways to provide a steady flow of information delivered in customized, bite-size chunks across multiple channels.
It also means looking for opportunities to supplement or replace the written word with images and video - because it really is true that a picture can be worth a thousand words. (Or, to quote Napoleon Bonaparte, “Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu’un long discours” - “a good sketch is better than a long speech”).
A few weeks ago, in a speech at City University, Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital, explained why organizations should use short, personalized emails instead of email newsletters: “Email newsletters don’t get read, yet they take more effort to prepare than a 250-word email he said. Email is still a killer application, but only when used properly.”
Gensemer may not be Thomas Jefferson, but he’s definitely worth listening to - he’s the guy behind President Obama’s incredibly successful web campaign. The Obama campaign gathered more than 13.5 million email addresses, sent more than 1 billion emails, and raised $750 million from 3 million online donors - who each gave an average of 6.5 donations.
The long and the short of it
Obviously, not everything can be boiled down to a sound bite. There’s still plenty of room in the marketplace of ideas for sustained arguments and in-depth analysis.
But most of the communicating we need to do - especially as marketers and fundraisers - can be done most effectively if we use as few words as possible. Social media and 1:1 marketing put an even higher premium on keeping things short and sweet, since the goal is to engage your constituents in two-way conversations, not just talk at them.
A shorter word count may sound like a great time saver. And sometimes it can be. It’s certainly going to be faster and easier to generate a 250-word email than a 3,000-word e-newsletter - and if those 250 words are the right words, you’re probably going to get much greater return on your investment.
However, keep in mind that it’s almost always easier to write long than to pare things down to what is most essential. The fewer words you allow yourself, the more every word has to matter. When you are striving to keep things short, striking the right balance of exactness and economy often takes as much effort as writing something three times as long.
This means that when you start working on a 250-word email, chances are your first draft will be two or three times that long. Then comes the hard but essential work of rewriting to make everything tight and bright - of not using two words when one will do.
This brings to mind another favorite aphorism - variously attributed to Mark Twain, Voltaire, Pascal, and Cicero. It appears all these smart people said something to this effect, which makes it a pretty powerful idea to keep in keep in mind whenever you sit down to write.
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
The 2009 version might go a little something like this: “I didn’t have time to write a short blog post, so I wrote a long one instead.”
But I’m trying. I really am.
