6 Secrets to De-cluttering Your Congested Writing

Writers can often find themselves creating pieces of work that come across as congested and hard-to-read. The attention spans and reading abilities of audiences can vary widely and writers must adapt their work in order to suit the widest of audiences. Writing in Plain Style Writing and Removing Jargon can help readers digest your work more easily therefore allowing them to wholly understand you and your message. Here are some quick tips to make your work more readable.

• Use simple and everyday words. Style your work using plain English. Avoid using technical words unless they are necessary. Technical jargon can clutter your ideas.

• Use shorter length sentences. A 20 or fewer word sentence is ideal because it avoids unnecessary padding. Making shorter sentences can also lead to making fewer run-on sentences.

• Use active-voice. Using the active voice allows the reader to distinguish who is doing what.

• Use personal pronouns like I, you and we. Using personal pronouns, with discretion, allows writers to communicate things with as little awkwardness as possible. Note that more formal formats like scholarly essays use personal pronouns as little as possible. this may sometimes make them seem more difficult to read.

• Avoid Ambiguity.  Make sure your work avoids instances of double meaning. For example, Mark likes working computers can mean that both Mark likes working on computers and that Mark likes computers that work.

• Place the subject as near to the verb as possible. The core of a sentence depends on the relationship between the subject and the verb. Adding unnecessary filler between those two words can make the sentence harder to understand. Using shorter more precise sentences lead to more readable writing.

Some may find that writing in plain style “dumbs down” their work, however it often can make your writing better. De-cluttering your work and removing jargon removes filler and can strengthen your grammar. When filler is removed the relationship between base sentence structures (the subject, the verb and the object) becomes more obvious. This helps your writing to deliver its core concept.

4 Ways to Make a Bad-News Letter Less Painful

Notifying someone of bad news is never easy. Even the most heartfelt sentiments can often be misconstrued when they are sent in a letter. Sometimes writers can over apologize for the bad news. Similarly, they can over-alert the recipient to the bad news: no one wants to hear they are evicted multiple times throughout the letter! However, there are tricks that you can use in order to make your bad-news letters more professional and less offensive.  Here are 4 ways in which you can make bad-news letters less painful.

1. Start your letter by clearly notifying the recipient of the bad news. Make sure to mention the bad news only once. No one likes to hear bad news multiple times.
2. Let the reader know how the incident happened. The explanation must be reasonable and clear. Avoid putting in erroneous or unimportant details as they will detract from the explanation.
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3. Offer the reader an alternative and/or a solution to the bad news. Offering the reader a solution can help detract from the problem and an alternative can help resolve the issue on both ends.
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4. Close with a goodwill statement and avoid referring to the bad news again. Do not leave the reader with an afterthought or an arbitrary closure.
   Enjoy your new shoes.Please let us know if there are any problems with your purchase. We hate to disappoint our customers with delays but it is the Holiday Season.

Bad-news letters are difficult in nature because they require the writer to be both informative and sympathetic. Striking an accurate balance is between those two components is key. The main goal of the letter should always be to let the reader know what is happening, why it happened and what can be done about it. Any information that is superfluous can disrupt the aim of the letter and can cause sentiments in your audience that can be undesirable.

How to Write an Effective Request Memo in 7 Steps

Writing a request memo can a difficult task. In a request memo you are asking someone to do a task or a favor via a letter or email. You are not asking them in person and this can be especially trying. Request memos like bad-news letters can be done efficiently and effectively if you plan ahead and focus on your message. Here are 7 secrets to writing a request memo.

1. Put your main idea first. Phrase your request as a question (Can you…? Will you…?). Never hide your request with a paragraph as an imbedded request can be hard to find.
2. Follow your request with a reason. After you ask for something explain why you need or why it will be beneficial to comply. Remember, if you feel the reader is not entitled to a reason you do necessarily have to include one. There may be cases where the audience cannot legally be given full disclosure.
3. Anticipate Details. Anticipating details can help you tell the reader what they need to do in order to follow your request. It will also guide them past difficulties along the way.
4. Use an appropriate tone for your audience. Be firm but respectful when asking for things. If you are entitled to something do not apologize for it likewise to not browbeat the reader into doing something for you.
5. Remove errata and keep extra information to a minimum. Unimportant information can be distracting.
6. Use an appropriate layout. If you have multiple tasks put them in a bulleted or numbered list. Do not be afraid to bold important points. Likewise, make sure to keep deadlines as visible as possible.
7. Close with a statement of courtesy. Close your memo with a goodwill statement for the reader. Avoid directly thanking them instead opt for words like appreciate or look forward to.

As long as you make your request clear, write in an appropriate tone and help the reader best achieve the goal ahead writing an efficient request memo is quite easy.

Conquer Writer’s Block with these 3 Steps

Writer’s block can be one of the, if not the most, dangerous issues for writers. Writer’s block can turn a well-written story or an intelligent thesis into contrived nonsense. Most writers have their own ways to deal with writer’s block. Some may find that listening to music or relaxing can help stimulate their mind while others find research or studying helps turn the gears of imagination. However, there are some helpful methods that writers can use for content generation. Here are some exercises that can help you with writer’s block.

1. Brainstorming: Brainstorming is an exercise that involves free association of thoughts and ideas. One of the most common brainstorm exercises involves mapping ideas and thoughts in a web-like free-flow chart. Begin by highlighting a central idea. Then draw strands that come off the main idea and group those into smaller groupings. (refer to the picture)
   

   Brainstorming Example

   Grouping items like this allows you, as a writer, to see the hierarchy between thoughts. It helps you draw a logical flow between beginnings and ends and between larger and smaller grouped items. This kind of content generation can help you draw ideas for sequences in a story or help you structure a thesis.

2. Structure Planning: Structure planning is an exercise that involves creating hierarchical structures for your core idea. Most basically it involves making a framework of categories for work. For example, if you wanted to write a story you would have to choose between making it a fiction or non-fiction story. After that you would have to figure out what genre you wanted to make. After that you would have to choose between perspectives (1st, 2nd or 3rd person). At the end you would have a near complete structure of what your story would involve. Something like: A non-fiction, romance novel told in the 3rd person, and so on.
3. Ask Questions: The best way to generate content is to ask questions. The best questions to ask are the 5 Ws – who, what, when, where, why (and how). This exercise is helpful because it allows you to ask more specific questions about what you want to see in your work. Its also helpful because answering each of the questions helps develop one of the other ones. For example, if you don’t know when your story will take place solving where it takes place may help further the decision.

Once you have all of these exercises complete writer’s block should be no longer an obstacle. The biggest opponent of writer’s block is planning. With apt planning all of the core structures and ideas are already in place. The only thing left for you to do is to fill them in.

9 Secrets to Maximize Your Click-Through Rate

A popular click-bait site.

The biggest hurdle for blogs and websites in general is visitor rate. Every site wants to increase their click-through rate in order to get more visitors. There are specific ways in which you can increase the appeal and attractiveness of your links and headers. Here some secrets that sites like Buzzfeed use that you can use to modify your signage to help better their allure.

1. Limit headline size. Headlines should be maximum 50 characters or 8 words. Any bigger than that and readers lose focus.
2. Front-load keywords. Put more attractive and important word at the beginning of the sentence to draw attention to them.
3. Use numbers. Big numbers written as digits (1,000,000,000) are more attractive compared to small numbers written as words (ten thousand).
4. Offer the readers an emotional promise. Promise to let them in on something the they will either hate or love.
5. Offer the readers a chance to learn something. Promise to let them in on a learning experience. Tell them that they will learn a skill or trick if they visit your site.
6. Propose urgency. Dangling a deadline compels readers to click. Adding lines such as Before its too late can increase the urgency of a headline.
7. Use imperatives. Do verbs tell the reader what they will be doing. Find out more, Improve the speed of, Learn to love and Get ready to are good example of using imperative verbs.
8. Avoid using dates.  Dates can artificially age an article. The less specific a date the better.
9. Use lists. Everyone loves a list. They are concise and ordered.

Improving your visitor count is simply a matter of making links and displays as appealing to browsers as possible. No one wants to click on a link that seems boring or mundane. Visitors are attracted to links and headers in the same way most of us are attracted to catchy ads or to shocking headlines in a tabloid magazine.