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.
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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.