Blaise Pascal, a 17^th Century philosopher and mathematician, once apologized for writing a long letter.  He said he didn’t have time to write a short one.

Most business writing is too long.  E-mails and memos drone as the author struggles to find a central theme, drops in extraneous material and distracts the reader with fuzzy logic and superfluous comments.  We all know people who talk this way, who start a sentence on an inspiration, detour into excursions irrelevant to the main point (which, of course, we haven’t come to yet) drag us back to an entirely different idea, and finally find their way somewhere along the way, by which time we’re looking over their shoulder for a quick escape from the conversation.

A lot of business writing follows the same model.  Why the overload?  Some people feel compelled to dump in everything they know for fear of overlooking something important.  Others are concerned with covering their flanks (or some other part of their anatomy) with a political agenda that stretches out the writing.  Both strategies dilute the focus of the piece and fatigue the reader.  Shorter is not better or worse, but it is different and can be more difficult.  Here’s a checklist of how to write shorter and better:

Who’s the audience? Keeping in mind whom you’re writing for will focus your objective and discipline your style and length.

What’s your objective? What do you want the piece to accomplish? This is the theme.  Here are some examples:

• Inform the boss about progress on computer installation.
• Prod the team’s members to finish assignments on deadline.
• Persuade the sales department to adopt new customer-service guidelines.
• Review the procedures for upcoming fire-safety exercise for all employees.

Notice the verbs.  They describe the work of the memo (inform, prod, persuade, review).  The theme sentence also mentions the audience (bosses, team members, sales department, employees) and desired actions (understand progress on installation, finish assignments, adopt new guidelines, prepare for fire-safety exercise).  The theme sentence may never appear in your essay, but it will guide decisions about what to include and exclude.

What are your key points? These will depend on the mission of the memo, but all key points will have two characteristics.  Each must be necessary (if not, don’t include them) and sufficient to make the case (if they are insufficient, you haven’t completed the mission).

Learning to write short is important.  No reader wants to waste time struggling through a poorly organized e-mail, memo or report.  Writers who think before they write are more likely to close the gap between their intentions and the readers’ comprehension.