Sometimes we throw in words that add nothing to the meaning. They make it harder to read your article, book or report. Here are some words you can throw away.

Go straight to the Infographic

Available

This word gets thrown into sentences all the time. Here are two ways it is thrown in for no good reason:

• “This report is available with…” No, no, no. Instead, you can say “This report has…”. It’s much shorter and to the point.
• “The line staff processed the available documents.” Hold on…they processed only the available ones? Really? Why didn’t they also process the unavailable ones? You see, there is no reason to specify that they processed the available documents.

Throw it away! [Read more…]

Readability is in crisis. Even the abstracts from studies on readability are virtually incomprehensible. Let’s see what they really say.

What is readability? It’s a measure of how easy a text is to read. For example, how easy is it to read a blog post or white paper you wrote?

Readability is most commonly measured in grade levels. The average person reads in the range of Grade 6 to Grade 8. This might shock you. You’ve had 12 grades of education. Or you’ve had 15 or even 20. But you still read at a Grade 8 level or lower. Yes, you can read at a higher level, but you would do so only when you have to. Why is this?

[Read more…]

Alexander Hamilton was America’s greatest ghostwriter. Here are five lessons he leaves us, with quotes from the musical that bears his name.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius of a writer, taking the fairly base form of entertainment that hip-hop is and elevating it to artistic grandeur. Hamilton: An American Musical contains layers of meaning, and pulls people into the story of America’s greatest ghostwriter.

What? You thought Hamilton was a banker? Or a politician? Or a lawyer? [Read more…]