…and your verbal communication, and time management, and thinking.
Good writing styles may be as unique as people but when it comes to bad writing there’s one nearly universal mistake.
Too many words.
Everyone begins their writing endeavors (whether emails or books) using too many words, too long sentences, and too bulky paragraphs. It’s hard to economize on words. The better your language skills and vocabulary, the harder it is. You want to flex those wordiness muscles!
But good writing is clear and to the point. Removing needless words makes what’s left more, not less important. Words are too precious to be drowned in a sea of superfluity.
Here’s a challenge to quickly and dramatically improve your writing:
Cut everything you write in half.
I suggest doing this for at least two weeks. It will hurt. It will take a lot of time at first. But compare results after the experiment. You will be better.
Every Facebook post, email, essay, blog post, or memo (heck, you can try it with texts and tweets too, but that might be tough) should be halved. After you write what you want to say, just before you click “send”, “publish”, “post”, or “save”, go back and cut it in half. Count words, divide by two and edit down.
I’ve done this and found almost no paragraph I write gets worse as a result.
Give it a shot and see for yourself.