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You Don’t Have to Start at the Beginning

Introductions and other kinds of beginnings can be difficult to write. A lot is riding on the opening of your document, and getting started can be intimidating. The good news is that you don’t have to start your draft by writing the beginning of it. In fact, the beginning might not be the best thing to start with.

Don’t get hung up on writing your introduction, especially when you’re working on a long document like a report or proposal. Start wherever you feel most confident. That might be somewhere in the middle of the document, a section where you feel you have the most to say or can make the most compelling argument. Go ahead and complete that section, and move on from there. If it helps, you can try writing the document piece by piece, not necessarily in order. Once you have a full draft, you can put the pieces together, smooth out the transitions, and then write the introduction. By this point you’ll know exactly what you’re introducing, and you’ll know what you want to emphasize in your introduction to guide the reader’s attention. Very often, introductions that are written last are stronger and more specific than ones that are drafted at the beginning.

In the next step, we’ll look at ways to make the best possible use of your reader’s time and attention by writing concisely.

STEP 4: BE CONCISE

“Most of the e-mails I get should be 30–50% shorter than they are.”

—SURVEY RESPONDENT

In Step 1 you got the ask clear, in Step 2 you tailored your message for your reader, and in Step 3 you wrote a strong beginning. In this step, you’ll learn to make your writing more concise.

In the business writing survey I conducted for this book, 87 percent of respondents indicated that writing more concisely was a priority for them, and 63 percent said they wished their colleagues would write more concisely.

The ability to write concisely has a lot of benefits—for your reader, obviously, and also for you. Concise writing tends to get a better response, because your readers will quickly learn what you want. If you get in the habit of writing concisely, you’ll spend less time writing and you’ll agonize less over what you write. You’ll also spend less time following up with people who didn’t understand—or didn’t even read—what you wrote. Finally, if you make it a habit, you’ll get a reputation as someone who’s straightforward and doesn’t waste people’s time—and everyone likes that kind of colleague.

For most of us, writing concisely doesn’t come naturally, especially when we’re in a hurry. When we’re in a rush, we tend to write whatever comes into our heads, and it’s often muddy, wordy, and too long. It takes a little time to break the habit of going on too long. As you practice, it begins to come more naturally.

Before we get started, a little caveat: shorter is not always better. Sometimes you want a particular tone or style that involves longer sentences, more explanation, or repetition to drive your point home. The key is to do whatever you do—whether writing concisely or more expansively—by choice, not from lack of skill.

Writing concisely involves learning a few editing techniques. There are practically endless ways to edit your writing, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before you even start. In this section, you’ll learn a quick, practical method that will cover about 90 percent of your problems with wordiness. If you want to learn even more, look at the section on editing your own writing later in the book (see here).

To give you the power to make your sentences more concise, we’re going to look at a little grammar (not too much, I promise). Here are four tips you can use to cut the chaff in your writing:

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