好的商务写作永不过时

    The typical Microsoft Office document is less cluttered with adjectives than abstractions and Unnecessary Capitalizations placed there out of fear that the work won't be taken seriously without them. But the reliance on jargon and catchphrases — move the needle is my current favorite — betrays a different insecurity than that of the copywriter worried over losing his reader to a bowl of peanuts. The authors of overlong PowerPoint decks seem to worry most that they won't be considered smart, and so they have to keep typing, in increasingly puffed-up language.

    The ad man would say they should worry more about not being boring. There's some strategic insight in the excess length, however. If you extract the jargon and corporate-speak abstractions, what's left may not be all that impressive. If the basic idea is fatuous, its stupidity has nowhere to hide once phrased in plain language.

    But if the point sounds unremarkable once put in plain English, maybe that's a signal to keep working and reworking. Not just the text, but also the idea -- because there's no separating the two.

    How many times they go over a text is a theme the contributors to The Copy Book keep coming back to. Says David Abbott: "I might rework a headline 50 or 60 times to get the thought and balance exactly right." They took a chopping block to any portion of the work that wasn't accomplishing much.

    So why is a similar process not in place in most workplaces? Some blame the disappearance of secretaries and the revision process they enabled along with it. "Used to be that you'd dictate a letter to your secretary and she'd type it up and show you a copy, and you'd look it over and mark it with changes," one longtime litigation attorney I spoke to said. "Maybe in that interim you reconsidered some things you thought you wanted to say but on further reflection didn't. Now everyone just fires off an email."

    Others blame the increasing amounts of time spent reporting on what we've been doing all day at the expense of actually doing it.

    So it's refreshing, in this era of swollen documents, to come across such strong endorsements of saying less. "When you get your copy to the point where you're really, really happy with it," Jim Durfee advised, "cut it by a third." Tony Cox edits his copy down "until I end up with the nub of the thing." Adrian Holmes suggested looking at a page as a visual object and asking if any paragraphs looked excessively heavy, in which case, words got deleted.

    Which points to a paradox at the heart of copywriting: A copywriter knows how limited the chances are of anyone reading his or her work, let alone read it all the way to the end. But the fact that the work was likely to be disrespected only spurred them to improve it.

    Today, a great deal of media attention is paid to people whose indiscreet post or impolitic YouTube video makes life difficult for them. It's news because it's the exception. The majority of content produced today is ignored. There's too much of it and not enough time. We're left with an argument for more process, fewer pages. Concludes The Copy Book's John Bevins: "Copywriting has taught me that [our work] enriches or impoverishes not just us, but society itself." When we borrow someone's attention, "we should strive to give something more valuable back."