Writing concise messages is essential in any writing you do at work.

No one wants to read for work

First, and I say this with all the wry humor you can imagine, no one wants to read your writing at work. People, for the most part, want to do their jobs. And doing their jobs involves reading your messages. But the reading people do at work is not the same reading people do when they pick up a good book or dig into the most recent blog post by someone they follow. Your colleagues aren’t *choosing* to read your writing. They have to read it to do their jobs.

Because of this attitude, our writing at work needs to be short. We need to get the point across quickly so that people can stop reading and do the things they actually get paid for.

But writing that is too short feels mean

But, and this brings me to my second point, short writing feels mean. Studies have been done on why writing feels different from things that are said out loud, and it boils down to a combination of these facts:

1) writing doesn’t have a body. That means we literally can’t hear or see the writer, so we don’t get all those extra pieces of information about your emotional state as you deliver your message. We just get the words. Without any emotion. Which, on a sliding scale from bad to good, correlates more with bad. When people speak without emotion, it doesn’t feel nice either.

2) writing has a lengthy (millenia) history of being associated with rich and therefore educated people. That means that we tend to use different vocabulary and sentence structure in writing than speaking. The language is different–and tends to be a bit elevated since writing has that association with education (literacy and $$) that speaking doesn’t have.

3) writing tends to be and needs to be more correct than spoken language. It uses (and requires) punctuation to craft the delivery of the language and these representations and symbols are not present in our spoken language–which doesn’t have to be *as* correct.

4) writing is considered more “official”--has more power in court–than things said out loud. Legal structures have prioritized written documents over hearsay, which gives writing literally more power than spoken language.

When you combine these facts together–no body, a history of elitism, the necessity of correctness, and the value of writing in the legal system–you come up with what researchers have called the negativity effect. On the surface this means that people tend to amplify negative information over positive, and that is especially true when the language doesn’t include non-verbal cues (face, body, tone) that can moderate the way the information is interpreted.

And the shorter the sentence or message, the worse this effect is:

Sign this by 5.

Mean 👿

Sign this agreement and get it back to me by 5pm.

Rude but not mean 😠

Please sign the attached agreement and return it to me by today at 5pm.

Neutral/Professional 😐

Would you please sign the attached agreement and return it to me by the end of the day today?

Nice 🙂

Hi Dale,

Would you please sign the attached agreement and return it to me by the end of the day today?

Getting your signature on the contract by 5pm will allow us to start moving forward on the project first thing tomorrow morning.

Sincerely,

Brett

Even nicer 😊

Doesn’t that last one feel nice compared to the other ones? Look at how the additional elements–greeting, explanation sentence, closing–contribute to the overall feeling. Sure, the writing doesn’t feel like a big hug, but wouldn’t you rather get the last message than any of the other ones? I would.

This experience brings us back to the idea of conciseness.

Short is mean. So professional messages need to be a little longer in order to feel ok to the reader.

Long is lazy

On the other hand, long messages may not feel mean but they will feel boring, useless, like a waste of time. A message that is too long feels lazy to the reader, which then correlates to rude. The message wasn’t crafted in a way that thought about the reader.

For example,

Good afternoon, Hayden!

Hope you’re having a great day and that the weather is nice where you are!

We’re just working on a few things on our end before we get started on the project. The lawyers have reviewed the agreement and had a few suggestions. It looks like those changes should be redlined in the document. I’m attaching that here for you to look over. If any questions come up, you can definitely send those back to me and I’ll try to get you whatever you need to move forward. The thing is that what we’re hoping is that you’ll be able to sign this version by today. That’d be great.

Thanks so much!

Sky

This message illustrates what happens when a person tries so hard to be nice in writing that they end up being rude because their message is too long and unclear. The reader has to wade through all this stuff to figure out what exactly the goal of the message is. While Sky clearly *cares* a lot about people and relationships, Sky isn’t effective at getting the job done. Which feels like a waste of time to the reader.

This message has so many words that it’s hard to figure out which ones are relevant. And that isn’t helpful to the reader either.

Which is why the goal is conciseness (ie balance). When we look at Sky’s super nice (and super long) version, it doesn’t feel better, in the end, than “Please sign the attached agreement and return it to me by today at 5pm.” Because a neutral, short message is easier for the reader to act on than a long, “nice” message.

Concise is nice

And the easier we make other people’s jobs, the more they’ll like us.

Concise = the balance between short and effective.

Professional writing should be concise because that word refers to the balance between short and effective. Messages should be as short as possible without being mean or while still showing respect and caring for the audience.

To do this effectively, we need to think about how writing conveys meaning. What words are important? What can be taken out? Where can we save time? Where do we need to add respect?

The list of strategies is long, but here’s a good start:

What you can take out:

-ly words, really/only/very/just
It is/There are
Wordy phrases (link to list)
“I” statements (e.g. I’m thinking, I’m wondering, I’m hoping, I’m feeling, I just wanted to…etc)
niceties (e.g. Hope you are doing well!)

What to do instead:

Use “please”
Ask a question
Move niceties to the end/closing

And if you want to learn exactly what to look for and how to make your messages more concise? Take my Business Writing Basics course!