A woman's hand with turquoise nail polish uses a red pen to edit a piece of writing to achieve tighter writing

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Smart Brevity" by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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Would you like to make your writing more impactful? Do you want to learn how to communicate your ideas more effectively and keep your readers’ attention?

Smart Brevity by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz shares practical advice on tighter writing. The authors recommend using shorter words, active voice, and visual cues to enhance your writing style. These techniques can help you create clearer, more engaging content.

Read on to discover how you can transform your writing and captivate your audience with these simple yet powerful strategies.

Tighten Your Writing Style

Before you can write more clearly and concisely, you need to sharpen how you write. This relates to certain aspects of your writing style. If you want to achieve tighter writing, drop flowery but timid language. Instead, adopt a punchy, to-the-point writing style with strong words, active voice, and visual cues.

The authors advise writers to use shorter, one-syllable words whenever possible, since they’re clearer and more memorable than multisyllable words. For instance, instead of saying that someone “made an illegal withdrawal from a financial institution,” you should write that they “robbed a bank.” Using elaborate words and uncommon terms can confuse the reader. Short, vivid words and phrases that evoke imagery are more memorable and impactful.

(Shortform note: The authors’ advice on writing isn’t new, even if it bears repeating. Many of their rules appeared much earlier in 1918’s The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. In addition to explaining rules of English grammar, Struck and White emphasized clear composition using active voice and positive assertions, and they urged the writer to “omit needless words.” Unlike the authors of Smart Brevity, Strunk and White advised writers not to be too informal and to make their personal feelings invisible. For over a century, The Elements of Style has been a hallmark text on how to write well, and with its focus on brevity and simplicity, it’s a direct ancestor of VandeHei, Allen, and Schwartz’s rules for writing.)

The authors also encourage you to use active voice, which creates a more compelling narrative. “Active” voice is a sentence structure in which the subject of the sentence acts, instead of being acted upon. For example, “Rocky Balboa knocked out Apollo Creed” is more gripping than the passive form: “Apollo Creed was knocked out by Rocky Balboa.” When using active voice, you should also use strong verbs to inject a sense of action and movement into the writing. For instance, don’t write that “Rocky moved quickly up the bleachers”—instead, write that “Rocky ran up the bleachers.”

Practical Tips for Tighter Writing From the Authors of Smart Brevity

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Here's what you'll find in our full Smart Brevity summary:

  • How to cut straight to the point to make content engaging
  • How clear communication can strengthen your organization
  • Why technology has made long-form writing uninteresting

Elizabeth Whitworth

Elizabeth has a lifelong love of books. She devours nonfiction, especially in the areas of history, theology, and philosophy. A switch to audiobooks has kindled her enjoyment of well-narrated fiction, particularly Victorian and early 20th-century works. She appreciates idea-driven books—and a classic murder mystery now and then. Elizabeth has a Substack and is writing a book about what the Bible says about death and hell.

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