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Ways to Cut the Fluff in Your Writing

Give your reader’s brain a break. Share clear and concise content.

Cynthia Marinakos
UX Planet

Illustration by Cynthia Marinakos.

A colleague once shared with me his experience of briefs for government officials. Brief writers would write something like 5 pages.

Then the government official’s adviser would share a cutdown version while they were in the car on the way to an event.

It was like giving a brief on the brief. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

But I’m guilty of it sometimes. How about you?

I fluff to fill in the gaps. Because I’m used to using a phrase. Or because I haven’t spent enough time editing. When speaking it’s like waffling instead of getting to the point.

We need to write more concisely and clearly when we’ve got our reader’s attention for a short time. When we have limited space to share content such as on an app. An information kiosk. Or on an error message box.

Brains slurp energy

We need to choose fewer, better words so we don’t exhaust our readers. We need to write 50% less text online than we would write in print.

You see, it’s been found the brain constantly slurps up huge amounts of energy, more than any other human organ. It uses up to 20% of our body’s…

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Published in UX Planet

UX Planet is a one-stop resource for everything related to user experience.

Written by Cynthia Marinakos

Aussie Copywriter. I love rock climbing high ceilings and hiking amongst ferns.

Responses (32)

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My pleasure :) Good on you for being open to improvements. Glad this may be helpful for you. Cheers for stopping by!

Wringing extra words out of other people’s writing was a big part of my career. I agree with all of these and will add another that doesn’t get enough attention: back. The word has too many meanings so must be surrounded by other words to make…

Concise, clear writing will help you sell that product, sell your idea, or help your users to get a refund.

Thank you for posting this informative post. I’m an avid reader. Being hypnotized by words that flow is music to my brain. But the latest book I tried to read, and I emphasize the word, “tried,” was excruciatingly painful. Listening to a two year…