Exactly one work day before I was supposed to give a company-wide presentation to fellow project managers on plain language writing was my last day on the job. The DOGE effect hit me hard.
Bummer.
I really wanted to give this presentation on plain language, an area of my communications expertise. My PowerPoint presentation included three slides at the beginning with photos of:
—A cluttered desk with heaping headaches of folders, papers, and work paraphernalia versus an open, airy, clean, inviting workspace.
—A street in a city jammed with traffic at a standstill versus an open highway with gorgeous mountain vistas and not another car in sight.
—Two snippets of content side by side. One was a block of slop from a virtually unreadable report by McKinsey & Company that literally is at the 20th grade level of reading. It’s next to a few descriptive, incredibly inviting paragraphs from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “All the Light We Cannot See” that is at the 3rd grade level.
My point with these competing visuals is how we don’t like clutter in the office, on the roads, at home, or even in what we read. We like open and airy, light and space. Even in what we read.
So why don’t we write like that?
I remain baffled at the insistence in the consulting sector to hijack easy to read and understand in favor of unreadable verbosity. Our eyes don’t lie. We scan content and don’t like word clutter.
Prune for vigor.
Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs.
White space is your friend.
Keep Marie Kondo’s words in mind: “Keep only things that speak to your heart. Then discard all the rest.”