{"id":640,"date":"2012-09-13T08:47:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T20:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=640"},"modified":"2012-09-14T10:12:21","modified_gmt":"2012-09-13T22:12:21","slug":"if-you-havent-got-anything-to-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"If you haven\u2019t got anything to say\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here’s the bottom line: if you haven\u2019t got anything to say don\u2019t say it.<\/p>\n

We have just conducted a review of the various \u2018corporate\u2019 editing projects KiwiStreet<\/em> has worked on over the past 12 months.\u00a0 Most were reports of one sort or another.\u00a0 There were also several proposals, and a number of policy documents.<\/p>\n

Aside from the rich variety, what struck us was the fact that, in every single case, the edited document contained fewer words than the draft document.\u00a0 In some cases, the \u2018shrinkage\u2019 was a matter of 10 or 15 percent.\u00a0 But in other cases it was closer to 40 or 50 percent.<\/p>\n

One of my colleagues suggested \u2013 quite charitably, I thought \u2013 that this may be because many corporate writers do their thinking \u2018on paper\u2019. \u00a0Get it all down; then polish it up later.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a little less charitable.\u00a0 I think that many writers don\u2019t really have much to say in the first place.\u00a0 But they figure that if they say what little they have to say in a sufficiently complicated fashion, and if they can work in a few vogue terms and plenty of jargon, they\u2019ll get credit for having said something without actually saying much at all.<\/p>\n

There is, however, a flaw in this approach: the \u2018padding\u2019 is almost always heavy going.\u00a0 The reader almost always ends up skip-reading, keeping one eye open for a possible diamond while trying to avoid getting sucked into the dun-coloured quicksand.\u00a0 And, under such circumstances, what few diamonds there may be are often overlooked.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have anything to say, the best strategy is to simply avoid saying it.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get hung up on the word count or the ‘thud factor’. \u00a0Short, concise documents can be very effective documents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s the bottom line: if you haven\u2019t got anything to say don\u2019t say it. We have just conducted a review of the various \u2018corporate\u2019 editing projects KiwiStreet has worked on over the past 12 months.\u00a0 Most were reports of one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":644,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}