Readwise: Writing Without Bullshit
SUMMARY
Book on how to optimize your business writing with useful and practice suggestions. The iron imperative if evergreen: Treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own.
Sean Wheeler is one of my go to’s when it comes to writing. He recommended this book and of course all his recommendations are gold.
The Iron Imperative
Let’s agree on one principle. This principle powers everything else in this book. I call it the Iron Imperative: Treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. (288) - From Writing Without Bullshit
The fundamenetal point of the whole book. When writing we can often go on tangets or write quantity because it helps mask weaknesses or boosts our ego. The point is that people can smell the BS and they’ll move on. You don’t want to constantly ship BS in your org, that’s likely a recipe for an unwanted career change.
Tight Writing
Your ideal should be tight writing. Eliminate everything you don’t need. The tighter you write, the more persuasive you will be. As Roy Peter Clark says in his masterful book How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times, “During revision, I realize that 90 percent of my cuts are helpful.” Don’t just trim the fat. Lop off the stuff you liked but that isn’t helping enough. (746) - From Writing Without Bullshit
This fits the judge role I follow. Cutting your favorite lines hurt, but when the writing isn’t for it’s important.
the objective is the same: deliver the main idea, up front, in as few words as possible. (886) - From Writing Without Bullshit
This follows the Inverted Pyramid format where you want to deliver your ideas as soon as you can.
“Controlling the sequence in which you present your ideas is the single most important act necessary to clear writing. The clearest sequence is always to give the summarizing idea before you give the individual ideas being summarized.” (888) - From Writing Without Bullshit
This matches the Writing > Above the Fold idea that you have a fleeting moment to capture your audience. If they don’t know what they’re getting into, they’re gonna close the tab.
“When you have the urge to write a whole long story, write the summary sentence instead. Write the one thing you want someone to know after reading this, and then back it up. If people know where you’re heading, they’re more willing to read it.” (892) - From Writing Without Bullshit
This is especially true for business writing. If you think about executive summaries, they are all the distillation of complex efforts. Once there people can (in my most annoying exec voice) “double click” (🤮) into it. But the fact remains that a bullet point might suffice and your writing should convince as you go on.
Passive Voice
Often, it’s easier to just use the zombies test: if you can add “by zombies” after the verb and it still makes grammatical sense, it’s passive voice. (“Attention must be paid by zombies …”) (962) - From Writing Without Bullshit
This one made me laugh and it’s one of my terrible habbits. It’s one of the things I have my copy-editor skill look for.
I’ve cured many writers of the passive habit. I can cure you, too. All it takes are the five Rs: recognize, raise awareness, reconsider, rewrite, and retrain. (968) - From Writing Without Bullshit
Weasel Words
A weasel word is an adjective, adverb, or noun that indicates quantity or intensity but lacks precision. (1166) - From Writing Without Bullshit
Preparation
It takes a professional to be paranoid at the start of the writing process. Being paranoid early means not just worrying about what might go wrong but also acting to prevent it. While late paranoia generates anxiety, early paranoia is productive. (1728) - From Writing Without Bullshit
Writing takes concentration. By completing your research and planning ahead of time, you put yourself in a position to write well. (1742) - From Writing Without Bullshit
Feedback
- Apply the insights to your rewrite. (2407) - From Writing Without Bullshit
Here are the five levels: …
• Idea development. …
• Structural edit. …
• Paragraph or line edit. …
• Copyedit and fact-check. …
• Proofread. (2422) - From Writing Without Bullshit