Here’s an interesting dichotomy: Killing time is the killer app for mobile devices. But mobile users are in a hurry and “get visibly angry” at verbose sites that waste their time.

Why?

“Even relaxation is purposeful behavior,” according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen. “In information foraging theory, users seek to maximize their cost/benefit ratio. That is, people want more thrills and less interaction overhead.”

Sadly, interaction costs are inherently greater in mobile — all that swiping and scrolling and trying to remember what you can’t see on the screen adds up.

“Tolerance of padding on mobiles is a lot lower,” counsels the BBC in its writing news for mobile screens guidelines. “So people are even quicker to drop out. You have to get their attention instantly; grab them from the first sentence. It’s too easy to click away.”

So how do you give mobile readers more thrills and less interaction overhead? Cut the blah-blah. Readers won’t put up with filler on their phones.

Cut the blah-blah.

Nielsen once saw this electronic sign in an airport hotel lobby:

Really?! you might ask. This flight monitor will actually … monitor flights?

“Because the monitor’s meaning is obvious to anyone who has ever been on an airplane, the sign adds nothing,” Nielsen says. “Worse, it wastes people’s time as they ponder the cycling text, assuming that it will eventually say something important.”

After all, Nielsen points out, the sign could just say:

Avoid information pollution.

Call it information pollution — “excessive word count and worthless details” that make it hard for people to get good information.

Information pollution not only wastes time, it steals audience attention.

“Each little piece of useless chatter is relatively innocent, and only robs us of a few seconds,” Nielsen says. “The cumulative effect, however, is much worse: we assume that most communication is equally useless and tune it out, thus missing important information that’s sometimes embedded in the mess.”

So cut the fluff.

“In particular, ditch the blah-blah verbiage,” Nielsen says. “When writing for mobile users, heed this maxim: If in doubt, leave it out.”

Filler = bad.

Nielsen also sees this kind of “useless chatter” at the tops of many web pages.

“The worst kind of blah-blah has no function; it’s pure filler — platitudes, such as, ‘Welcome to our site, we hope you will find our new and improved design helpful,’” he says.

“Kill the welcome mat and cut to the chase.”

Filler of all kinds irritates mobile readers. Consider this response from one participant in Nielsen’s mobile usability studies:

She felt duped because she didn’t get enough payoff from her investment of time and effort.

Cut to the chase.

“Let’s clean up our information environment,” Nielsen says. “Are you saying something that benefits your customers, or simply spewing word count? If users don’t need it, don’t write it. Stop polluting now.”

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Why cut adjectives and adverbs from your copy?

Because modifiers:

1. Strike journalists as hype

Writing media relations pieces? Journalists hate hype and fluff … and modifiers are hype-y and fluffy.

“Be fair. Don’t stretch the truth or tell half-truths. When words such as ‘first,’ ‘best,’ ‘biggest’ or ‘only’ are used, there had better be supportive explanations.”

Journalist to researchers in the 17th Annual Bennett & Company Media Survey

No wonder people call this stuff marketing fluff. Or, as one of my clients says, “pouffle dust.”

2. Reveal shoddy research

“Frequently, we use adjectives to paper over a shortage of facts,” writes Mark Duvoisin, reporter and editor for the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call. He says:

“A ‘troubling number’ — how many is that? And who was troubled by it? Better to let the facts speak. Did half the workers fail to show? Ten percent? One percent? Give the reader the info and let her judge whether it’s troubling or not.”

3. Weaken meaning

Modifiers usually dilute, rather than intensify, your point.

“‘Very angry’ [is] always less than ‘angry,’”

Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, in Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work.

And casino and resort developer Steve Wynn says: “Have you seen any resort built in the last twenty years that isn’t world class? Those words have been drained of all their blood.”

4. Become clichés

Some adjectives and adverbs combine with nouns and verbs to create formulaic language.

“Knee-jerk modifiers … automatically attach themselves to some nouns. Who needs to hear about one more ‘spirited chase’? Or another ‘troubled teenager’? And haven’t we all had enough of ‘angry mobs,’ ‘nasty cuts,’ and ‘trying times’?”

Jack Hart, managing editor of the Oregonian, in A Writer’s Coach.

5. Add bulk without meaning

Besides, modifiers are “the great deceivers,” according to The Associated Press Guide to Good News Writing. Choose strong nouns and verbs instead.

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Thank you, David Letterman.

The Top 10 list rules the web — or at least, Buzzfeed. The number of Buzzfeed listicles with the numeral 10 in the headline outranked the next most popular numeral (15) by 142%, according to research by Noah Veltman and Brian Abelson, two Knight-Mozilla fellows. Fiddle around with their addictive “listogram” for details.

But just because Buzzfeed writers like the number 10 doesn’t make that the best number for your listicle. So how many items should you include? Here are eight thoughts about that:

1. Consider including more items.

Abelson found a slight correlation between Buzzfeed list length and the number of tweets the list gets: The longer the list, the more tweets.

But don’t forget: Tweeting doesn’t mean reading.

“We’ve found effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading,” writes Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, which measures traffic for sites like Upworthy.

2. But don’t include too many.

Hundreds of items might overwhelm potential readers. “6 steps to 6-pack abs”? Maybe. 66 steps? Forget it!

And no matter what the headline says, there really aren’t “99 Things You Need To Know About Franz Ferdinand Before The 100th Anniversary Of His Assassination.”

3. And don’t include too few.

When it comes to lists, remember what you learned at Three Dog Night camp:

One is the loneliest number. Two can be as bad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one

Why?

• One item is an item. So no “Top 1 Reason Why ‘The X-Factor’ Is Going To Be Better Than ‘The Voice’.”
• Two items are a couple. So no “2 Excellent Parodies Of Amanda Palmer’s ‘A Poem For Dzhokhar’.”
• It takes three items to make a list. “3 Classy Ways To Get Drunk On St. Patrick’s Day“? Sure!

Besides, posts with headlines promoting seven or more items outperformed those with six or fewer, according to an internal study of HubSpot’s blog. While HubSpot still posts pieces with six or fewer items, writes Pamela Vaughan, HubSpot’s lead blog strategist, the inbound marketing experts don’t promote that quantity in the headline.

4. Embrace your oddness.

Oddly, odd numbers on magazine coverlines sell better than even ones, according to Folio:. Bloggers have taken note.

“It’s long been a superstition in the business — for years — that an odd number will do better than an even number,” BuzzFeed’s Jack Shepherd told the folks at Neiman Lab.

So 7 Steps may be more effective than 10 Tips.

5. Or maybe 10 is the magic number?

Lists with 10 items received the most social shares, according to research by BuzzSumo. The provider of content marketing analytics itself analyzed the number of shares of more than 100 million articles.

Top 10 lists had four times the number of social shares — 10,621 on average — than the second most popular list number: 23.

Runners up: 16 and 24.

6. Steer clear of 20.

“Yeah, I think probably people shy away from 20,” Shepherd told Nieman Labs. “Twenty feels real weird.”

7. But do use a number.

Numbers sell, because they indicate quantity and value in the information.

“Honestly,” Shepherd said, “I’ve often made posts where the post didn’t need a number, and then I’ll throw a number into the headline — just because people like that more.”

We know, Mr. Shepherd. We know.

8. Or don’t.

The best length for your list: the number of items your research turns up.

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Just 7% of adults around the world can manage conflicting requests to reserve a meeting room using a reservation system, then email people to let them know whether they got the room they requested.

Which means that if you create websites or other technological interfaces for technologically competent folks, you’ll miss 93% of worldwide adults ages 16 to 65, according to the 2017 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, or PIAAC^[1].

How low can you go?

The results?

Adults worldwide weighed in at an average problem-solving proficiency rate of 278 out of 500. That puts us at level 1, or basic, problem-solving skills.

That means that, on average, these adults can sort five emailed responses to a party invitation into pre-existing folders to track who can and cannot attend. But we struggle to locate on a spreadsheet with 200 entries members of a bike club who meet two conditions, then email the information to the person who requested it.

Below average

How do you communicate information via websites and other technological tools in an environment where many people struggle to solve problems using technology? Learn to write web copy and plan websites that overcome some of the obstacles of learning online.

About the study

PIAAC is a large, every-10-years study of adult literacy, developed and organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The study looks at literacy and numeracy, as well as problem solving in high-tech environments. The problem-solving study tested subjects’:

• Knowledge of how different technological environments (email, websites and spreadsheets) work
• Ability to use digital information effectively; understand electronic texts, images, graphics and numerical data; and locate, evaluate, and judge the validity, accuracy and relevance of that information

From 2012-2017, the PIAAC studied the skills of 150,000 adults, ages 16 to 65, in 39 countries.

____

^[1] Highlights of the 2017 U.S. PIAAC Results Web Report (NCES 2020-777). U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics.

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What do you notice about this passage, excerpted from an article in The Economist?

With the exception of “Winston” and “Churchill,” this 800-word story uses only one-syllable words. And, with an average word length of 3.7 characters, it scores a Flesch Reading Ease of 100.

Make 80% of your words one syllable long.

Take a tip from this passage: Use mostly one-syllable words.

Chances are, you won’t lose anything but reading difficulty. As Alden S. Wood, columnist on language and English usage, writes:

Use short words.

It is possible to write in mostly one-syllable words.

In fact, members of the “Club for One-Pulse Words” go so far as to speak exclusively in words of one syllable.

And you thought writing with short words was tough.
____

Sources: “In praise of short words,” The Economist, Oct. 7, 2004

Alden S. Wood, “Wood on Words: Keep it Simple,” IABC Communication World, December 1988

Ann Wylie, Cut Through the Clutter, Wylie Communications Inc., 2005

Dave Blum, “In Praise of Small Words,” The Wall Street Journal,  “Some Month, One Nine Eight Two”

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This just in, writes one of my favorite correspondents, sharing a sentence his subject matter expert has written:

Somebody just kill me now, my friend writes.

Or, as his subject matter expert might put it, “Somebody just problem solve his way to a homicide success immediately.”

What’s wrong with this sentence? It:

• Weighs in at 30 words long
• Features 6.1-character words, on average
• Boasts 25% hard words

Worse, it’s been through the de-verb-o-rizer a few times. That’s a problem, because verbs make copy easier to read.

Verbs boost reading ease.

In 1928, Mabel Vogel and Carleton Washburne became the first researchers to statistically correlate writing traits with readability. They found that the more verbs in a writing sample, the easier the sample was to read. In fact, the number of verbs in a 1,000-word sample ranked No. 6 among 19 key elements that contributed to readability.

Why? Because verbs:

• Make words shorter and more recognizable. Short, familiar words rank among the top two predictors of readability, according to 70 years of research.
• Simplify sentences. Subject-verb-object is the easiest sentence structure to read and understand. And sentence length and structure is the other element most likely to predict readability.
• Reveal action. Action is easier for readers to process than things, so verbs are easier to process than nouns.

How can you mind your verbs to boost reading ease?

Reverbify nouns.

Call it verbicide: “Nominalizations” are verbs that writers have turned into nouns — “problem solved,” for instance, instead of “solved the problem.”

In 1979, attorney Robert Charrow and linguist Veda Charrow ran a test to see whether nominalizations and other “linguistic constructions” affected comprehension. They asked 35 people called for jury duty in Maryland to listen to a series of standard jury instructions, then tested participants’ understanding of what they’d heard. Then the researchers reverbified the nouns and otherwise simplified the copy and tested the instructions on a different group.

The reverbified copy was 14 percentage points easier to understand.

At least three other studies have also linked verbicide with reduced comprehension:

• E.B. Coleman and P.J. Blumenfield (1963)
• G.R. Klare (1976)
• D.B. Felkner et al (1981)

No doubt about it: When you write in verbs, you make words shorter, sentences simpler and copy brisker. This sentence, for instance, weighs in at an average of 7.0 characters per word:

This report explains our investment growth stimulation projects.

But reverbify some of those nouns, and you can bring that average down to 5.9 characters per word:

“This report explains our projects to stimulate growth in investments.”

Notice how many verbs suffocate in the nouns of my friend’s passage:

“Louisiana Station employees have problem solved their way to an XYZ Company Continuous Improvement success by purchasing a specifically designed storage cabinet to protect the life ring at the neutralization discharge pond.”

Those dying verbs make the passage thick, stuffy and hard to understand.

Zoom, zoom

Once you’ve reverbified your copy, push your verbs. Make them as strong and specific as possible.

“A story is a verb, not a noun,” wrote one of the former editors of The New York Times.That means the verb is the story. The stronger the verb, the stronger the story.

How well do your verbs tell your story?
___

Sources: William H. DuBay, “Smart Language,” Impact Information, 2007

Roy Peter Clark, “Thirty Tools for Writers,” The Poynter Institute, June 19, 2002

David Bowman, owner and chief editor of Precise Edit, “Keep Verbs as Verbs,” 300 Days of Better Writing, Sept. 24, 2010

“Break up complex sentences to help readers,” The Manager’s Intelligence Report

A Plain English Handbook (PDF), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1998

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Want to make sure you’re not eradicating clarity in your organization?

Slaughter these problems instead, suggest Martin J. Eppler, Ph.D., and Nichole Bischof. They’re the authors of “Complex to Clear: Managing Clarity in Corporate Communication.”

Top 3 clarity killers

According to participants in a survey by Eppler and Bischoff, the top three reasons corporate communications are hard to understand:

• Information overload. Including too many details in a communication vehicle (mean=3.61/5.0)
• Approval process. Involving too many people in creating the communication vehicle (mean=3.36/5.0)
• Death by tweakage. Inserting errors and inconsistencies and making too many changes to over time (mean=3.36/5.0)

Institutional clarity killers

These recurring managerial issues often lead to unclear communication, according to Eppler and Bischof:

• Too many cooks. The approval process results in inconsistent, overlapping and stylistically diverse messages. Example: An intranet article that’s been written by half-a-dozen “writers.” Driver: Lack of ownership. Solution: Give one owner the authority as well as the responsibility for the piece.
• Too big to fail. Everyone gets their own essential detail into the vehicle, which is now redundant, unclear and overloaded with information. Example: A marketing brochure that includes every grunt and groan about the project or service. Driver: “Iterations without consolidation.” Solution: Consolidate and redraft.
• Re-use abuse. Cut-and-paste segments are outdated, redundant and inconsistent. Example: A blog post that contains unedited paragraphs from a partner company’s website. Driver: Time. Solution: Fact-check and rewrite cut-and-paste passages.
• Swiss Army knife. Documents that attempt to serve multiple audiences but really serve none. Example: A press release for investors, journalists, community members and employees. Driver: Time and money. Solution: Divide and conquer. Write one piece, then tailor it to target audiences.

Clarity killers by project

Some topics and vehicles bring with them additional communication challenges. Are you communicating:

• The corporate vision and values? Clarity killer: Making these top-line messages abstract and generic. Simplicity solution: Add examples, stories and concrete details.
• Strategic direction? Clarity killer: Using the structure of the strategy, such as a balanced scorecard or strategy map. Simplicity solution: Develop an accessible visual metaphor for the audience, not for the creators.
• Social media? Clarity killer: Using jargon and communicating down a one-way street. Simplicity solution: Write in the language of the reader. Invite and listen to feedback.

Which of these clarity killers is your organization guilty of? How can you resuscitate clarity in your shop?

___

Source: Martin J. Eppler, Ph.D., and Nichole Bischof, “Complex to Clear: Managing Clarity in Corporate Communication,” University of St. Gallen, November 2011

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When Lynn Wylie, aka Best Sister Ever, sent me an Unfancy blog post arguing that all you need to look great every day is a capsule wardrobe of 37 items per season, I scoffed.

After all, Dear Reader, Aunt Ann is a maximalist. I love Jessica Harper’s quote in Pennies From Heaven: “It’s not the money; it’s the stuff!” My jewelry box is seven stories high. When someone asked my husband about my hobbies, he replied, “Ann’s sport is dressing for dinner.”

Focus on what goes in, not what goes out.

However, Dear Reader, Aunt Ann is also OCD. I love a place for everything and everything in its place. So when I read how Unfancy suggests you get to 37 garments a season, I was intrigued:

1. Empty your closet.
2. Review each item in your wardrobe.
3. Return to your closet only the garments you absolutely love.

In decades of closet-cleaning-as-entertainment, this is by far the best approach I’ve found. I now have all of the clothes I want to wear, and none of the ones I don’t. Plus, my closet is now uncluttered and gorgeous. Shelves once stuffed with T-shirts and yoga pants now display glittering evening bags and bracelets.

Spring-clean your copy.

So I wondered: Can we adapt this approach to cutting clutter from our copy? Then I remembered: We already have!

This is the approach editing genius George Stenitzer recommends in “An Act of Commission.” When editing, George uses a highlighter to identify what stays in the message instead of a red pen to identify what goes out.

It seems like a simple shift, but it works. So give it a go. If your message winds up as clean and dazzling as my closet, your readers will love you for it.

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“Good writers are visible just behind their words.”

— William Zinsser, author, On Writing Well

Eliot Fette Noyes was a Harvard-trained architect and industrial designer. He worked on projects for IBM — most famously the IBM Selectric typewriter and the Westchester IBM Research Center.

Frustrated with IBM employee jargon, Noyes composed a pamphlet called “Dear Mother.”

He suggested that employees write memos as if they were simple notes to Mom.

Dear Byron

It was 1962, and Tom Wolfe was covering the hot rod and custom car culture of Southern California for Esquire magazine.

That is, he was trying to cover it. He was having so much trouble that his desperate editor, Byron Dobell, asked Wolfe to send him his notes so he could have another writer try.

On the night before deadline, Wolfe he sat down at his typewriter and, ignoring all journalistic conventions, banged out a personal letter to Dobell explaining what he wanted to say on the subject. Dobell just removed the salutation — “Dear Byron” — and published the letter intact.

The result was “There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” — an article that helped establish the New Journalism movement.

____

Source: “Ten Things You Should Know About Eliot Noyes,” Dwell, April 2007

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Size does matter.

The longer your story, the less of it your readers will read — and the less likely they are to understand and act on it.

That’s according to 60 years of research correlating story length with readership, comprehension, decision-making — even jam buying and 401(k) plan participation.

“We take it, as a given, that the more information decision makers have, the better off they are,” writes Malcolm Gladwell in Blink. But “all that extra information isn’t actually an advantage at all … In fact [it’s] more than useless. It’s harmful. It confuses the issues.”

Increase reading by 33%.

Wilbur Schramm, the “father of communication studies,” was one of the first people to study the effect of story length on reading. In 1947, he interviewed 1,050 readers about what they read, how much and why they stopped. He found that …

• A nine-paragraph-long story lost three out of 10 readers by the fifth paragraph.
• A shorter story lost only two.

That’s the 33% reading gap between a short piece and a longer one. Bottom line: The longer your piece, the less of it they’ll read.

Leave them wanting more.

In his Broadway musical “Fame Becomes Me,” Martin Short quotes another Broadway actor as saying, “Leave them wanting less.” This study shows that the reverse is, of course, better advice.

Want people to read more of your piece? Make it shorter.

___

Source: William H. DuBay, Readers, Readability, and the Grading of Text, Impact Information (Costa Mesa, California), 2007

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