Most of what is written today is neither worth the writing nor the reading.

The first rule of writing is that you must have something worth communicating. Most writers charge forth, fumbling the ball on the one-yard line.

The second rule of writing is that you must convey your thoughts in an interesting manner, since if you fail to capture and hold the reader's attention, he will not read what you write and no communication will occur.

The third rule of writing is that you must transmit your thoughts in an understandable fashion, since if the reader does not understand what you write, nothing is communicated.

Writing is an art, and an ability that anyone can improve. Writing well is also an essential component of success. Virtually every literate human believes that he or she can write well ... but seldom does.

In just the next few minutes of this Mega Genius Intelligence Briefing I will teach you the secret rule of writing well. It is a rule that few people know and that no one applies as well as he should.

Knowing the rule will enable you to ensure that you are consistently applying the first three rules of writing.

Using it will improve your writing immeasurably.

Many years ago I bought a small, slightly worn, antiquated book for only a pittance, which was of far greater value than most people would have suspected. It was one of the most famous American books ever written: An 1836 first edition of the "Eclectic First Reader," by William Holmes McGuffey, a professor at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio.

Throughout the following century, 80 percent of all American school children were educated with more than 122 million copies of the series of small textbooks known as "McGuffey's Readers," which had more influence over more children over a longer period than any other book ever written in the United States.

The reason America used McGuffey's Readers so extensively and for so long was that they were useful. School systems didn't require extravagant funds to teach generations of children to read quickly and effectively. Instead, inadequately paid school teachers, in one-room school houses, used the simple McGuffey's Readers to get the job done.

In the nineteenth century, the children were also competently taught the other two "r's": writing and arithmetic. They learned to write legibly and well. And children in the late 1800's learned a kind of arithmetic that most people today have never seen. It was entirely different from the form of arithmetic taught later, in the mid twentieth century. Yet very young children even learned to solve algebraic problems with it.

McGuffey's Readers worked.

Now, in the twenty-first century, only the world's expenditure for defense exceeds that of education. Yet in our multimillion-dollar public school edifices, with our exhaustively adjudicated curricula, and with our modern electronic instructional gadgetry, and with hair dryers in the boys' locker rooms, we fail to teach children to read as well.

Psychologists changed what worked. (Flunk!)

They also changed arithmetic, again, into "the new math," which didn't work nearly as well, either. (Flunk again!)

Incidentally, they also drop-kicked geography down the corridor and into the janitor's room. Now many public high school graduates can't even find the continent of Australia on a world map, although their diplomas certify that they were properly educated ... with your tax dollars. (Flunk again!)

No one can write well who can not read well. Accordingly, as the public's ability to read has deteriorated significantly, so has its ability to write.

For example, Florence Feiler, the Beverly Hills literary agent who represented "Out of Africa" [winner of seven Academy Awards], used to bemoan what she called "the national hobby of writing." One afternoon, in 1985, she spent hours with me in her home sharing her frustration with the poor grammar, punctuation, spelling and general writing inability displayed in the manuscripts that she received daily, from hopeful authors who had never learned the basics of writing.

You see, Florence was surrounded that day by stacks of manuscripts, submitted by hopeful authors who could write. Every one of their 120,000 word manuscripts proved it. Unfortunately, however, not one of them stood a chance in hell of ever getting published. They all wrote, but not well.

You may never submit a manuscript to a literary agent, but you may write memorandums, or reports, or an occasional résumé. At least you probably write letters or e-mails. Almost everyone writes some things, but do you write well? Are you sure?

For years I taught writing techniques and skills for a multibillion dollar subsidiary of the media conglomerate Viacom, Inc., served as Editor-in-Chief of a financial magazine, and had some 30 million words of my technical writing published. It was probably a record.

Incidentally, although I have hired writers by the dozens, I never terminated even one. To the degree that you fire employees that you have hired, you have failed to hired the right people. (I only fired some writers that others had hired.)

While interviewing applicants, I learned with a "thud" that universities nowadays do not teach students how to write. Communications majors don't even know what communication is ... literally. Although they have studied all about it in numerous classes, even when pressed they can not suggest a definition for the word "communication." They receive degrees in the subject, but not an elementary education in it.

Trust me; if one doesn't at least know that communication is the act of sending something from one point over to another point and ensuring that what is being sent is exactly what is received, then he can not write well.

Not only are students today not taught how to write, they are not even taught to write. For example, my closest friend, an author who once had 11 consecutive "New York Times" bestsellers (a mark unequaled in publishing history), was invited by Harvard University to speak to a class that supposedly was being educated in writing. When my friend mentioned offhandedly to the students that any professional writer should turn out at least 100,000 to 200,000 words per month, he was surprised to see a shock wave course through the class. The students' reaction seemed baffling, until the professor of the class explained later to my friend that he only expected each of his students to write 1,500 words per semester. (This editorial is about 2,200 words.)

Finally the Harvard students had at least learned that successful writers write.

Now I'll show you how to substantially improve all your writing with one simple rule that even the best authors fail to apply as well as they should.

For now you can forget about period faults, comma faults, pronoun antecedents, case, sequence of tenses, and everything else about grammar.

Also forget all about confusion of clauses, unnecessary commas, and everything else about punctuation.

You don't even need to care about nonstandard expressions, slang, sentence unity, word order, parallelism, split construction and dangling modifiers.

You can even forget everything you know -- or should know -- about spelling, for now. It's all important, but we're not going there.

Instead, just read this paragraph:

Anytime that you write anything at all, the whole purpose is to communicate some kind of idea or expression from you across a distance to some other person, or to some people. In the process of doing that, it is both fundamental and crucial that you ensure that whomever receives the communication that you decide to send properly understands you. Accordingly, the more it is that you write exactly what it is that you are intending to communicate, without writing more words than you necessarily have to write, the more easily the person who receives your communication will understand you and, therefore, the better your writing will tend to be.

Now that is a horridly written 110-word paragraph. It fails to do what it is advising you to do. It is replete with excess wordage.

So, let's sharpen our editing pencil and revise it, as follows:

Anytime that you write anything, the purpose is to communicate an idea to some other person. It is imperative that you ensure that whoever receives the communication understands you. Accordingly, the more that you write what you are intending, without writing more than you have to, the better your writing will be.

We have just obliterated more than half the paragraph by eliminating 58 unnecessary words, thereby shortening the paragraph to just 52 words, while maintaining a truthful presentation of the idea. Can we improve it further?

Let's revise it again:

Anytime you write anything, the purpose is to communicate an idea. In doing so, you must ensure that you are understood. Therefore, the more concisely that you write, the better your writing will be.

Now we've shortened the paragraph to a mere 34 words. Can we do even better?

Let's revise it again:

The more concise your writing is, the better you will be understood.

Now we have distilled the idea to just 12 words. Shall we continue what works?

Let's revise it again:

To be better understood, write concisely.

Now we have reduced the paragraph by 95 percent, from 110 words to only six. Isn't our six-word version easier to read and understand? Doesn't it communicate more effectively? Isn't that the basic purpose of writing and reading?

Incidentally, just to amuse myself, I checked the original paragraph with Microsoft^® "grammar checker," strictly applying all grammar and style rules, which indicated that it was perfectly acceptable. Well, believe me, it would not have been acceptable to Florence Feiler, or Joni Evans, or Loretta Barrett, or to the many other top literary agents and publishing houses that I know.

Of the hundreds of manuscripts surrounding Florence that day, you can imagine the percentage of each that was unnecessary "fluff." Because of increased publishing costs, publishers today have no use for 120,000 word manuscripts by unproved authors. Instead, they want submissions of about 75,000 words, screened by literary agents.

The typical manuscript submitted to Florence certainly could have been condensed to merely 25,000 words, easily. Although each hopeful author thought he had written a "book," he had actually written only one-third of an acceptable-size manuscript, inflated with more than a book of unnecessary writing that wasn't worth the spittle on the postage to send it. Such a manuscript should never have seen a glimmer of sunlight outside the writer's study.

A poor writer will commit three primary mistakes. First, he will fail to learn all the basic technology of his profession. Second, he will then fail to practice his craft as much as he should. Finally, he will develop "writers' block," or some other excuse to not write at all.

Prominent among his mistakes, however, he will treat everything he writes as though it is of unquestionable value. If a finished piece does not precisely communicate what he intended, he will add more words. That will not improve his writing.

Extra words never improve what you write. Rather, they severely weaken the quality of your writing. They diminish the punch and weaken the readers' interest.

You may imagine that all your words are carefully crafted jewels and that people scurrying about who slow down to read your literary creations grind to a standstill to admire your every word, but they do not. The finely cut jewels are only the words that remain after you have revised many times.

A good writer must be willing to discard any of his second-rate writing that he can not easily revise to a preeminent standard. For instance, some 35 years ago I wrote a 75,000 word non-fiction manuscript of which I was quite proud. That is, until I finished it and then realized that it did not adequately communicate what I had intended. Consequently, without ever submitting it to any literary agent, I discarded it without a second thought. That was a lot of excess wordage.

So everyone, including myself, is guilty of excess wordage. We all, however, should continually improve that fault, for it is an affliction that wastes every writer's time and bores his reader.

Someday I may write that manuscript again, from scratch, but that's quite all right. After all, writers write.

Always remember though that good writers don't just write. They rewrite ... repeatedly. They slash and discard every unnecessary word, ruthlessly.

No matter what you write, you should always do the same.

There is a name for that skillful form of writing. It is called précis (pronounced pray - 'SEE), taken from French, meaning a "cut-down statement." The name originated with diplomatic correspondence that needed to be accurate and concise.

Nevertheless, you don't need to remember that name. Or the numerous frustrations experienced by literary agents, daily. Or what publishers require. Or what students at Harvard are not taught about the real world.

I hope, however, that every time you pick up a pen, or decide to send even an e-mail, you will keep the following concisely expressed, six-word rule of writing prominently in mind.

To write well, cut it out.

All of your writing will be the better for it.

Mega Genius^®

7 December 2003

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