Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less (Revised and Updated)

by Jim Vandehei

People want to know something new, revelatory, exciting. And they want you to put it in context and explain “Why it matters.” Then, with a visual or verbal cue, they decide whether to “Go deeper” into the conversation.

1 A muscular “tease”: Whether in a tweet, headline or email subject line, you need six or fewer strong words to yank someone’s attention away from Tinder or TikTok.

2 One strong first sentence, or “lede”: Your opening sentence should be the most memorable—tell me something I don’t know, would want to know, should know. Make this sentence as direct, short and sharp as possible.

3 Context, or “Why it matters”: We’re all faking it. Mike and I learned this speaking to Fortune 500 CEOs. We all know a lot about a little. We’re too ashamed or afraid to ask, but we almost always need you to explain why your new fact, idea or thought matters.

4 The choice to learn more, or “Go deeper”: Don’t force someone to read or hear more than they want. Make it their decision. If they decide “yes,” what follows should be truly worth their time.

Picture in your head the person you’re trying to reach. This is easy if it’s a single individual, but if you’re targeting a group, zero in on a specific individual, a name, a face, a job. • Always do this before you start communicating. If you try to speak to everyone, usually you reach no one. Singling out the person you want to reach clarifies things big-time.

Pastor Glade wanted to shrink this big existential question into something more digestible. He offered to his kids nine words of wisdom that guided us through our departure—and shaped how we live our lives today: “All you can do is the next right thing.” Think about how simple, direct and memorable that one line is. He could have prattled on, quoting Luke, waxing poetic in Hebrew or dropping C. S. Lewis wisdom, and he could’ve sharpened it even more: “Do the next right thing.”

In a note to his congregation in October 2021, Glade quoted William Strunk’s Elements of Style: “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

The second and equally important Smart Brevity step is to tightly tailor your message to your target reader. You will truly achieve Smart Brevity when you figure out what you want this person to remember specifically—and find taut, vivid, memorable ways to express it.

➊ Focus on ONE person you are targeting. ➋ Plot out ONE thing you want them to remember. When Mike was a rookie at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, one of the veteran reporters, Michael Hardy, used to critique competitors’ clumsy work by saying: “Think, then type!” • He was snarking, but it’s good advice. • If you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to convey, the reader has zero chance of understanding it. ➌ Write like a human, for humans. Be simple, clear, direct. Be conversational. Authenticity and relatability are essential ingredients. They help people become more willing to hear you and remember what you said. • Mike likes to think of his newsletter, Axios AM, as a breakfast conversation with a smart, curious friend. • When we’re sitting face-to-face, we have social cues that keep us from being boring. We subconsciously think: I want you to like me. So we don’t repeat ourselves. We don’t use fancy words. We don’t tell people things they already know. We don’t explain the obvious. • And yet when we sit down at a keyboard, we do all those things. Here’s the hack: Talk to someone else (or yourself—no one will know) about the point you want to make. • It’ll be clearer, more interesting and more urgent than anything you’d ever come up with if you sat down to “write.” ➍ Then write it down. Write down that one thing you want the reader, viewer or listener to remember if it’s all they take away. Write that before doing anything else. • Then try to shorten it to fewer than a do...

Tips & Tricks ➊ List the points you must make. Write them in order of importance. The first one is the one most likely to stick. • Mike picked up a tip listening to a speech by an executive of BJ’s Wholesale Club that we use—and you should too. Mike thought he knew all the secrets of public speaking, but as he waited to go onstage after the executive from BJ’s, he heard him start and end his speech with these words: “If there’s only one thing you remember from this talk . . .” That’s a great way to signal unmistakably what matters most and what you want people to take away. ➋ Whittle down your list of important points to one or two, if possible. If not, write them as bullets, not blobs of text. • How do you know when to do this? Think about your own reading habits. Do you really study an email from top to bottom or go through a report word by word? Of course not. If we’re lucky, we know that from any given podcast, industry meeting, sermon or Zoom, we’re going to take away one idea, anecdote, tip, hack, quip, stat, insight. That’s a win, right? Most of the time, we listen to a podcast or sit through a meeting and don’t remember a damn thing. • So lean into that. Don’t let them pick. You pick. ➌ Do a real gut check. Is this point or detail or concept essential? If so, is there a simpler way to convey it? ➍ Delete, delete, delete. What words, sentences or paragraphs can you eliminate before sending? Every word or sentence you can shave saves the other person time. Less is mo...

The most important words you type are subject lines, headlines and the first line of tweets, notes or papers. You need to grab me, entice me, seduce me.

The Axios audience team found that roughly 6 words is the optimal subject line for emails—short enough to show all words in a mobile phone format.

➊ Start by stopping. • Stop using too many words in a headline or subject line. Limit yourself to 6 words, tops. • Stop being funny. Or ironic. Or cryptic. It’s confusing, not clever. • Stop using fancy SAT words or business-speak. ➋ Once you kick the bad habits, start new, healthy ones. • In 10 words or less, write the reason you’re bothering to write something in the first place. • Write it in the most provocative yet accurate way possible. • Short words are strong words. A general rule: A one-syllable word is stronger than a two-syllable word is stronger than a three-syllable word. • Strong words are better than soft and soggy ones. • Active verbs ALWAYS. ➌ Read it aloud. Confirm it sounds like something that would entice you to want or need more.

If there is one thing you take away from this book, it is this: Learn to identify and trumpet ONE thing you want people to know. And do it in ONE strong sentence. Or no one will ever remember it. This is your most important point—or what journalists call “the lede.”

So if you’re writing an update to your team or a note to friends, imagine you’re talking to them on the elevator with no time to spare. • If they were headed out the door, what is the one thing you would shout and hope they don’t forget? That’s your opening sentence.

➊ Boil down your most important point. Remember to keep your target audience top of mind. ➋ Skip the anecdotes. Or jokes or showing off. ➌ Stick to the one-sentence limit. Now write it. ➍ Don’t repeat the tease verbatim. (If you used one.) ➎ Hack off the adverbs, weak words, extraneous words. Is it direct, succinct, clear? ➏ Now ask yourself: If this is the ONLY thing the person sees or hears, is it exactly what you want to stick? Then move on.

An “Axiom”—the name we’ve given to the bolded “Why it matters” headings you’ve seen throughout this book—is a way to put your thoughts into a digestible context. • “By the numbers” . . . “The context” . . “What’s happening” . . “The other side” . . “Reality check”—these Axioms are all crystal-clear signposts that guide someone who’s skimming. (And trust us: They all are.)

A few more of our favorite Axioms: • The big picture • What’s next • What we’re watching • What we’re hearing • Between the lines • The backstory • Catch up quick • Zoom in • Zoom out

➊ “Why it matters” is the most common and effective Axiom. People are busy, their minds cloudy. They yearn for context even if they don’t know it or express it. Bold the words “Why it matters.” ➋ After “Why it matters,” explain in one sentence—or at most two—why the information in your first sentence is important. • What will it change? A policy, a business line, a strategy, an approach? • What does it signal? A shift in thinking, a trend? • What’s the larger context? Is this an anomaly, intriguing, eventful? Relevant to something you previously discussed? ➌ The sentence—or sentences—should be direct and declarative. They should NOT be redundant with your opening sentence. They should add and offer perspective. Say the lede and the Axiom out loud. If they are all someone hears, will they get the gist? Success is leaving me wanting more because what I’m reading feels so new, essential, riveting. ➍ Now read all three parts together: your headline, your first-sentence lede and your Axiom. If this is all a person hears and learns, does it convey what matters most to you in the most blunt and understandable way possible? If the answer is yes, you have done more in 200 words than most people do with 20,000.

➊ Axioms rock. These bolded signposts naturally grab attention and tell others where you are headed. • We are big fans of “Go deeper” because it states clearly that you will provide more data and context below. “The big picture” is also a good one when you’re zooming out to provide more context. ➋ Use bullets, often. The bullet point is a wonderful way to isolate important facts or ideas. Think of how you scan or skim, searching speedily for something that pops out. The bullet point breaks up the text and sticks out because of the spacing and rhythm it imposes. • The Golden Rule of Bullets: Nobody wants to stare at a clump of words and figures. If you want to explain three or more different data points or related ideas, split them into bulleted points. People will skim nicely separated, bulleted points. ➌ Be bold. By now, you get it—most people are skimming. If you want an Axiom or specific word or figure to really stand out, put it in bold. It’s darker and more detectable than italics—and self-evidently differentiates itself from standard text. It screams, “Pay attention to this!” ➍ Mix it up. Avoid long paragraphs, always. Stick to two or three sentences, tops. Then try to avoid long blocks of consecutive paragraphs. Use bolding, bullets, charts and Axioms to break up the flow. Big blobs of bloviation bite (say that five times fast ). ➎ Just stop. The biggest flaw and time-wasting aspect of communications is overtalking or overwriting. • Be monk-like in your discipline w...

The same is true with soft words versus strong ones, short sentences versus long ones and effective communications versus crappy ones. You want to strike like lightning, not annoy like bugs.

An old city editor once pointed out to us that you’d never call a banana an “elongated yellow fruit.” Yet when we’re writing, we do this all the time.

You’d never tell your significant other: “With record temperatures besetting the West and South, and local highs nearing the triple digits, I’m going to avail myself of the nearby air conditioning.” No! You’d say: “It’s hot. I’m going inside.”

➊ Shorter is always better. An easy rule of thumb is that a one-syllable word is more powerful than a two-syllable word is more powerful than a three-syllable word. We use one-syllable words in subject lines.

➋ Deploy STRONG words. A strong word is vivid, precise and—here’s the big one—something you can see. It’s something real. A weak word is abstract—you can’t see it, touch it, taste it, take a picture of it (like “process” or “civics”). • Strong words: Any one-syllable noun (fire, boat, cage, cliff, fish). Any one-syllable verb (chop, taunt, botch, crush).

➌ Purge WEAK words. A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t say it at a bar or the beach, kill it. These limp or nerd words come in many forms. • Fancy words: Mike’s Grandma Powers used to call them “10-dollar words.” You can call them “spelling-bee words”—words that are supposed to make you sound smart but actually just make you sound like an ass. The short words that follow are better. avociferous (vocal) prevaricate (lie) didactic (preachy) conundrum (jam) paradox (puzzle) disconcerting (bad) salient (on-point) conclave (meeting) vicissitude (change) quintessential (classic) breadth (range) verisimilitude (real) elucidate (explain) • Words no human would say: These exist only in journalism, academia, think tanks and research papers. When we worked in newspapers, sharp editors called these “journalese”—a dying language, thankfully. discourse (talk) challenge (problem, shitshow) posit (assume) dearth (lack) paucity (scarcity) obfuscate (hide) ubiquitous (everywhere) veracity (truth) altercation (fight) vehement (forceful) disseminate (spread) raison d’être (purpose)

➍ Avoid foggy words. “Could,” “may,” “might:” Those usually tell you nothing in terms of what’s happening. • “Almost anything could happen.” This sentence will do nothing to inform, persuade, convince, delight—the whole point of writing something in the first place. • Instead, say what is happening: Is it “planned” or being “considered” or “discussed”? Is it “feared,” “hoped” or “expected”? • Any of those tells you something useful. Don’t waste people’s time with vague, foggy nothings.

➎ Use active verbs. An active verb brings action to your writing—it’s someone doing something: Roy races Miatas. • A passive verb is foggier—it’s someone making an observation: “Roy is known to race Miatas.” • Active: “The Taliban captured Afghanistan.” Passive: “The situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate from a security perspective.” • In elementary school, we learned: “Who—doing—what.” That simple formula always yields a riveting construction. The bottom line: Tell me a story. Don’t tell me about a story.

➏ Embrace strong phrases. Short, crisp, punchy = memorable, clear, smart. “Jesus wept.” These are the shortest, most powerful two words of the entire Bible. Nine letters and one vivid, telling verse in the Gospel of John. It captured Jesus’s earthly humanity, humility, emotion. • Japan surrenders. • Sales cratered. • Revenue boomed. • I quit. • Cubs lost.

➐ Check yourself. After you write an opening sentence, look at every word to see if you can say it in one fewer syllable. Every single time, you’ll be moving to a stronger word. • Never get “retribution” if you can get “revenge.” The big picture: One sentence is better than two sentences is better than three. Be as ruthless with your sentences as you are with your words. Be even more ruthless with your paragraphs. Package your words to pop.

Useful emojis for business communication: Data or poll Election Killing it D’oh Perfect Oy Deadline Restaurant review Devices Sports Food Emojis are also useful for regular exchanges: • You don’t even have to label this section: . • Our newsletters signals Axios on HBO with . • For other Hollywood references, it’s or . • is always a podcast or music. • And people love the throwbacks:

Mike’s Tips & Tricks ➊ You are the chef. Part of the “smart” in Smart Brevity lies in the selection. By paring down the selection for your reader, you’re increasing the chances they’ll hunger for more. • Writing is like a stacked buffet, where it’s up to you to pick and choose what you want. • Don’t make your readers pick what’s important! You’ve mastered your content, honed your idea and know what matters. Just say it—stop cooking. ➋ Brevity is confidence. This was hard for Mike, like it is for you. He felt he had a lot to say and wanted to include it all. But once he flipped his focus to the reader and not himself, everything changed. And his word count dropped dramatically. • One Easter weekend, Mike was with his family in a place with slow internet and not much news happening. He said: “It’s Easter—no one’s going to complain if their newsletter isn’t long enough.” So, instead of Mike’s Top 10, he sent out Mike’s Big 6. • When he went back to the regular format on Monday, he got emails: “Where can I sign up for the Big 6 version?” Humbling, and telling. ➌ Being selfless is selfishly beneficial. Once you see yourself as serving your audience, people take notice, reward you, trust you, welcome you and actually read or listen to you. • Think about what you actually read. I know. So why would you force-feed your audience more than that? • If people know you are picky, they will take notice when you shake ’em by the lapels: “Pay attention to this.” ➍ Gamify it. It’s actually...

Morrell’s Tricks & Tips for Communicators 1. Smart Brevity is teachable. Morrell would tell people to use an active verb in each of their bullet points—and they’d do it. 2. Smart Brevity forces you to write like a normal person. Morrell was struck by the way we send text messages in staccato sentence fragments that the recipient instantly grasps, but our business writing is a laborious mess. 3. Smart Brevity can be cool. Morrell became a hero with other executives, who saw the results and wanted to pioneer the concepts with their own teams. Chris Reynolds, the first ITK author, became a celebrity communicator, with people throughout the company coming to him for tips and tricks. 4. Smart Brevity is contagious. The magic instantly went beyond ITK and those employees whose job it was to communicate. Morrell started seeing internal memos structured as “3 things you need to know” or “5 things you need to know.” Policy papers on complex topics, which in the past were never read, were now coming in Smart Brevity. Morrell used it to arm alumni and other BP allies with talking points about the company. 5. Smart Brevity is versatile. Now you’ll see it in BP performance reviews and even safety briefings.

Tips & Tricks ➊ Bad emails start with lame subject lines. You want it short, direct, urgent. The one on the previous page tells me why I need to open the email NOW. ➋ You want the news or ask in the first sentence, always. Make people feel like they MUST read on. ➌ Give the recipients the “Why it matters” context. In email, this creates a replicable framework to provide the supporting data right after it. ➍ Bullets make it easy for skimmers and close readers to catch the most important data points or supporting ideas. ➎ Bold any words or figures or names you want to stand out—here, again, it’s the perfect eye-trap for those skimmers. ➏ Clean, intuitive visuals help amplify or bring to life an important point.

The pregame show: A good meeting is usually determined before it starts. • Sounds silly, but make sure you truly need a meeting. If it requires privacy or brutal honesty, it might be better handled as a one-on-one chat. • The person calling the meeting should be responsible for setting an objective (one direct sentence) and agenda (three bullet points, max) in an email before the meeting. • Try to do this the night before, in case some participants are booked solid on the day of. It gives ample time to think. • Jeff Bezos famously takes this to an extreme—based on his distrust of in-meeting PowerPoint presentations, which he says are more likely to confuse than clarify. “Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos,” he said in a shareholder letter. “We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of ‘study hall.’” • Six smart sentences will suffice! • Outline the specific decisions or actions to make or take, if possible.

While you meet: 1. Set a time limit: Done right, 20 minutes is usually sufficient. Most people are like robots, auto-setting meetings at 30 minutes or more, regardless of what needs to be done. Shake up that culture in your shop, and you’ll shine. • The Slack approach seems smart: 25 minutes or 50 minutes. Then if you’re scheduled back-to-back, you’re not late for your next stop. Maybe you can even grab a coffee. • Test out micro-meetings (5 to 10 minutes). There are no laws or sound theories for meeting longer than necessary. 2. To open the meeting, start with your headline—the one-sentence objective you emailed in advance. This articulates the chief reason for this meeting: What needs to be resolved or debated? 3. As your second sentence, explain “Why it matters” to this specific group at this specific moment. People are busy, often switching topics quickly from meeting to meeting. Let them know why they’re here. 4. Next, state unambiguously what specific decisions need to be made. You’ll circle back to these at the end with your takeaways. 5. Guide the discussion, setting the tone for focus and efficiency. Think of this as healthy peer pressure. If someone starts on a tangent, interrupt with a smile: “Off-topic!” A wave of the arms can add humor and take the sting out. 6. Be inclusive. Often the quietest people have the smartest things to say. Encourage silent people to share their views too. At the very least, they will appreciate the offer. 7. When 2 minutes are left,...

After you meet: • While the session is fresh in your mind, shoot the group a quick email with a list of follow-ups, using bullet points. • We’ve found that these emails often prompt people to add points they thought of since the meeting—perhaps saving another meeting.

Communications expert Nancy Duarte did a popular TED Talk after studying the rhythm, arc and content of famous speeches, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” and Steve Jobs’s iPhone launch in 2007. The Smart Brevity version of her “secret structure” of great speeches: • Describe the status quo: how the world or topic exists today. • Contrast with your lofty idea—ideally, the point of your speech. • Move back and forth from what is and what could be. • Make a call to action. • End with a vivid portrait of utopia if they embrace your idea.

Here are some practical tips that work for us mortals. 1. Win before you begin. You are a human, so you need to perform like one. Think about writing and speaking authentically. Too many people try to mimic others or speak like they are the main character in a Broadway play. Be yourself. • Sorry, but slides, notes and teleprompters are bad crutches. You want the focus on YOU and your words. • Practice and remember to rehearse looking five or six different people in the eyes during your speech. 2. Remember the audience. If you’re lucky, they’ll remember one point from your remarks. They are likely itching to check their phone or are actually doing it under the table. BUT, BUT, BUT: Speeches are different from other forms of communications. People come to hear from you on a specific topic. Get the audience on your side from the beginning: Start with a real-life story that hopefully ends with a chuckle. You defeat the purpose if you go on for more than one winning joke or anecdote. • Here’s a foolproof way to gauge how long your opening should be: Imagine running into a neighbor. Social cues tell us exactly how long we can engage them without being a drag or a bore. • That’s precisely how long your opening story should be. Set up the time and place, describe the situation, tell me what happened. Then stop. 3. Distill and sharpen your most important ONE point or lesson. Write it down, word for word—don’t hazily know it. Once you have your Big Thought, build your speech around ...

One of the most-viewed TED Talks ever is “How to Spot a Liar” by social-networking expert Pamela Meyer. She began her 2011 talk by saying: “I don’t want to alarm anybody in this room, but it’s just come to my attention that the person to your right is a liar.” • You’ve got my attention, Pamela. And all it took was one sentence. Then she dropped a funny: “Ever since I wrote this book Liespotting, no one wants to meet me in person anymore, no, no, no, no, no. They say, ‘It’s OK, we’ll email you.’” That’s good stuff. Two sentences. • Then she gave a little map: “So before I get started, what I’m going to do is I’m going to clarify my goal for you.” • Then her Big Thought: “Lying is a cooperative act. . . Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.” Nailed it.

Define your audience. • Specify what you want them to know Fill in the prompts below (60 seconds or less) Who is the smart reader for this exercise? What is an update or other topic you’re familiar with and they need to know about: Why is it significant? Jot down a few details. We’ll come back to them later: Structure it—smartly and succinctly • Visualize what you want the output to be. In most cases, the art will be optional. Headline: Is it . . . • 6 words or fewer? • Clear and specific? • Conversational, with muscular words? What’s new: Is it . . . • One sentence only? • What you need readers to remember? • A distinct detail from your headline? Fill in the prompts below (30 seconds or less) Write your headline and first sentence—remember the tips and tricks. Example: BEFORE Update on our work-from-home plans in 2021 We continue to closely monitor the impact of COVID, and we are writing today to provide an update on our plans for the rest of the year. AFTER Remote work option extended Everyone will have the option—but not the requirement—to work from home for the rest of 2021. Explain the significance and context • Write the words “Why it matters,” bold them and slap a colon at the end. • Think about the person you listed as your target audience. • In one sentence, explain the reason you are sharing this with them as bluntly and briefly as possible. Come up with your own unique axioms • Think about your industry, personality, brand, voice and tone. Brainstorm a better ve...