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

by Jim Vandehei

active verb in each of their bullet points—and

One message per slide. People should absorb your point in 3 seconds, max. Think of each slide as a billboard: Would someone racing by at 65 miles per hour get the point?

we can process a presentation best if it has one big idea, backed by three to five points.

Consult resources like the Conscious Style Guide (https://consciousstyleguide.com) to learn about language to avoid.

Swap one identity for another—one race or ethnicity for another, one nationality for another—and see if the language and intention of the sentence remain nonjudgmental.

“Is race/ethnicity/religion/national origin relevant? . . . Using the descriptors when they’re not relevant or without explaining their relevance perpetuates harmful stereotypes.”

Smart Brevity Your versions What’s next: The bottom line: By the numbers: The big picture:

if your communication feels curt or overly cut, you’ve gone too far. Take a minute to breathe a little bit of life back into your text.