Don’t summarize: drive points home with highlights. That’s how you should summarize a long report. It’s also why no one is satisfied with Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. If you write, you have to write summaries. Think of a summary as a movie trailer: it gives you the general…
Last week the U.S. Federal Government issued its fourth report on the Climate, as mandated every four years since 1990. Despite its being released on the day after Thanksgiving, it got plenty of airplay. But the report itself could do a lot better job of summarizing its pointed conclusions in a way that anyone, even…
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and several other government organizations are completing a report on global climate science. Someone leaked a late draft to the New York Times, which published it. The 545 page report is a great case study on how (and how not) to summarize technical information. The executive summary features telling…
Storytelling is all the rage in business. Meanwhile, I’m telling you to front-load your writing — to explain just what you’re about to say in the title and first few sentences. If you take my advice, won’t that ruin your story? Not quite. In fact, following my advice is the only way you’ll get to tell your…
I’ve run a little experiment on this blog in the last three months. I’ve attempted to start every post with around 50 words that would draw you in. It’s working. In my view the title and first few sentences of a blog post should: Intrigue the reader. Promise what’s coming, accurately. Incorporate a clever or counterintuitive…
Every email, document, or post you write now competes with hundreds of other items for your reader’s attention. Two strategies will get them to read it: fascinate and summarize. In this post I explain how to balance these two concepts to create titles, subject lines, openers, and tweets that win over readers quickly. (A complete guide organized by…
Crappy writing springs from crappy planning. Like an architect, plan before you build. On a project that takes weeks or months to write, spend at least one day on planning. Follow these planning tips to maximize your chance to create something great. In this post, I show you how to lay the groundwork for a writing project like…