Todd Rogers

Jessica Lasky-Fink

We were all taught the fundamentals of writing well in school. But how do we write effectively in today's hyper-interactive world? When The Elements of Style and On Writing Well were published in 1959 and 1976, the internet hadn't been invented. Since then, there has been a radical transformation in how we communicate. The average American adult receives over 120 emails and over 100 text messages each day. With all this correspondence, gaining a busy reader's attention is now a competition. Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink, both behavioral scientists, offer practical writing advice you can use today. They begin by outlining cognitive facts about how busy people read, then detail six research-backed principles for effective writing: Use fewer words Lower the reading level Use formatting judiciously Make the purpose clear for skimmers Emphasize value for readers Make responding as easy as possible Including many examples, a checklist and other tools for the most effective writing, this handbook will make you a more effective communicator. Rogers and Lasky-Fink bring Strunk, White, and Zinsser's core ideas into the 21st century's radically transformed attention marketplace.

Communicate More Effectively in the Real World

Writing for Busy Readers

Fabian Beiner

Busy readers aim to extract as much value as possible from a communication with as little time and attention as possible.

Long-winded writing is relatively simple to execute; we can transcribe our stream of consciousness directly into written words. Translating our unstructured thoughts into clear, concise, and articulate messages involves more serious work.

Although concise messages demonstrably outperform wordy messages, most people wrongly predict that wordier messages will be more effective.

Writing for Busy Readers quotes

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