Justice Clarence Thomas on legal writing:
What I tell my law clerks is that we write these so that they are accessible to regular people. That doesn’t mean that there’s no law in it. But there are simple ways to put important things in language that’s accessible. As I say to them, the beauty, the genius is not to write a 5 cent idea in a ten dollar sentence. It’s to put a ten dollar idea in a 5 cent sentence.
That’s beauty. That’s editing. That’s writing.
We talked about editing with Jason on the last podcast but here’s another good reminder about the importance of it. This goes beyond your emails too. Think about your help pages. How complex are they when showing customers how to do things? Could your brother that’s never used the app before understand them? What about your mom?
Edit and revise. Edit and revise. Always be looking for ways to explain things better to your customers. Pack that sentence with dollars worth of information rather than cents.
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