I just published the first installment of my 3-part series on how to polish up your work to make it stand out and shine. It appears on OpportunityKnocks.org, the leading website for nonprofit jobseekers. Whether you’re seeking a new nonprofit job, recently got hired, or just want to improve your job performance, you will want to ensure that your documents are clean and professional.

This first installment is about how to cultivate conciseness. The idea here is to make sure your reader can quickly find the most relevant information. Most people will “take a pass” rather than spend much time or energy trying to sort things out. And that’s the last thing you want!

One of my favorite phrases about writing is rather Orwellian: Less is more. But it is not doublespeak. It’s true! Concise statements are powerful. Accessible words and phrases get read. Your challenge is to keep your piece as brief as possible, without compromising meaning. See how tight you can write.

Believe me, I know how wordiness can infect your writing! Almost every client I have had fights this condition. In fact, I still often find myself wallowing in a circuitous, excessive, unnecessary, irrelevant, extraneous multitude of quicksand-like mountains of verbiage (like this). Word proliferation is an occupational hazard for all writers. But if you find ways to moderate that situation, your readers will reward you.

Read the rest of the article right HERE.