177: Streamline and Clarify Your Writing to Make It More Powerful with Josh Bernoff

Josh is the author of four books, including Writing Without Bullshit. He is frequently quoted in major publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He’s also given keynote speeches at major conferences on television, music, marketing, and technology all over the world.

Josh spent his whole life focusing on his two talents, math and writing. He wanted to make good money, so he put most of his emphasis on his math talents. But he was always interested in writing.

When he became an analyst at Forrester Research about 20 years ago, he was able to combine his two talents. Then, 10 years ago, he convinced the CEO of Forrester Research to allow him to write a book on social media, Groundswell.

Following the success of that book, Josh has defined himself as an author. For the last two and a half years, he has worked with indie authors and corporations on how to communicate clearly and powerfully.

Clear Writing Principles

After Josh washed out of the PhD program at MIT, he learned some critical skills that helped him become a successful and powerful communicator and writer.

1. Write in the active voice. Avoid the passive voice whenever possible.
2. Write as directly as possible.
3. Use bulleted lists to break up the flow of your copy so that it’s easier to digest.
4. State your arguments clearly.
5. Break up your text with headings and subheadings.
6. Be brief.

Josh’s Top Communication Principles

“You must treat the reader’s time as more important than your own. That sounds like something everyone would agree with, but every time we write an email, a memo, or a book chapter, people tend to do what’s easiest for them instead of thinking about what’s easiest for the reader.”
– Josh Bernoff

The #1 thing you can do to improve your writing is to be brief. Don’t spend a lot of time warming up. Just say what you need to say as clearly as possible. Eliminate any duplication.

Next, you want to frontload your writing with the things your readers need to know.

Often, people will warm up before they get to their point. They write emails with the idea that people will keep reading past the first two paragraphs.

That’s not how it works. When you write an email, your subject line and the first two paragraphs you write need to be about what the reader needs to know. People will often give up on reading a longer email.

3 Elements of Toxic Prose

1. The Passive Voice

When you write in the passive voice it hides what’s going on from the reader.

2. Weasel Words

These are intensifiers and qualifiers that don’t mean anything. Some popular examples that Josh sees appearing everywhere right now include: huge, incredible, and insane.

3. Jargon

Using jargon creates writing that only you can understand and no one else can make sense of.

If you avoid these toxic prose elements, write as briefly as you can, and frontload your information so people are getting what they need to know at the beginning of your writing, you will communicate far more clearly and powerfully in a world where everyone reads on a screen all the time.

How Josh Edits for Clients

When Josh works with a client, he helps them organize their thoughts so that they can present them more clearly and usefully. Here’s how:

Do an Idea Audit

The first thing Josh does is an idea audit. He’ll ask the client to tell him their idea. He’ll usually say something like, “That’s boring,” or “that’s complicated,” or “I don’t understand.”

By pushing on the idea like this, you have to explain it more and think more deeply about it. It’s difficult to defend your idea and go deeper, but when you do, you finally get to something that’s big, new and