Clarity tip: put the most important words first

Summary

Here’s an underappreciated tool for the all-important task of making writing concise: put the most important words first.

Background

People with technical skills know their subject matter inside and out. But sometimes you can’t tell it by their writing. Even when writers of technical documents steer clear of industry jargon, they may fail to define unfamiliar terms. Or they may use needlessly complex words.

But their biggest problem is breaking the first rule of clear writing: be concise.

Being concise while also being precise is really hard. There’s something in the act of generating text that lends itself to over-explanation. We give more detail than necessary. We repeat ourselves. We use two words when one will do. And – my personal albatross – we give too much context before getting to the point.

Training yourself to front-load writing with the main point makes the other elements of being concise fall into place: since you’ve already made your point, you have less of a tendency to over-explain afterwards.

And I’m not simply saying “make your first paragraph the main point,” which is great, and central to inverted pyramid structure. Rather, the case study below gives examples of front-loading individual sentences with the most important words.

Shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, President Obama issued 23 “executive actions” to deal with gun violence. Read the first six and decide whether they are clear and well written:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

The sentences do follow parallel structure, shown in highlight:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

But the actual executive action is buried in filler text, highlighted below:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to** the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, **that may prevent** states from making information available to the background check system.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

And the sentences start with how the action will be carried out instead of the more important what the action is, highlighted here:

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
2. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
3. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
4. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

A potential rewrite

This rewrite:

• relocates the what to the beginning of the sentence, rather than the how
• retains parallel syntax structure for scannability
• removes filler phrases

1. Share data from federal agencies with the federal background check system.
2. Remove unnecessary legal barriers that prevent states from sharing information with the background check system, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
3. Incentivize states to share information with the background check system.
4. Make sure dangerous people aren’t able to use gun sales loopholes, accomplished by an Attorney General review.
5. Allow law enforcement to run full background checks before returning seized guns.
6. Instruct federally licensed gun dealers on how to run background checks.