Five General Tips for Succinct Writing

Erin O'Neill reports:

"If you think big words from a thesaurus would be [a] good idea for your cover letter addressed to a recruiter, you may want to think again. Yes, vocabulary is important, but so is knowing what you are typing. Words can have very different meanings and if you don’t know what you are saying, the recruiter is probably going to think twice about hiring you. Write how you would talk in person...If you are going to use jargon, pretend you are explaining the concept to someone who knows nothing about it...Using short paragraphs and bullet points makes it easier for the reader to 'breathe' and to enjoy your writing even more...Challenge yourself to write with as few words as possible, while still getting your message across. More often than not, you can cut out unnecessary words like 'some', 'that', 'very', 'seem' and 'got'...Repetition is unnecessary. Reiteration is rather useless."