Writing tighter for online prospects, using Prof. Lanham's Lard Factor.

I strongly suspect that readers' attention spans, as we progress through the second decade of the internet era, continue to shorten.

While it still may be true that "long copy sells," as real prospects want as much information about our product and its benefits to them as we can give them, writing shorter and tighter is probably becoming increasingly important.

Think of it this way. The first cohort of three- and four-year-olds who watched Sesame Street and its famous abbreviated segments are turning 40--entering their prime "newsletter subscribing years."

With this in mind I like some suggestions from UCLA professor and linguist Richard Lanham.

He calls his system the "paramedic method." Beyond suggestions that I know you have read before, such as "avoid the passive voice" and "try reading the copy aloud," Lanham offers some practical copyediting suggestions.

How often do you at least figuratively crumple your copy paper, toss it into the circular file, sigh and begin anew?

Lanham's suggestion is that in many cases your first draft may be your best work. "There may be no place to go but down. Don't discard it and start over a second, third and fourth time--work to improve and tighten what you wrote the first time."

Get to the point quickly

President Lincoln got away with front-loading the Gettysburg Address with a summary of the nation's founding precepts, but that was a different time--when you become a wartime president, people will put up with your introductory perorations.

Note. In fairness a lot of newsletters have been sold with long narrative openings where the selling message doesn't begin until halfway down page one. But then again, maybe that's the type of selling copy that has seen its best days.

Don't be too eloquent

Returning to Lincoln, in copywriting you don't want to be too eloquent. If you have a couple of "mystic cords of memory stretching from every patriot grave" rattling around in your rhetorical toolkit, keep them there. You don't want to distract the prospect from your selling message to admire the elegance of your prose.

Studies have shown that college graduates are most comfortable reading at about a 9th grade level. "Not my Widget Industry Fortnightly subscribers," you might say. OK, give them an extra of couple years. An 11th grade reading level is what publications like the Wall St. Journal and Newsweek aim for.

Lanham's specific suggestions

Check for "Officialese." Look for vague, general nouns, especially shun words like education. Beware of nouns modified by adjectives such as "incremental throughput." Be ruthless with constructions like "initiate the hiring process" or "maintain an aggressive operational attack posture." (You could substitute "bomb the enemy.")

Here's the "Paramedic Method." Circle all the forms of "is" ("is," "was," "seems to be," and so on). These are the linchpins that hold together unwieldy sentences. See how many sentences you can shorten or combine. Eliminate the passive voice entirely. Get directly to the action, "Who's kicking whom?"

When you've eliminated all the unnecessary words, add them up and compare them to the total number of words. That percentage is The Lard Factor. Lanham suggests that writers may find Lard Factors between 33 percent and even 50 percent when making first efforts to tighten their prose.

Finally, Lanham counsels, vary the length of your sentences. (My own suggestion is to aim for an average sentence length not much more than 15 words. More than 20, on average, gets into the domain of academia.)

He comments that "an endless procession of sentences of similar length produces the dread disease endemic to contemporary prose: monotony. Use short sentences for conclusive statements or summaries."