I like to wrestle with some of the bigger retirement-related questions, and get all the pertinent facts, plus my personal experience, down in one place. I’d like to say that applying these principles always results in short blog posts. Use your reader’s brainpower, and patience, efficiently Never use more words, sentences, or paragraphs than needed to make the point.
It also relates to one of my principles - avoiding redundancy, which I learned as a software engineer. “Never make two points when you can make one instead.” That’s a really powerful way to think about good writing. It is a great story and message for anyone that has an audience. He sent a letter to Lincoln the next day saying that he hoped his message, delivered in two hours, would be as important Lincoln’s, which was delivered in 2 minutes. However it has been completely overlooked by the simplicity and power of Lincoln’s words. The speaker prior to Lincoln spoke for 2 hours. Possible the most profound words ever spoken by a politician. One of the best examples of this ever is the Gettysburg Address. Simplicity, in most things, is very powerful. There are times when the content requires that the writing be lengthier, but if you can condense your message that should make it easier for your reader to digest.
However, what I have found with my blogs and newsletters for my clients that they are much more engaged and interested if my ideas are to the point, use language that they understand (limit the industry jargon – that doesn’t impress most people anyway), and are relatively brief in overall length. Taylor Larimore, author of The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing "A wonderful book that tells its readers, with simple logical explanations, our Boglehead Philosophy for successful investing."
Asset Allocation: Why it's so important, and how to determine your own,.Investing Made Simple: Investing in Index Funds Explained in 100 Pages or Less Thanks for reading! New to Investing? See My Related Book: Estate Planning Is About More Than Just Estate Taxes (from me, at WSJ).By The Way, Tax Extenders Are Expired Again from Alan Cole.Free H&R Block Deluxe + State If You Bought TurboTax Basic Or Deluxe from The Finance Buff.The Total Cost of a Mortgage from Chris Simber.Money Moves for 2015, Q&A with WSJ’s Clements from Vanguard.Can Increasing LTC Insurance Elimination Periods Make Coverage Appealing Again? from Michael Kitces.What to Do With Your Money in 2015 from Allan Roth.What Your Grandma Taught You About Investing from Curt Stowers.What Matters Most in Investing from Jim Dahle.6 Keys to Successful Investing from Rob Berger.Dos and Don’ts for Combating Portfolio Sprawl from Christine Benz.I’ve enabled comments on this post, so please feel free to click over to the blog and share your thoughts! Investing Articles So, for those of you with experience writing, I’d be interested to hear what tips, advice, or resources you have to share.
(This applies to sentences, paragraphs, and, perhaps most importantly, articles.) I was recently asked by a new personal finance blogger if I had any writing tips to share. All I really had to offer was my general writing philosophy: Never make two points when you can make one instead.