Clear Concise Compelling: How to write less to achieve more

Simon Hertnon's bright new 2021 edition of Clear Concise Compelling provides readers with the equivalent of an engaging two-day master class on writing to deliver value. The first edition (2006) focussed on brevity and clarity – gatekeepers to comprehension, and essential qualities of good business and academic writing. Fifteen years on, Hertnon has completely revised the guidebook to incorporate what he has learned teaching the material to thousands of knowledge workers, and to emphatically highlight the importance of writing in a manner that can and does deliver value to readers. Using his own 12-word optimal knowledge working framework, Hertnon reminds readers that the job of a writer is to solve problems and realise opportunities through a mixture of solution, change, and information design. Writing a document should be a means towards a valuable outcome, not an end in itself. Consequently, the book features a completely new process chapter that highlights the crucial need for clear briefs, along with eight other new sections. • 1.3 Writing to deliver value • 1.4 The principles of persuasion • 3.4 Familiar tone • 3.6 Adhering to a plain language standard • 4.2 Sentence structure and voice • 6.2 Advice for academic writers • 6.3 Reviewing draft documents • 6.8 Writing numbers This attractive guidebook is an essential resource for anyone who writes for work or study, and doubles as the textbook for Hertnon's popular Writing Essentials professional development course, which he has taught at Victoria University of Wellington since 2008.