{"id":402,"date":"2013-01-18T23:52:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T23:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scqa.hult.edu\/en\/news\/hult-labs\/2013\/january\/can-you-say-it-in-140-characters\/"},"modified":"2022-06-29T14:45:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T13:45:10","slug":"can-you-say-it-in-140-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hult.edu\/blog\/can-you-say-it-in-140-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Say it in 140 Characters?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something momentous has happened to you, or a momentous thought has struck you, and now you want to share. Let\u2019s say Twitter is your medium for dispensing your news. As you quickly strike the keyboard one thing becomes clear: you will have to compose an abridged version because you\u2019ve\u2026run out of characters. Sure, you can truncate some words, and sure you can lean on text slang, but sometimes even that isn\u2019t enough of a countermeasure \u2013 you still have too much to say<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But you will not be defeated. You go into haiku-mode and pare down your words until you\u2019ve captured the very core of what you want to communicate. Now take a step back and think back to the last time you were at work\u00a0\u2013 or if you are a student, at school (that is<\/em> work)\u00a0\u2013 and ran into the same conflict. Too much to say, but a limited amount of time or space to deliver the message. In real life bosses are busy, meetings have hard stops, and when you are given a finite amount of time to present to colleagues, no one will take kindly (nor will they absorb what you have to say) when you take a leisurely stroll to your main premise.<\/p>\n

Perhaps tweeting may be a form of communication you have given little thought to, but it does provide a very real world parallel. By limiting the number of characters you can use, Twitter forces you to shrink a message down to all its vital parts \u2013 and that is actually a big deal.\u00a0 And don\u2019t just take my word for it. At Hult Labs we have heard business leaders at all levels tell us that the ability to deliver a succinct message, verbally and in written form, is a skill they rarely see, want more of, and have even deemed \u201ccritical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps tweeting is not your thing. No problem. The Financial Times Lucy Kellaway recently offered some pretty good advice in her article, \u201cBosses fail the 10-year-old test<\/a>.\u201d She writes: \u201cA CEO ought to be able to explain what he does in a way a child can grasp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, you may not currently find yourself in a C-level role, you may not be interested in ever finding yourself in one, and perhaps you don\u2019t regularly talk to children. But none of that matters. What Kellaway is suggesting applies to anyone who wants to be a good communicator \u2013 if you find yourself in a situation in which brevity is required, strip your message down to the bones.<\/p>\n

Kelly writes: \u201cAs the naked emperor found out long ago, the child is the best and the toughest inquisitor there is. If any chief executive is unable to say what he does in a way that a brightish 10-year-old can grasp, he either hasn\u2019t thought about it carefully enough or he should stop doing it at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m advocating you stop doing anything, but I will say this: the ability to communicate succinctly raises your chances of being clearly understood, and that your audience (even if it\u2019s an audience of one) will remember what you had to say and take something meaningful away. OK, maybe not exactly what you said word for word, but the very crux of your message. And this is important in a world where we are bombarded with verbal, literal and digital messages of all kinds, all the time, and don\u2019t have the capacity (or the will) to store it all. This is not always easy, and it does require you to spend some time seriously thinking about what it is you really<\/em> want to say before you take the first crack at saying (or typing) it.<\/p>\n

Kellaway is not alone in proposing the advice to be concise. In a 1985 essay, \u201cHow to Write with Style<\/a>,\u201d writer Kurt Vonnegut relayed one particularly good writing nugget (among many \u2013 seriously you should read the whole thing<\/a>) in his rule #3, \u201cKeep it Simple\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cAs for your use of language: remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. \u2018To be or not to be?\u2019 asks Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story \u2018Eveline\u2019 is just this one: \u2018She was tired.\u2019 At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.\u201d<\/p>\n

So when you want to truly reach an audience in a pointed way (and maybe like Joyce elicit some kind of emotion), just remember: you can keep it short and sweet and still have impact.<\/p>\n

To read Lucy Kellaway’s Financial Times article, you can go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Flickr photo courtesy of MDGovpics<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Explore the complexities and challenges of the marketing world with Hult’s Masters in International Marketing<\/a>. To learn more, take a look at our blog Social media appearances matter<\/a>, or get into broader business with a Masters in International Business instead. Download a brochure or get in touch today to find out how Hult can help you to explore everything about the business world, the future, and yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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