What have we learned so far?

Professional writing, firstly, is about action, change, making something happen, achieving a specific objective as a result of the writing.

It's not about impressing our reader or showing off our vocabulary or how much we know about a particular topic.

Good writing therefore needs to:

• Have a clear objective
• Be well-organized
• Be concise, clear and brief
• Use appropriate language - easy to follow and appropriate to the reader
• Have a style that keeps our readers interested
• Be accurate

Writing itself is a four-step process of:

• Thinking
• Planning
• Drafting
• Editing

When we look at clarity, we want to draft clearly, but these tools are also useful when we want to edit our writing to make it easier to understand.

Lack of clarity is one of the biggest problems that readers face - forgetting what happened at the beginning of the sentence, not being able to pick out the main message simply because of too much information and very often too much wordiness, long sentences, long words, that cause strain on the short-term memory.

And when we reduce that Fog Index, we respect our reader's attention and their time, because we're keeping it clear and straightforward wherever possible.