Clear and Concise Writing
Identify: As I’ve progressed in my white paper journey, I have noticed some difficulties to writing white papers that I had not anticipated. As I mentioned in my last blog about my white paper journey, finding case studies can be extremely difficult. However, this white paper was easier to find a case study due to the fact that I had already written a white paper previously.
Explain: Finding a case study was not as difficult as I thought it would be, based on past experiences with white papers. When writing my first white paper, difficulties arising in the production of that paper are to be expected. The difficulty that I had, particularly in my second white paper, was trying to connect all the ideas that I had in my mind. Not only was connecting difficult, but connecting those ideas in a clear, concise way was difficult. I found it difficult to accumulate all the ideas I had in my head and put them onto paper, within the word limit. I tend to be very wordy when it comes to writing my essays. This wordiness stems not from just trying to reach a word count, but because I’m trying to help the reader understand what I am writing. I find that helping the reader understand what I’m trying to say is much easier when it’s simpler. Simplicity is often overlooked when it comes to writing technical documents. I hope that while struggling with this concept, I was able to improve my ability to reduce word count and increase clarity.
Question: How do writers create clarity in their documents, without losing valuable information? How do I, as a young writer, improve my ability to write well? Is this something that is only learned from practice?
