Cut the Clutter From Your Copy - how to manage your magazine's content and increase good advertising - Statistical Data Included

Eight ways to help your tired, busy, distracted readers make it to the end of every article in your magazine.

Information, these days, is hard to escape. Even formerly message-free spaces now bombard us with data.

First there was CNN blaring in the elevators at the New York Hilton. Then there were Snapple stickers on the kiwis in the produce aisle. Last week, I caught a 15-second clip of "What Women Want" at my ATM machine. (I know what women want: We want to be able to tumble out of bed on a Saturday morning and pull $40 out of the cash machine without seeing Helen Hunt look luminous in pajamas. That's what women want!)

All this adds up to information overload. And it's getting worse. In 1971, Americans were exposed to an average of 560 messages a day. Today, if you're brave enough to get out of bed in the morning, you can count on facing 3,000 attempts to get your attention, every single day. That's more than a million messages a year. Think about it: When your magazine lands in your readers' mailboxes, it's competing with 2,999 other things for their time, interest and energy.

With our readers buried under a pile of information, what are editors to do? Cutting through the clutter--making it easier for our readers to read and understand everything we write--is one way to reach our tired, busy, distracted readers more effectively. Here are eight ways to hold your audience's attention until the very the last sentence.

Use the funnel system. Cutting clutter is an editing process, not a writing process. And the best way I've found for editors to cut clutter is to use a funnel system--that is, start with the largest "parts" of your article and work your way down to the smallest.

Using the funnel system, you'll probably edit your article in this order: the whole article, the paragraphs, the sentences, the phrases and the words--and then the final review.

This funnel system saves time because you won't waste effort seeking just the right word in a paragraph that's destined for the axe. It also means you'll look at each part discretely, so you're not likely to forget, say, to test your paragraph length.

Pass the dollar-bill test. So first, consider the piece as a whole. How long should an article be? The right answer, of course, is "that depends"--on substance, style and the reader. But no matter how many words your story demands, you can at least make your article look easier to read by making sure it passes the dollar-bill test, a technique devised by Edmund Arnold, a journalist and design consultant, for breaking up copy effectively.

Break up your copy into chunks of text no wider than and no longer than a dollar bill. This should include subheads, bullets, pull-quotes, boldface lead-ins, sidebars, boxes, cutlines, illustrations, photographs and graphics. This reduces your readers' perception of the time and energy it will take to read the story, and increases the chance that they'll dive right into it.

Pick up the pace of your paragraphs. What do readers do when they're reading along, and suddenly they run into a loooong paragraph? They skim it, scan it or--most likely--skip it.

So how long is too long? There are a couple of measures I like for paragraph length. One approach is Jon Ziomek's 1-2-3-4-5 rule. Ziomek, a professor at the Medill School of Journalism, suggests that your paragraphs contain one main thought, expressed in two to three short sentences, taking up no more than four to five lines on the page.

As Ziomek says: "You must cut the meat into little pieces."

My own journalism professor was tougher. Rick Musser, professor of journalism at the University of Kansas, suggests that paragraphs average 42 words- the number recommended by the International Circulation Managers Association (ICMA) Education Committee.

Use your word-count tool to count the words in your story, then divide by the number of paragraphs to get the average paragraph length in your story. If it's longer than 42 words, shorten some of your paragraphs or cut them in two. If a couple of individual paragraphs still look too bulky, try the word count function on them, too.

Lighten the lead. Some paragraphs should be even shorter. For example, ICMA research tells us the best-read first paragraphs should contain no more than 25 words.

That makes sense. With the lead paragraph, you're either building a bridge leading readers into your story, or a wall barring them from entry. A huge lead paragraph is an obstacle they have to scale to get into your piece.

I like very short lead paragraphs. Some of the best leads are no more than a sentence long. Some are no more than a couple of words long. Take this short starter from The Wall Street Journal. The article covered the retirement of Coca-Cola chairman Douglas Ivester, who left after only two years on the job. The lead paragraph, reprinted here in its entirety:

"So fast?"

Streamline your sentences. Long sentences irritate readers, too. My writing professor used to make us read our sentences without taking a breath. If you're gasping for air at the end of that exercise, your sentence is too long.

One professor out there is even crueler. He makes his students light a match and hold it until they finish reading their sentences. If the sentences are too wordy, the students get a painful reminder not to let their sentences get too long.

So, how long is long enough?

Fourteen words, according to the American Press Institute.

The API researched how reader understanding rose and fell as sentences got longer or shorter. The correlation: virtually one-to-one. If your sentences average 14 words, readers will understand more than 90 percent of your article, according to the API study. Drop that average to eight, and you'll achieve 100 percent comprehension (and have a hell of a time editing copy!). Increase the average sentence length to 44 words, and comprehension drops to less than 10 percent.

Shorter is better.

Fine-tune your phrases. There are lots of things you can do to tighten phrases. In this step, make sure you recast noun phrases, activate the passive voice, and translate jargon into your readers' own language.

This is also the time to cut out modifiers that, in the words of The Associated Press Guide to Good Writing, "give the illusion of meaning without its substance."

As Mark Twain used to say: "If you can catch an adjective, kill it."

Whittle your words. What's the average length of a word that your readers feel comfortable reading?

Two syllables, according to the Fog Index formula. In fact, for every three words longer than two syllables in a 100-word section of your article, reading difficulty jumps by more than one grade level (And, as I tell the participants in my workshops and seminars, I may have a master s degree and be capable of reading at the 18th grade level, but I don't want to!)

Of course, all editors must include words longer than two syllables in their copy. The secret to bringing down the average length of the words in your piece is to surround long words with short ones.

Keep cutting. Finally, go through your copy one more time to see what else you can cut. Ask: Is every word you're using doing real work? Can you snip out a syllable or make do without a modifier?

Then read your copy aloud. Your tongue will trip over nine-syllable words; you'll find yourself breathless by the ends of long sentences.

And remember the words of writer Peter DeVries: "When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon in a skillet," he says, "I know I'm on the right track."

Ann Wylie works with editors who want to reach more readers and publishing companies that want to beat the competition.

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