The cost of waffle

In the battle for people’s attention, why do we waffle?

🔆 Did we run out of time to read and edit?

🔆 Do we think more words sound smarter, clever, impressive?

🔆 Do we feel our idea or content is ‘weak’ and so more words might bolster it?

Waffle, jargon and filler is wasteful. Visually in a report or document, it looks like too much hard work to read. Our eyes tire and our brains are exhausted from working through slabs of wordy text.

Long sentences lose people.

If it’s too much hard work, your audience will go into cognitive overload and they'll distract (or rescue) themselves, looking away, disengaging and disconnecting. Keep it clear, clean, as many words as needed. No filler.

Q: What does wordy waffle do to you?