A snapshot of skills from AROSA'S one day workshop for business and government writers. More efficient writing will save time and money.

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Nine steps to more efficient workplace writing
Write one imperfect version.
Get your thoughts down and don’t worry about order or format.
Label each sentence as fact, analysis, opinion.
These are the thinking strands and show you the thinking pattern of your document.
Get your thoughts down and don’t worry about order or format.
Hew any sentences not absolutely needed by your readers.
Use your FAO pattern to identify duplicated content and/or unnecessary content.
Get your thoughts down and don’t worry about order or format.
Hone for persuasive power.
How compelling is your analysis to support your opinion? You may need to add more analysis.
Get your thoughts down and don’t worry about order or format.
Create a high reader impact.
The top half of your document needs to have all the most important information.
Get your thoughts down and don’t worry about order or format.
Check for passive balance.
It’s good to have a few passive verbs spread through your document. Read it aloud to hear your language.
Are your ghost verbs necessary?
If not, change them to verbs. Reading aloud will pick up ghost verbs.
Use chop and change to adjust vocabulary.
Reading aloud will also pick up your Style Stamp: words you may use too often. Variety is the key.
Reading aloud will naturally adjust your sentence length.
Efficient writing has long and short sentences but never a string of long sentences together.