Alexander Haig was a hero to millions of Americans. He was an army general who would serve three U.S. presidents in such posts as Secretary of State and White House Chief of Staff. Haig was a veteran of the Korean War and Vietnam War, and he had a slew of medals across his chest. But he was also a notoriously bad communicator.

Haig would use words like this:

“The theological isolation of a functional objective.”

“The rigid theological functional areas of preoccupation.”
 
“The rapid hemorrhaging of international terrorism.”

“When we find ourselves in a dialectic fashion at one end of the spectrum.”

“Some disconnect on the airwaves.”

With that last one, he actually took a verb – ‘disconnect’ – and turned it into a noun. Haig was a man who used words to try and impress, as opposed to try and express. There is a world of difference. He was so bad that when I was teaching a college course in writing I put him at one end of my communications continuum and Winston Churchill at the other. The latter, of course, was the master.

Too often, whether we’re speaking or writing, we forgot our audience. Instead, we speak or write for ourselves, and unless you’re alone in a room, that isn’t such a good idea. When we write, we must always remember the reader. Put the reader front and centre. Put the reader on a pedestal. Think of the reader as your ultimate goal, the mind you want to win over.

Mr. Churchill certainly did. In World War II, he even put the English language into battle. And won.

Many people in business like to read good literature. No doubt, a lot of them studied such books as 1984 or Animal Farm, both by George Orwell, when in school. Orwell had six rules of writing:

1. Never use a figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word or jargon.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying something ridiculous.

Yet, at work, those same people do everything they can to break Orwell’s rules with their own brand of jargon-heavy, adjective-overloaded, ego-centric writing. How about Mark Twain? His books – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper – inspired millions. Well, Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, also had a few rules of writing:

1. Say what you are proposing to say, don’t merely come near it.
2. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
3. Get rid of non-essential matter.
4. Don’t omit necessary details.
5. Avoid slovenliness of form.
6. Always use good grammar.
7. Employ a simple, straightforward style.

Finally, there was Ernest Hemingway whose The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls revamped the literary landscape in America and around the world. The master of succinct writing, Hemingway had fewer rules than the others:

1. Use short sentences.
2. Use short first paragraphs.
3. Use vigorous English.
4. Be positive, not negative.
5. Never have only four rules.

We should all remember these authors and put their rules alongside our keyboard the next time we sit down to write.