Does Word Count Matter?

Rarely a week goes by when a nervous financial professional doesn’t reach to me for help with a last-minute guest column for the business media. With a deadline bearing down, the thrill of being a guest contributor has been replaced by the anxiety of “what am I going to write about and how will I/we get it done on time!?!”

Inevitably thoughts turn to word count. They’re typically upset because the editor’s assigned word count is either too long (i.e., how will I ever fill up that much space?) or too short (i.e., how can I jam my entire life’s work into such a tight space?!?!). Ahhhhhh. They joys of being an author.

When it comes to word count, there’s no hard and fast rule for how long a blog post, article, white paper or even a book should be. Don’t believe me? Ask your favorite search engine or AI tool and you’ll see “recommended word counts” ranging from 300 to 2,500 words for blogs and 800 to 5,000 words for articles. That’s not very helpful, is it?

Less is more

At HB, we lean toward the “less is more” approach. But, as Mark Twain famously quipped to a friend: “'I apologize for such a long letter - I didn't have time to write a short one.'

Twain could get away with that logic because he was one of the greatest authors in our country’s history. So, the short answer is this: If you’re an exceptional storyteller and can keep your prose compelling, go ahead an air it out. But for the rest of us, shorter is generally better as long as you don’t “dumb down” the complex topics you’re frequently asked to write about.

For business and financial topics, we’ve found that 600 to 900 words scores best for blog posts and 1,000 to 1,500 words (including the Key Takeaways) tends to get the most engagement for articles. Most financial editors will assign word lengths in this range. Of course, there are exceptions. Most word processing software generates about 400 words per page, so an ideal blog post is 1.5 to 2 pages and an ideal article is about 2.5 to 4 pages. For white papers and book chapters, we’re seeing that 2,000 to 4,000 words works best (think 5 to 10 Microsoft Word pages).

Here are some tips for keeping concise:

1. Read your work aloud before submitting it for publication. Most people read at 200 to 300 words per minute. So, an 800-word blog post is a three to four minute. A 1,250-word article is about a four to six minute read. If someone was listening to your piece on their headphones, could you hold your interest for that long? Does it seem to be dragging anywhere? Are you being redundant or vague? These are clues to where you could tighten up or cut.

2. Use short sentences. If you see any instances in which your sentences are more than two lines long, that’s a likely sign of a run-on sentence. Break your prose into shorter more digestible chunks of information, especially if you’re writing online. It’s okay to start sentences with “determiners” such as “And” , “But” and “So” these days. Your high school English teacher would be horrified, but I’ll write you a note to exempt you. Your readers will thank you, too.

Here’s a recent example from one of our clients:

ORIGINAL (one sentence, 65 words): “The sliding scale depends on which of the four “pools” your business falls into, but for many of you, the schedule starts at 40% of cost in the first year the equipment is placed in service; rises to 56% in Year-2, and then declines steadily from 42% in Year-3, all the way down to 18%, and Year-6 and to 15% in Year 7 and beyond.”

REVISED: (4 sentences, 53 words total) The sliding scale depends upon which of the four tiers your business belongs. The schedule starts at 40% of cost in the first year your equipment is placed in service. But the rate rises to 56% in Year-2. Then it declines steadily from 42% in Year-3 to 15% in Year 7 and beyond.

3. Tell ‘em times 3.  As my old boss at the AICPA used to tell us before every presentation, make sure you get three things across to your audience:

a) You tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em (INTRO).
b) Then you tell ‘em (MAIN BODY).
c) Then you ‘em what you just told ‘em (CONCLUSION).

Same goes for your written communication.

4. Key Takeaways. Whether you call them Key Takeaways, Hot Takes, Key Learnings, Summary Bullets or simply Takeaways, those hardworking bullet points at the top of your content should provide readers with an instant summary of what they will learn from you. Here’s more on Key Takeaways.

5. Call to action. You don’t need to overwhelm readers with everything you know about a topic. Financial professionals frequently suffer from Smartest Kid in the Class Syndrome. You just want to stimulate their interest and have them reach out to you for more information. Make it easy for them to find you to set a time to discuss with you in more detail. Then you can share more of your lifetime body of work.

Conclusion

Just keep these simple tips in mind and you’ll be fine. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how well you know the numbers, without a solid command of the English language, you won’t be taken seriously. After all, You're an Elite Professional; Don't Sound Like a Jamoke.

#grammar; #wordcount; #businesscommunication; #thoughtleadership