Tag
show don't tell
4 posts
- 06SaturdayDifferent Angle·
In a guide where I slapped an example onto every abstract sentence, word count doubled and readership dropped—because examples carry a cost, and sometimes an abstract sentence gets the job done faster.
Giving Examples Isn't Always Right: When "Make It Concrete" Fails
For years, I attached an example to every abstract sentence; in one onboarding guide, this reflex doubled the length and tanked completion rates. Here are three conditions where examples backfire and a single decision test for the editing desk.
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- 03WednesdayData·
We deleted the sentence "Quality content matters" and replaced it with a single scene from a meeting—and readers' scrolling behavior changed on that exact paragraph.
The Abstraction Tax: What Happened When We Replaced "Quality Content Matters" with a Single Scene
We compared two versions of the same paragraph: keep the abstract claim, and readers skim right past; replace it with a single concrete scene, and they stop. But this rule is conditional—when we stuffed an example into every sentence, completion rates dropped. The data tells a story of 'one single example in the right place,' not 'more examples everywhere.'
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- 01MondayOpening·
I wrote the sentence "quality content matters" hundreds of times—and it was so uncontestably true that it told nobody anything.
An Abstract Sentence Is a Promise, a Scene Is Proof: Why I Deleted "Quality Content Matters"
For years, I wrote true but invisible sentences like "quality content matters"; no one paused, no one quoted them. Here is what changed when I replaced an abstract claim with a single concrete scene—and how I bloated my prose when I tried to turn every sentence into one.
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- 05FridayFramework·
For years, I stacked flashy adjectives together to make my copy look more 'professional'—only to realize later that instead of persuading readers, I was just choking the engine of the sentence.
The Adjective Pruning Matrix: A Verb-Driven Editing Framework for Actionable Copy
A sentence's persuasive power comes not from the grandeur of its adjectives, but from the precision of its verbs. Here are micro-tactical ways to prune adjectives and shift the weight of your copy onto specific actions.
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