In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry writes:

State that something is your understanding. This statement should be firm, vaguely disapproving, and virtually impossible to understand. A good standard one is: "It is my understanding that this was to be ascertained in advance of any further action, pending review."

Although that sentence has several problems, its fundamental one is that it starts with "It is," an absolutely empty subject-verb combination. 

This week, as you revise, look for sentences like this:

It is not until Wednesday that the parts will arrive.

Change them to sentences like these:

The parts won't arrive until Wednesday.
The parts will arrive Wednesday.

(Which you choose depends, of course, on whether you're the buyer, complaining, or the supplier, promising.)

Dan Santow, at Word Wise, a blog for public relations professionals, reminds us of a powerful tool for revising your writing: read it aloud. He concludes:

. . . by reading out loud you’ll hear when sentences are meaningless and empty. How many times, after all, have you read a sentence like "We will utilize proprietary methodologies and best practices in order to leverage messaging that breaks through the clutter" and literally not even noticed it? Eyes gloss over (not to mention glaze over) sentences like that. Read it out loud and you’ll notice it, all right, and cringe that you were its author.

This week, after you've drafted something, read it aloud, then start revising.

If a coworker interrupts us while we're writing a letter and asks, "What are you doing?" most of us will answer "Writing a letter."

That answer reveals a focus on the written product, not on its purpose. Such product-focused thinking keeps our writing from being as effective as it could be.

This week, when you start each writing job, take a few seconds to think about your purpose—about what effect you want to have on your reader. This week, if a coworker interrupts your writing and asks what you're doing, be prepared to answer (for example), "I'm trying to get this customer to forgive us for a shipping mistake we made."

In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry provides a helpful question and answer:

Q. What do they mean on the TV weather forecast when they say we are going to have "thundershower activity"?

A. They mean we are not going to have an actual thunderstorm, per se, but we are going to have thundershower activity, which looks very similar to the untrained eye.

This week, as you revise, look for places where your writing includes the equivalent of "thundershower activity." Go for "thunderstorms" instead.

Recently, one of the strongest champions of good writing has been best-selling marketing guru Harry Beckwith. In his book Selling the Invisible he wrote that vague empty pieces of writing "tell your prospects one thing: They say you are willing to waste that person's time. No message can hurt you more."

This week, after you draft each piece of writing, ask yourself, "In what ways am I wasting my readers' time?" Use your answer to help you revise.

As you may know by now, I argue that writing is the chief value-producing activity in this economy.  But that may or may not be true for you.

This week, keep an informal log of the writing you do, and the time you spend on doing it. Track both formal and informal writing, on paper and on screen. Include the time you spend thinking about the writing you have to do, the time you spend planning, the time you spend drafting, and the time you spend revising.

This time next week, analyze the log. How much of your time is spent on writing? How much on planning, drafting, revising? How much on various kinds of written products: notes, e-mail messages, reports? How productive was that time? How could you make it more productive?

Then please post your results as comments on this blog, or send them to me by e-mail--in which case, I'll keep your name confidential.