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It’s official — Wall Street is declaring war on sexism.

By contrast, here is an example of the kind of mumbling first sentence that confronts people in their office reading:

This provides the Argus, Mitchell & Dohn perspective on a consumers'-eye view of the current position and growth potential of Blake’s Tea and Jones’s Tea, the major entries of National Beverages in the English tea market.

The Wall Street Journal is broadly read — beyond business and Wall Street. Readers and editors alike give much of the credit to its readability.

Journal editors have put into practice this simple principle: Short sentences and short paragraphs are easier to read than long ones. And easier to understand.

As for short words, you don’t have to turn your back on the riches and subtleties of the English language. Nobody will excoriate you for using a long word whose precise meaning no shorter word duplicates. But prefer the short word to the long one that means the same thing:

Prefer this… …to this

Now Currently

Start Initiate

Show Indicate

Finish Finalize

Speed up, move along Expedite

Use Utilize

Place, put Position

Reliance on long words, which are often more abstract than common short ones, can be a sign that you have not worked out exactly what you want to say. If you have distilled your thinking to its essence, you will probably be able to express it in simple words.

Here is how George Bernard Shaw, in his days as a music critic, described his startled response to a new work: “I did with my ears what I do with my eyes when I stare.” Once Shaw had figured out what his unusual reaction had been, he was able to describe it in words of one syllable.

Shakespeare expressed the deepest emotion in the simplest words. Says King Lear on the brutal murder of his beloved Fool: “And my poor fool is hang’d. No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou’ll come no more. Never, never, never, never!”

The Reader’s Digest once published an article on the power of short words. The last sentence pointed out, to the surprise of most readers, that no word in the eloquent three-page essay had more than one syllable.

3. Make your writing active — and personal

Good writers choose the active voice over the passive voice whenever possible — and it’s possible most of the time. Active verbs add energy to your writing. That’s why they’re called active.

This simple practice also improves your writing by making it more personal, a human being talking rather than an institution. The passive voice hides who is speaking or taking action; the active voice reveals it.

Passive, impersonal Active, personal

It is recommended We recommend

He should be told Get Alice to tell him

Personal sacrifices are being made, although the degree of participation is not absolutely identifiable. We see people making sacrifices. How many people? We can’t say for sure.

A lot of business writing mumbles along in the passive voice because high school English teachers told us not to start sentences with “I” without the first person singular (preferring “the cookies were eaten by me” to “I ate the cookies.”) But there are plenty of good ways to substitute active for passive verbs.

Here is a typical passive construction — followed by active alternatives.

It is respectfully requested that you send a representative to our conference.

All of us here hope that you’ll send a representative Won’t you please send a representative …

Somebody representing your company would add a lot …

Will you give serious thought to sending a representative?

You can see how much a representative from your company would contribute …

Without a representative from your company, our conference would be a fizzle …

You might protest that these alternatives don’t all say quite the same thing. Exactly so. Yet another advantage of the active voice is that it tends to push you to decide precisely what you want to say, to be more specific.

4. Avoid vague