Eliminate the ‘tough times’ from your writing

One person lamented that during NPR’s Sunday morning arts hour on April 4, phrases like those were used seven times in just two minutes. The result? She turned off the radio.

Consider that when you write internal communications, external news releases, marketing material and even Tweets. That we are in “tough times” is now a given and easy to edit out.

Earlier this week, I was assisting an organization by editing a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs). And every one of their six scripts included those phrases. Removing them was easy. The substance of the PSAs was unchanged but the now overused and trite phraseology, which could distract listeners, was gone.

This: “In these challenging times, friends, neighbors and people in our community need our help.”