Clarity
One idea per sentence
Stop three ideas arriving joined together as one unreadable sentence.
The problem it addresses
Most jumbled speech is not complicated thinking. It is three ideas joined by and, which, and because.
The shape
- One idea
- Full stop
- Next idea
Why that order
A listener parses a sentence at a time. Two ideas in one sentence means one of them is heard as a subordinate detail of the other, and it is rarely the one you meant.
How to run it
- Say the idea.
- Stop.
- Say the next one.
- Where you were about to say which, or and, or because, consider a full stop instead.
A worked example
We are behind on testing. The main cause is the vendor. The release may move. I wanted to flag it early.
You have it right when
Somebody could take notes at your speed.
What usually goes wrong
Chopping every sentence to five words, which reads as a telegram. The rule is one idea, not one clause.
Practise it
Knowing the shape is about ten minutes of work. Running it while somebody senior is looking at you is a different thing, and that is what these are for.
The earlier glossary named this the single highest yield rule on the page, and nothing in the larger library has displaced it.
A framework tells you what shape the answer takes. It cannot tell you whether shape is what you are short of, and for most people it is not. Which one is yours, and whether a framework is the right instrument at all, is what a Discovery Call is for.
Take the AssessmentOr read the whole glossary first.