"Cut half away and edit the other half."

That was Astrid Lindgren's advice to children's book authors.

It is also good advice if you need to convince a foundation or explain your research to someone who is unfamiliar with your field of research.

Because you can count on your reader being busy. Your application, article, column and all other texts are in fierce competition with other applications, other articles, emails, Teams, LinkedIn and many other attention-demanding elements in our everyday lives.

It is therefore more important than ever that your language does not hinder understanding.

Below you can see examples of how strategic linguistic techniques can make a professional text easier to read.

Fund application

Before

FUNDING APPLICATION

1 The project's output is a strengthening of the volunteers' skills in conflict management and conversation techniques.

After

The goal is that we equip volunteers for the difficult conversations so that everyone feels heard.

FUNDING APPLICATION

2

The project aims to develop and test new pedagogical methods and didactic approaches that can strengthen teaching quality and support differentiated teaching in order to meet the different learning needs and prerequisites of the heterogeneous student group.

RESEARCH DISSEMINATION

3 Chronic psychosocial stress exposure was significantly associated with elevated plasma levels of inflammatory biomarkers and increased incidence of major cardiovascular events in a prospective cohort study.

Our classrooms are filled with students with very different backgrounds. This is a strength, but also a daily challenge for teachers.

In this project, 45 teachers at two schools are testing concrete methods for differentiated teaching. The goal is that more students learn more, regardless of their starting point.

A large new study shows that prolonged stress increases inflammation in the body and the risk of heart attack.

RESEARCH DISSEMINATION

4 Moderate-to-high-intensity aerobic exercise three times a week over twelve weeks induced measurable volumetric expansion of the hippocampus as well as improved performance on cognitive tests of executive function and episodic memory in older adults with mild cognitive impairment

The study showed that older adults with incipient memory problems performed significantly better in cognitive tests when they exercised three times a week.

Brain scans also showed that the brain's memory center, the hippocampus, had grown after twelve weeks of training.