Avoid Cliches By Hook or By Crook

Whether a newsletter or the latest page-turner topping the bestseller charts, people prefer reading something fresh and inventive. In Patricia O'Conner's grammar guide for the grammarphobic, "Woe Is I," the author writes: "Tallulah Bankhead once described herself as 'pure as the driven slush.' And bankruptcy has been called 'a fate worse than debt.' We smile at expressions like these because we're braced for the numbing cliché that fails to arrive."

Writers of newsletter articles face additional obstacles with industry-specific jargon that tends to pepper the prose of corporate communications. Which is fine if you're writing to other like-minded eggheads in a story that's all "wires and pliers," but sometimes newsletters target readers of all experience levels and even of different industries.

Newsletters often serve specific business purposes, but they can and should still be "good reads." Keeping the "moving forwards," "value-addeds," and "ramping-ups" to a minimum will freshen up your copy and pay a compliment to the intelligence of your readers. Although it's difficult, try to imagine new ways to say the things your boss has been telling you for years.

Keep Your Paragraphs Short and Don’t Overstate Your Point

If you break up a single paragraph, say, 11 lines long into approximately three separate paragraphs, the chunk of text won’t look so impassable when the reader gives it his or her first quick glance (and it will be quick, so don’t scare them away by making it look like they need the mental readiness for “War and Peace”).

While you want your paragraphs short and sweet, they also most flow nicely into one another. If you express a simple idea in one paragraph, as well as one thought per sentence, there is no need to find alternate ways to say the same thing. A common practice is to make a point then restate it in someone else’s words. In a newsletter, space is tight, your writing should be, too.