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Subtracting Numbers,
  Scrubbing Laundry Lists     Return to Views Directory Page
I just completed a script for a client who manages a network of large storage facilities that each year ship millions of items all over the world.  The objective was to highlight what each facility does, how well it does it, and how enormous the scale of the overall operation is.  The research information I received included lots of facts and figures: square footages, linear footages, numbers of items, descriptions of items, daily and annual shipping volumes ... laundry lists.

One of the first rules for writing words of mouth is: eschew lists.  Audiences glaze over at litanies of details and numbers, especially numbers.  They can't absorb them.  A reader can skip over a paragraph full of numbers or descriptive details, then come back to it if necessary.  The viewer of a video or the listener to a speech cannot. In speeches and videos, audiences want broad brush strokes: images, few words, fewer numbers.

So what does the writer do with numbers and laundry lists?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Eliminate them all.  Write a first draft with no numbers and no lists.  You can always go back and add a number here or a detail there, if clarity demands it.
  
• Choose for impact.  Some numbers ("Our employees package and ship more than two million items each month") are more dramatic than others ("The computer system tracks the inventory of 243,000 items assigned locations along 76,700 linear feet of storage racks").  Some short lists are interesting ("Our Northwest facility ships items ranging from power tools and toy animals to steel beams and fresh flowers"); others are not ("In the lower bins are nuts, bolts, washers, clips and other types of fasteners").  Use the ones that add impact, insight, contrast or humor, and use them sparingly.
  

• Convert numbers to their Common Human Denominator.  Some numbers that are dull or overwhelming in one form are more interesting or comprehensible in another:
  
          "The storage racks in this facility rise to the height
                  of seventy-six feet."
                          vs.
          "These storage racks are more than seven stories tall."
  
          "This Colorado facility encloses 872,660 square feet
                  of floor space."
                           vs.
          "Here in Colorado we have more than 20 acres
                  of storage under one roof."
  
  In both examples, the numbers are more accessible when converted to a "common human denominator"--a form that most people can better understand and visualize.

• Convert numbers and details into images.  Often it is not the numbers or the laundry lists themselves that are necessary to the speech or the script; it is what the numbers or laundry lists say about the central message.  When that is true, converting figures and details into images usually achieves the objective more effectively.
  
          "Total corporate storage space is 67 million square feet."
                              becomes
          "Together, our warehouses have enough floor space
              to accommodate 399 modern aircraft carriers."
  
          "This facility is more than 600 yards long and covers
              more than 775,000 square feet."
                               becomes
           "This facility is longer than the Queen Mary and
              covers more area than the Rose Bowl."
  
  A laundry list of products or parts becomes, in a video, a briskly paced montage without the narrator naming everything we're seeing.

What do you do with all those scrubbed facts and subtracted figures?  Don't waste them.  Suggest that the client print them in a handout to accompany the speech or the video, for those who want to know more.

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