After you’ve drafted your message, what do you do? If you’re like most writers, you read it over, check for typos, and send it on its way.

Instead of this hit-or-miss approach to revising, I recommend you review your copy more systematically by using five techniques of style:

Make every word count. As Strunk and White advise in their classic little book, The Elements of Style, “Omit needless words.” The foundation of a good style is economy of language. Change until such time as to until. Change during the course of to during.

Prefer action verbs to nouns. Check your draft for nominalizations, or verbs made into nouns, and change them back to verbs. Change “It’s important for you to make a connection with your audience” to “It’s important for you to connect with your audience.” Change “Please take under consideration my proposal” to “Please consider my proposal.”

Don’t trust modifiers. Both Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway offered this advice. They didn’t say don’t use modifiers; they said use them carefully. They’re the trickiest part of speech to use well. Change end result to result, general consensus to consensus, terrible tragedy to tragedy, and personal opinion to opinion.

Trim sentence endings to create emphasis. To take advantage of the natural stress point at the ending of each sentence, trim excess words. Change “We need to respond to the complaints that are occurring” to “We need to respond to these complaints.” Change “Let’s listen to the ideas our customers are offering to us” to “Let’s listen to our customers’ ideas.”

Take advantage of opening prominence. Sometimes the wording can be rearranged to take advantage of opening emphasis. Change “She blamed her colleague once again for the error” to “Once again she blamed her colleague for the error.” Change “Customer service is even more important” to “Even more important is customer service.”

Obviously, these applying these five techniques improves the writing in the examples above, but how much of a difference do they make in an actual message? Compare the following passages:

“The end result of disregarding our shareholders’ concerns may be disastrous in nature. In the event that you are unable to attend the meeting, please put in a call to me. It is my recommendation that we have a good discussion of the changes that have taken place recently, take under consideration their financial implications, and undertake a study of the possible harm they might do to future sales. We need to take action in with all due alacrity given the volatility of the marketplace that we are presently experiencing. Our shareholders as always deserve the utmost accountability.”

“The result of disregarding our shareholders’ concerns may be disastrous. If you are unable to attend the meeting, please call me. I recommend we discuss the recent changes, consider their financial implications, and study how they might harm future sales. Given the volatile marketplace, we need to act quickly. As always, our shareholders deserve accountability.”