I want to build on the window pane and waste no time principles and add to the box of your writing tools to introduce the concept of voice. Crafting your writing voice breaks down into two simple ideas. One, don't sound smart, be smart, which we'll cover in this video. And, two, own your ideas, which we'll cover in the next video. When we talk about voice, we're talking about tone. I want to address tone early in our course, because many of you have already heard about it from other writing classes that you may have taken. I want to address it here, before we get too far, because I want to correct some common perceptions about tone. The main way that writing teachers deal with tone is to talk about audience, because the two go hand in hand. You need to have the appropriate tone for the audience you want to reach. That concept's easy. It makes sense. The problem that I have is that a lot of writing teachers speak as if you have a lot of different audiences. This implies, then, that you need to understand each kind of audience that you're writing to before you can actually start writing. That sounds like a lot of work. So my advice is, let's not do it. Why? Because we already know our audience and there's only one of them. They're busy. They have no time. The want a reading experience that's efficient and doesn't waste their time. Once we know that, we can achieve a proper tone with the same techniques, no matter what kind of document we're writing. When we understand that our motivation is always clarity and always to waste no time, then we also understand that our goal with our tone isn't to sound smart, it's to be smart. These are two completely different concepts, and when a writer writes to sound smart, they fail, because complexity detracts from your goal. Let me say that again. Complexity detracts from your goal. Complexity is like a maze on a page. You don't want your audience to feel like they're trapped in an Escher drawing when they read your writing. It takes more time and effort to read a complex sentence. In fact, you don't read a complex sentence, you decipher it, you have to work at it, and like a dirty window pane, complex writing hides your ideas from view. Remember, we want our writing to be transparent, we want our readers to see through the words on the page without even thinking about them. To put it in another way, we don't want our readers to have to do any extra work. Choosing sentence structure or fancy vocabulary so that you sound smart actually does just the opposite. Your document becomes about your writing instead of about your ideas. Take this sentence, for example. In order to enhance our investment in maximizing our systems without the encumbrance of onerous costs, it's incumbent upon us to maximize our profitability. [LAUGH] That's someone trying to sound smart, but do they? No, they don't. And I have to tell you something. I get really annoyed when I have to read writing like this. Why? Because I know the writer did not take any time to make my experience better. In fact, their writing is all about them. It's not about me, their audience. No promotion for that guy. Instead of that maze of words, isn't it much better to say in order to invest in new systems, we need to increase our profitability. [LAUGH] Of course it is. So just be smart. Say what you mean, simply and directly. And be the authority when you write. >> It's exactly the same in graphic design. In my course, we'll talk about the importance of designing with authority and confidence, so that we're not simply adding things to the page, or to our designs to make them look finished. We know when to stop. That's what good design is all about. It's exactly the same as in writing. [SOUND] >> In modules three and four, we'll learn that good writers use the rules of grammar and good organization to write with simplicity that lets their ideas really shine. For the time being, just remember, you don't want to write to sound smart. Keep things easy for your reader. Present your ideas with simplicity and clarity, and just be smart. You are smart, be who you are. That's who your reader wants to see, and that's what you want to showcase when you write.