- Susan Weiner Investment Writing

4 great tips for writing sentences

August 12, 2026/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Joe Moran’s First You Write a Sentence has some great sentences about sentences.

Here’s a sampling of them, sorted by the lesson they suggest.

1. Slow down

Moran writes:

Most of us, when we write, march too quickly on to the next sentence. To write intelligibly is hard enough, so be sure you have done that first. Fix your sights on making one sane, sound, serviceable sentence. As a farmer must do, hold your nerve and resist the impulse to put your energies into cash crops with quick returns. Have the confidence to leave fields fallow, to wait patiently for the grain to grow and to bear with the dry seasons.

What a great analogy with farming!

I don’t recommend pausing after every sentence. After all, too many people struggle to complete a first draft. But, at some point, you should pause to review what you have written. Don’t hesitate to throw it out and start over if it doesn’t work. Your second draft is bound to benefit from the ideas “marinating” in your head.

2. Don’t tax your reader’s memory

“A sentence must stick in the mind. It has to be literally memorable, never so intricate that it cannot be absorbed all at once,” says Moran.

He also says:

The limit of a spoken sentence is the breath capacity of our lungs. The limit of a written one is the memory capacity of our brains. The full stop at the end of a sentence sets the limit. By the time it arrives, you must still be able to recall the sentence’s beginning. If you can’t keep it all in your head, then maybe those words weren’t meant to be together.

“Maybe those words weren’t meant to be together” agrees with my assessment of many complex, long sentences that I read in the fields of investment and wealth management.

I like using the idea of “memory capacity” to explain why many long sentences don’t work. I think that some of my clients might understand that better than my babbling about “too many dependent clauses.”

Complex sentences and paragraphs are also a problem when key information is unintentionally omitted. As Moran says, “A readers should not be asked to do the equivalent of lining up all the screws and dowels and puzzling over the instructions, only to find that the Allen key is missing.” Ooh, there’s another analogy that makes me smile.

3. Give gifts

Moran says that writing should be “an act of generosity, a gift from writer to reader.” So, follow the rules of good gift giving. For starters, “the gift should never feel like more trouble than it is worth.” Moreover, “the gift of knowledge that a sentence brings should never have to be bought, as it often is, with the reader’s boredom or confusion.”

Despite Moran’s suggestions, confusion abounds in many examples of financial writing. That’s no gift.

4. Move up and down the ladder

Moran uses S.I. Hayakawa’s idea of a ladder of abstraction. Concrete nouns like “chair” and “wall” are on the lowest rung. Abstract nouns—nouns like “truth” or “knowledge”—are on the top rung.

Moran says:

Writing stuck on one rung of the ladder of abstraction is too monotone. Arguments that use only abstract nouns, like truth and power and knowledge, are hard to care about because writing that sidesteps the senses is dull. Sentimental or pious writing also leans on abstractions, replacing difficult feelings with consoling simplifications. When words are too general, they paint inadequate pictures. But writing that describes only the feelable things in front of our faces is also dull, because it does not say why those things should matter to someone else. Writing stuck on the ladder’s middle rungs is worst of all, because here sit words with an illusory concreteness. Keep shinning up and down the ladder, though, and the reader gets the gist in different ways. She grasps big ideas through concrete things, and concrete things through big ideas. The tangible ignites the elusive and both of them shine brighter.

Moran himself seems to have a flair for “shinning up and down the ladder.”

I had to return this book to the library before finishing it. I’m definitely re-reserving it. It’s worth reading all the way through.

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.

Make your writing easier with my fill-in-the-blanks approach for structuring articles

July 22, 2026/in blog, white paper, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Smart financial professionals often struggle to convert their ideas into compelling prose, losing readers in the first paragraph.

Photo: Joe Mud

If this sounds like you, you can benefit from my fill-in-the-blanks approach to write your introductory paragraph and structure your article, blog post, or other writing.

Step 1: Identify three keys to your article

This approach depends on your identifying three pieces of information:

1. Your target audience

2. Their problem

3. The solution

Step 2: Write your fill-in-the-blanks intro

To craft a compelling introduction, take the key information from from Step 1 and drop it into the blanks highlighted in yellow in the illustration below.

In other words: Name of target audience struggle with brief description of problem. You can solve this problem with brief description of solution.

Does this structure seem familiar?

It should. I used it in the first paragraph of this blog post. Name of target audience: smart financial professionals. Brief description of problem: struggle to convert their ideas into compelling prose. Brief description of solution: my fill-in-the-blanks approach.

Introducing your topic this way quickly shows your audience that you’re speaking to them and their needs. Plus, they’ve got an incentive to continue reading because you have a solution for their problem.

Step 3: Flesh out the formula in the remainder of your article

You’ve set expectations in your introduction, so follow through in your article. If it’s a brief piece, such as a blog post, dive in to explaining the solution. If it’s a longer piece, such as a white paper, you can first describe your audience and its problem in more detail to show you grasp their challenges. This enhances your credibility.

Updated on July 22, 2026.

Should you hyphenate “fixed income”?

February 17, 2026/in grammar, writing/by website admin

It depends.

There are two schools of thoughts about whether to hyphenate compound adjectives, which is what “fixed income” becomes when you use it as an adjective. It’s the reader-friendly approach vs. common usage.

Reader-friendly

Let’s talk about “fixed income investing.” When you combine an adjective and noun and then use them to describe a second noun, you’re creating a compound adjective.

You’re also making it more difficult for your readers to interpret your text. They’re used to thinking of “income” as a noun, so they may struggle for a moment before they realize that “fixed income” serves as an adjective in “fixed income investing.” Following this line of thought, it’s kinder to your reader to write “fixed-income investing.”

Common usage

Opponents of writing “fixed-income investing” say “fixed income” is so commonly used as an adjective that a hyphen is unnecessary.

Your decision

Grammar Girl says that you should always consider whether a hyphen changes your meaning. As she pointed out in a post that has been removed from her website:

A hot-water bottle is a bottle for holding hot water.
A hot water bottle is a water bottle that is hot.

The Wall Street Journal uses a hyphen when fixed-income is an adjective.

What’s your decision? Is it fixed-income investing or fixed income investing?

Whichever approach you adopt, be consistent in your usage. That will help your readers know what to expect.

NOTE: Updated on Feb. 17, 2026 for a broken link.

Image courtesy of iosphere at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Do your grammar, punctuation, and usage affect your credibility?

January 22, 2026/in grammar, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Does the quality of your writing matter? It looks like it does. When I asked “Does a writer’s grammar, punctuation, or usage errors damage that writer’s credibility in your eyes?”, an amazing 100% of respondents said “yes” in response to the survey on my blog and in my newsletter.

Specifically, they gave the following answers to my multiple-choice question.

0% No, I don’t notice errors
0% No, I don’t care
26% Yes, but I forgive small mistakes, especially in social media posts
74% Yes, they damage the writer’s credibility

I imagine that my readers are more critical than the general population. Still, these numbers should make all of us, including me, pay closer attention to how we write.

Respondent comments on bad writing

As one respondent commented, “Having your reading disrupted by a misspelled word or badly written sentence is like having air suddenly let out of a balloon. It makes me question the writer as well as the content.” Another reader said, “it reflects poorly on the writer and shows lack of attention to detail.” On a similar note, one person wrote, “There’s always that nagging feeling: if they didn’t care enough to proofread this, where else are they cutting corners? I try to be charitable because I too make mistakes, but it really bugs me.”

In their comments, readers showed some tolerance for mistakes. Here’s one example, “To me, it shows the writer is not detailed enough to review their input before hitting ‘go’ – drives me crazy. That being said, I hit the wrong key often when texting and sometimes miss it before sending, so I have a small tolerance for those sort of errors.”

Believe it or not, despite concerns about writing mistakes, I fall into the 26% of people who tolerate small mistakes, especially in social media.

The worst mistakes?

The second question in my survey asked, “What is the worst mistake that writers make? Why is this mistake bad?”

Popular answers included spelling mistakes, mistakenly using “it’s” as the possessive form of “it,” and failing to proofread.

Here are more answers to my question about the worst mistakes:

“It’s a toss-up between thinking they are texting and using texting acronyms and overloading their writing with technical jargon.”

“Writing with very little thought and planning… poor sequencing of ideas, incomplete sentences, stream of consciousness, no clear call to action. When that’s the output, why bother?”

“Since I read almost no fiction–in my job, I don’t have to because what I see and hear no writer could make up–I confine my comment to non-fiction. Embedding numbers inside paragraphs abuses most readers because it asks them to ‘see’ relationships between and among numbers that can be shown much more easily with charts and graphs.”

“Using too many words. I want to get the point, learn the lesson without reading useless words.”

Dave Spaulding on writing mistakes

I’m not the only person raising these questions in the world of investment management. You can read Dave Spaulding’s “Should GIPS verifiers correct grammar? Spelling?”

When Dave sees mistakes, he recommends changes. In his blog post, he says, “On occasion, I’ve discussed this with our clients, and in every case the client has been very clear that they welcome my comments. Most want their materials to be as correct in all respects as possible.” That’s good news.

March 13, 2017 update: The original version of this post linked to my original survey. I updated the post to focus on the survey results, which I’d published in my newsletter.

Jan. 22, 2025: I made minor updates.

Is your free report “complimentary” or “complementary”?

December 17, 2025/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Offering a free report to folks who sign up for your email list is a great marketing technique. However, you risk making a mistake if you substitute a multisyllabic word for “free.”

Look at the example in the image below, which shows a sticker that appeared on a local newspaper. I feel confident the advertisers wanted to push the benefits of a free class. Too bad that’s not what they offered.

“Complementary” doesn’t mean “free.” It addresses the relationship between two or more items. Taking this ad literally, it suggests that if you pay to take a music appreciation class, it will enhance your experience in the other courses, lectures, or seminars offered by the advertiser.

“Complimentary,” meaning “given free or as a favor,” is the word the advertisers needed.

When you offer a report at no cost to your newsletter subscribers, please consider making it “free.” You’ll avoid an embarrassing mistake. Also, the single-syllable “free” is easy for your readers to absorb.

If you must go multisyllabic, please use “complimentary.”

Free help for wordy writers!

September 22, 2025/in writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Wordiness is a curse. Long-winded writing obscures your meaning and scares off readers. However, many writers don’t realize that their writing is dragging on and on.

A free online tool—the Hemingway App—can help you recognize when your sentences are too long. Hemingway highlights sentences that are too long. It also suggests some ways to improve your writing. You could identify long sentences using your word processing software, but Hemingway is easier to use.

I’ll walk you through how to use Hemingway.

Step 1. Drop your text into the middle of the Hemingway page

Entering your text into the Hemingway app is a little more complicated than I expected, but it’s worth the effort. First, click to select all of the colored text in the middle column that starts with “Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear.” Then, hit “delete.” You’ll see a blank space in the middle of your screen.

Next, either type or copy-paste in the text that you’d like to analyze. As soon as you drop in your text, Hemingway will analyze it.

Step 2. Look at Hemingway’s grade level analysis

Look first at Hemingway’s overall rating of your text. The image below says the sample below is written at a grade 17 level. You may think, “Great! My clients are sophisticated, so aiming at a graduate-school level is fine.” Think again. Grade level measures how hard you’re making your reader work. Do you want your readers to struggle or to easily absorb your message?

Direct marketers aim for grade eight. On its home page, Hemingway shows grade seven as “good.” You might be able to hit that level in a personal finance blog post, but it’s too hard for more formal financial communications that discuss technical topics. I figure I’m doing a good job if my client materials hit grade level 10.

Your grade level gives you a “big picture” indication of how hard you should work to simplify your writing.

Step 3. Review Hemingway’s assessment of your sentence length

Hemingway will color code your text according to its wordiness, as you’ll see in the example below. Red means a sentence is “very hard to read” because of length, as in the first sentence in the image below. Yellow isn’t as bad, but it’s also too long, as you can see in the sample paragraph’s second and third sentences.

Step 4. Start simplifying

Hemingway also uses highlighting to suggest some simple fixes by using fewer adverbs and simpler words or eliminating the passive voice.

Hemingway’s suggestions are just a starting point. Complex sentences require a re-thinking of the content. That’s what it took for me to go from the sample paragraph in Step 2 to my rewrite below:

Prices of riskier investments rose in response to recent proposals by German and French leaders, but we are skeptical that this will continue. Investors seem to believe that the proposals will strengthen the euro zone by capping bond yields. This would make euro-zone bonds more attractive to private investors. However, success would require the European Central Bank (ECB) to use strong language or to boost its daily purchases of the troubled countries’ debt by at least €5 billion. To convince distrustful investors will require strong action. That may be more than the ECB can achieve.

If you’d like to learn more about shortening and simplifying your complex sentences, check out my publications and my presentations for do-it-yourself tips. I also edit materials, typically for larger firms with bigger budgets.

NOTE: This post originally was published in 2014, but was republished because it remains relevant today.

JULY NEWSLETTER: Creating content for an AI world

July 1, 2025/in newsletter, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Creating content for an AI world

Traditional content is less successful in a world increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Your potential customers are relying less on traditional search engines. “Because content discovery mechanisms that marketers have relied on for decades are being fundamentally disrupted. Users are bypassing the entire traditional search ecosystem and instead asking AI for answers directly,” according to “The Future of Content(ly)” on Contently’s The Content Strategist blog.

To combat this, Google Search Central suggests that you “Focus on making unique, non-commodity content that visitors from Search and your own readers will find helpful and satisfying. Then you’re on the right path for success with our AI search experiences, where users are asking longer and more specific questions — as well as follow-up questions to dig even deeper.” It also suggests that you assess your content using Google’s criteria in “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.”

Streamline your content for greater impact!

Writing that’s less wordy is more powerful.

I have some suggestions on how to cut your word count. One tip is to substitute simple words for phrases. For example, “building my knowledge” becomes “learning.” “In advance of” becomes “before.”

Learn more in “8 ways to cut word count and boost your impact!”

Neurosurgery in 19th-century Japan

Having lived in Japan and earned a Ph.D. in Japanese history, I enjoy watching Japanese-language shows on Netflix.

Here are some subtitled shows that I like:

Jin—A modern-day neurosurgeon time-travels to the period just before the 1868 Meiji Restoration. He meets some real-life historical characters, such as Sakamoto Ryoma.
The Family—A zaibatsu family’s son and father disagree about the company’s future.
Dr. Coto’s Clinic—A doctor moves from Tokyo to a clinic on an isolated island.
Inheritance Detective—A former lawyer helps clients resolve inheritance issues.

Pan-fried chickpea patties

These chickpea patties from the Well Seasoned Studio blog are delicious! I’ve been trying a lot of dried bean recipes as I get rid of old pantry staples.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

Quit underlining headings in your documents!

May 20, 2025/in white paper, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Underlining headings in your written documents used to be common. That’s no longer true, especially because underlined text now leads people to expect hyperlinks.

Underlining headings dates back to the days of typewriters. As Practical Typography says,

Underlining is another dreary typewriter habit. Typewriters had no bold or italic styling. So the only way to emphasize text was to back up the carriage and type underscores beneath the text. It was a workaround for shortcomings in typewriter technology.

Please stop underlining headings, unless you want to prove that you’re old-fashioned.

Old vs. new style of headings

Sample 1

This is what headings and text sometimes looked like in the old days:

Heading

This is the text under the heading.

Sample 2

Here’s an easy, more modern style of heading:

Heading

This is the text under the heading.

When you compare Sample 1 with Sample 2, which makes it easier for you to focus on the heading? It’s Sample 2.

That ease is important in encouraging readers to skim—rather than abandon—your content. That’s important now that everyone’s attention spans have shortened. If they continue skimming, perhaps they’ll find a heading that tempts them to dig into the details of what you’ve written.

Use heading styles built into your software

If you only have one level of headings in your document, it’s easy to make them all bold. But what if you have different levels of headings? You’re most likely to need multiple levels in a long document like a white paper.

Different heading styles are built into many types of software.

For example, here is one style you can find in Microsoft Word’s ribbon:

Here’s what these styles might look like in a document:

You can learn more about using styles in Microsoft Word on Microsoft’s help page, starting with “Show or hide the ribbon in Office.” (Depending on your version of Word, your steps to find and apply headings may differ.)

Styles can get pretty fancy, but I tend to stick with the basics. I prefer to devote more time to writing than design.

Microsoft Office isn’t the only software with different styles for headings. You’ll also find them in WordPress. Here’s an explanation of headings in WordPress.

MAY NEWSLETTER: AI prompts for content marketing

May 6, 2025/in blog, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

AI prompts for content marketers

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in content marketing is increasing. I’m not a big fan of AI, but I realize that it can be useful.

If you’d like to experiment with AI in your content marketing, check out Andy Crestodina’s “The Prompt Library Starter Kit,” recommended by my fabulous copywriter friend Robyn Bradley.

Crestodina covers topics such as “personal generation using AI,” “audience research,” “content marketing mission statement and CTA,” and much more.

Check it out!

When the going gets tough

A friend shared the following “Four things to tell yourself when the going gets tough”:

This has happened before
Failure is the path to success
This won’t matter nearly as much in five years
I live according to my values

She said it came from Inc. magazine, but I can’t find the original article. I did, however, find a related article: “5 Ways to Stay Positive When the Going Gets Tough.”

Do you know when your article is finished?

The following line by novelist Hilary Mantel caught my eye because it speaks to the difficulty of knowing when you should stop rewriting or editing your work: “…unfortunately, for writers, there’s no intellectual equivalent of the sexual climax; they don’t always know when they’ve finished.”

The line appears in Mantel’s A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing, a collection of essays. Some of her essays were quite interesting, but I skipped over many others.

Microsoft Word shortcuts

I found this list of Microsoft Word shortcuts on LinkedIn. It covers shortcuts for text and formatting, navigation and editing, and document management, plus some shortcuts it deems “lawyer-specific” that might still benefit the rest of us.

So at the start of a sentence

When you start a sentence with “so,” must you follow it with a comma? There are two schools of thought, as I explain in this post.

What the heck’s a “manicule”?

If you know or care about the answer to my questions about the manicule, read “The Secret History of the Manicule, the Little Hand that’s Everywhere.” I must thank Wendy Cook, another fabulous friend, for this link.

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).

APRIL NEWSLETTER: Help for identifying best practices

April 1, 2025/in newsletter, writing/by Susan Weiner, CFA

Everyone wants to use best practices. But how do you identify the best practices for your situation?

Tom Brakke of The Investment Ecosystem blog shares a simple exercise that you can do. In “Common Practices, Best Practices, and Next Practices,” he suggests that you ask, “How would you describe what you do in comparison to the standards that are prevalent across the industry in like positions and situations?”

You can organize your responses into three columns:

Common practices
Best practices
Next practices

I like the simplicity of the three columns.

I also like the idea of striving for “next practices.” Brakke says,

Innovative organizations are constantly working to improve their methods. Identifying next practices and working toward them (while knowing that some won’t come to fruition) is part of their DNA.

Brakke publishes free e-newsletters so you can receive his ideas in your inbox.

Mice or mouses?

What do you call more than one computer mouse? Read “Computer mice or mouses? It’s a case of irregular plurals” for some expert opinions.

For my part, I’ll continue to try to avoid referring to the plural of this device.

Protect your personal data from Meta

Want to limit the ability of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to monetize your data? The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers practical advice in “Mad at Meta? Don’t Let Them Collect and Monetize Your Personal Data.”

Egg substitutes for baking

If you’re interested in working around high egg prices, check out “No eggs? Here’s your guide for substituting” on the King Arthur Baking website. I’ve had good luck using “flax eggs” in pancakes and banana bread.

My best tip for improving your investment commentary

If you’re frustrated by your lack of results from publishing your investment commentary, read “My best tip for improving your investment commentary.”

What my clients say about me

“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”

“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”

“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”

Improve your investment commentary

Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.

Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.

Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Email me to buy it now!

Boost your blogging now!

Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).