Lessons on Clarity and Brevity from a Student Writing Competition

The writing competition at the International Conference 2018 asked undergraduate students to respond to a prompt in under 800 words, with submissions judged by a panel of editors and business communicators. What set the strongest entries apart was not flair or ambition, but the discipline of saying what they meant in as few words as possible. The judging panel repeatedly flagged the same habits in shortlisted drafts: throat-clearing openings, redundant qualifiers, and paragraphs that wandered before landing a point.

For students from Australian universities, where assessment rubrics often reward nuance and theoretical scaffolding, the competition felt like a different sport. The prompts demanded crisp argument, not breadth. Curated essayists accustomed to layering ideas for a tutor discovered that executive readers operate under different incentives. They scan, they decide, and they move on.

The lessons drawn from the final round go well beyond the writing room. They speak to anyone preparing a pitch email to a senior leader, drafting a policy submission, or summarising a research project for a non-specialist audience. Clarity and brevity, the judges insisted, are not stylistic luxuries. They are how respect for the reader's time is signalled.

What the judges actually looked for

Across more than 400 submissions, the panel met weekly to compare notes, and a consistent shortlist of criteria emerged. Entries needed a clear thesis in the first three sentences, evidence that earned its place, and a conclusion that did not simply restate the introduction. Anything ornamental risked being cut, and anything vague was marked down regardless of how sophisticated the underlying thinking seemed.

The judges were also surprisingly attentive to the rhythm of sentences. Long, multi-clause constructions were flagged for revision even when their meaning was technically correct. Short sentences, used sparingly, signalled confidence. The pattern echoed a principle the conference emphasised in its broader programming: future leaders will not be judged by how much they say, but by how precisely they say it.

A common mistake among Australian entrants was assuming that local references and idiom needed translation or padding for an international audience. The opposite proved true. References to campus life, the cost-of-living pressures facing students in Sydney or Melbourne, or the cadence of a regional newspaper's editorial style, landed cleanly. Familiarity, when stated plainly, travels.

Research is the quiet engine of clarity

Many entrants arrived with strong opinions and thin evidence. The strongest submissions, by contrast, did their homework before they drafted a single sentence. They named specific speakers, programmes, and policy proposals, then quoted or paraphrased them accurately. Vague gestures at "industry trends" or "research suggests" were the easiest cuts on the judging sheet.

The same instinct that drives someone to research speakers before approaching them applies to writing. Curiosity precedes clarity. When an author knows the terrain, the prose tightens automatically because there is less hedging to do. Unfamiliarity shows up as qualifiers, throat-clearing, and the kind of cautious language that signals the writer is not sure of their ground.

This is good news for students who worry they lack a "natural" writing voice. A well-researched draft reads with authority even when its author is still finding their feet. The discipline of preparation removes the need for verbal padding. Students who spent an extra hour with primary sources before writing produced drafts that needed two fewer rounds of revision.

Brevity is not the same as bluntness

Short writing is not the same as curt writing. The competition winners trimmed words without trimming meaning, and they did it by recognising which phrases earned their place. Filler adjectives, abstract nouns, and the connective tissue of academic writing all came under the knife.

Habits that stripped a fifth off every word count

The result was prose that felt generous rather than stripped. Readers could tell the author had chosen each sentence rather than assembled it. Brevity, properly understood, is an act of care. It says to the reader: I have considered your time, and I have done the work so you do not have to.

Australian entrants sometimes worried their natural directness read as too informal for an international business audience. The competition results suggested otherwise. Plain language, used with precision, outperformed florid alternatives. A draft from a Monash student that opened with a plain statement of fact landed further up the shortlist than several entries that opened with abstract framing. There is no need to drop the local accent, only the academic scaffolding.

Voice choices that sharpen the message

The active voice came up again and again in the judges' notes. Passive constructions were not banned, but they were flagged wherever they softened responsibility or buried the actor. "The proposal was rejected" reads as bureaucratic. "The committee rejected the proposal" reads as a sentence a human wrote.

This preference for active voice is not about style alone. It is about accountability, which sits at the heart of executive communication. Leaders want to know who decided what, when, and why. Writing that mirrors that directness trains the writer to think the same way, and helps readers across a Brisbane boardroom or a Singapore headquarters arrive at the same conclusion without translation.

The competition also surfaced an unexpected lesson about rhythm. Mixing sentence types created momentum. A short declarative sentence after two longer ones gave the reader a moment to breathe and a point to remember. Entrants who varied their cadence earned higher marks than those who kept every sentence at the same length. The technique is old, but it remains underused in student writing.

Structure helps skimmers and careful readers alike

Most readers at the conference, including the executives who attended the keynotes, were scanning rather than reading from top to bottom. The strongest competition entries mirrored that reality. They used short opening paragraphs, clear signposting, and subheadings where the format permitted. They put the conclusion near the top when the prompt allowed it, and they let the structure do some of the persuasion.

Layout moves that improved skim-readability

The lesson travels well into workplace writing. The same principles apply to a board update, a project brief, or a message to a senior leader. The reader will not award points for effort. They will award points for how quickly they understood the point.

Australian voices in a global room

A surprising thread in the judges' notes was the success of entries that wrote from a recognisably Australian perspective. Short pieces that referenced the gig economy in Sydney's inner west, or the experience of regional students commuting to a metro campus, scored highly without explanation. The trick was stating the local detail as fact rather than apologising for it.

Part of this is the Australian habit of plain speech. Part of it is the country's longstanding suspicion of corporate waffle. The competition rewarded that instinct rather than punishing it, and it suggested that executives from any background respond to writing that respects them enough to skip the preamble.

The lesson for students and early-career writers is to keep their voice, then sharpen it. A draft that sounds like the author on a good day, edited for precision, will usually outperform one that has been flattened into international-style committee prose. Trust the reader to do some of the work. They will reward you for it.

Carrying these lessons into the next brief

The conference's writing competition has now closed, but its judging notes remain useful long after the event. Clarity and brevity are practices built one sentence at a time, and they improve with deliberate effort rather than innate talent. The strongest entrants were not the most literary writers in the room. They were the most prepared and the most willing to cut their darlings.

For anyone drafting a pitch, an essay, or an email to a stranger this week, the practical test is simple. Read the draft aloud. Circle every word that does not earn its place. Cut the ones that do not survive that test, then send it. The discipline of brevity, like the discipline of research, compounds quietly across every document you write.