Do you remember being asked to write a persuasion essay when you were in school? Have you ever been asked to give a speech, written a page of a website, or participated in a meeting? Ever write a sales letter or product review? Have you ever feared you would lose your audience?

For many centuries, certain basic principles of communication have been recognized as ideals or rules of thumb. Or from your audience's point of view, there are certain ways to reduce the chances of losing them.

(1) First place probably belongs to unity. It isn't that getting five topics across in five minutes is wrong. Sometimes life requires that you do. But if you say one thing at a time, the one thing carries more punch. It is more memorable ... easier to for your audience to digest or follow ... more developed ... more persuasive ... than if you digress, introduce unrelated topics, jump around into different contexts.

Of course, saying one thing at a time does not necessarily mean repeating oneself. Repetition has its place, but overuse can annoy or lose your reader or listener.

(2) Normally, several specific points can all follow under one heading, one topic, one umbrella category. The trick then is to connect the specifics not only to the one unifying theme, but also to each other in sequence. You can lose your audience when the specifics don't connect.

For the sake of your audience, your logic and argument should flow. It should cohere. The links should connect in a chain. This is the second communication principle.

(3) The third may be phrased as the aphorism, "Brevity is the soul of wit." If you can say something with fifteen words or five, chose five. Don't make your audience wade through unnecessary verbiage. Lord Chesterfield wrote, "I am sorry I wrote you a five page letter. I hadn't time to write you a one page letter." The reader may leave on page three (especially on the web).

Of course, length alone does not imply that a speech or piece of writing has too many words. Some things require a lot of words to get across properly. If too short, a speech or piece of writing will fail to communicate what is necessary. Being concise is about using the fewest words needed, not the fewest words period.

So say one thing, make your argument coherent, and be concise. These are not the only principles needed to get through to your audience, but they are important and related enough to consider altogether at one time.