Writing

How to Read the AP Stylebook

January 21, 2026 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

How to Read the AP Stylebook---Loo Literature The AP Stylebook is not a book to be conquered, nor is The World Almanac and Book of Facts. They are tools, not tomes. They exist to be consulted, scanned, and revisited. Treating them like novels to be read from cover to cover is a category error.

The task is not memorization; it is orientation. Success lies in knowing what is inside and where to find it. Think of these volumes as companions. Keep them close and dip into them often. Call it “loo literature” if you like—the practice of using idle moments to absorb their contents in small, concentrated bursts.

This method builds familiarity. Repetition creates a mental map of the book’s architecture. Over time, the intimidating mass of rules and facts becomes terrain you can navigate with ease.

Scanning beats slogging. Let your eyes wander and stop when something catches your attention: a curious rule in The AP Stylebook, a surprising statistic in the Almanac, or a detail that makes you pause. Those moments of discovery stick, eventually becoming landmarks in your memory.

Other reference works reward the same approach. Consider dictionaries of quotations, encyclopedias of political history, or guides to parliamentary procedure. None demand mastery, yet all reward repeated, low-pressure encounters.

Idea for Impact: Do not cram. Do not memorize. Familiarize, familiarize, familiarize. That steady discipline turns The AP Stylebook, The World Almanac, and their kin from daunting bricks into trusted allies.

Most Writing Is Bad Because It Doesn’t Know Why It Exists

July 10, 2025 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Most Writing Is Bad Because It Doesn't Know Why It Exists Ask anyone who has ever written something that actually worked—a punchy social post, a compelling blog entry, a persuasive ad, or even a user manual that finally made sense—and they’ll tell you: it didn’t begin with confidence or inspiration. It started with motive. Real motive. Before the first sentence hit the page, there was already a reason burning behind it. Writing wasn’t a search for clarity. It was the final execution of it.

In college editing classes, students are often introduced to the concept of exigence in rhetorical theory. This aligns perfectly with the idea that strong writing needs two things: a clear thesis and a compelling motive. While the thesis is usually straightforward, the motive—that deeper reason the piece truly deserves to exist—often leaves students blank. Ask why they wrote a particular essay, and the most common answer is, “Because it was assigned.”

That’s not a motive. That’s compliance. And it’s exactly why so much writing feels hollow. The form may be polished, but the pulse is missing.

Writing without motive is like swinging a sword at fog. There’s motion, but no impact.

What readers truly want to know is this: What gripped the writer’s mind hard enough to make them sit down and wrestle with a blank page rather than scroll TikTok or eat cereal straight from the box? Why this topic, and why now?

Idea for Impact: If a writer can answer that—whether it’s obsession, frustration, or a question that won’t let go—the piece gains traction. The spark becomes visible. And maybe, just maybe, the reader will feel it too.

New Rules of Language for the Digitally Baffled: Summary of Gretchen McCulloch’s ‘Because Internet’

November 4, 2024 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (2019,) Canadian linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the ever-evolving dynamics of language in the digital age. She explains numerous quirky details about how people type in text messages—those oddities you’ve probably noticed but never really understood.

The shift toward brevity and the informal nature of online communication have reshaped the way we interact, often giving the impression of a decline in linguistic standards—much to the frustration of prescriptivists who cling to traditional language rules.

Internet writing is a distinct genre with its own goals, and to accomplish those goals successfully requires a subtly tuned awareness of the full spectrum of the language. … Language is a thing that lives in the minds of individual humans at individual points in time, a thing that can’t be fully encompassed in a static list of uses like a game of chess.

McCulloch presents an engaging analysis of how new words, phrases, and slang continue to emerge and spread globally at an unprecedented rate, driven largely by social media. Rather than lamenting the habits of “kids these days,” she embraces the evolution of modern language, encouraging a fresh appreciation for the quirky, unpredictable, and often amusing ways we now communicate online.

Throughout the book, McCulloch uncovers the curious nuances of texting—subtle details you’ve likely noticed but never fully understood. As an exercise in descriptivism, the book provides keen insights into the fluid nature of language in the digital age: why sparkly tildes became shorthand for sarcasm, how emojis are replacing words, and the linguistic significance of internet dialects like doge, lolspeak, and snek. You’ll also learn why your teenager replies “LOL” when nothing funny was said.

Now more than ever in history, communication extends beyond mere words; it’s about how we connect. It’s a game of linguistic dodgeball, filled with fast, cryptic slang, witty retorts that often mean the opposite of what they say, and so much brevity that half the message gets lost. You’re never quite sure if someone’s complimenting you or subtly roasting you!

Read Because Internet if you’re a writer, reader, social media user, or just someone who enjoys a good language deep dive. This sharp and witty blend of humor and analysis will have you second-guessing every text, status update, and tweet you’ve ever sent—often revealing more about yourself than you realized! It’s the perfect guide for anyone eager to stay “in the know” and navigate the ever-shifting, often bewildering language of social media culture.

Curate Wisely: Navigating Book Overload

September 12, 2024 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Curate Wisely: Navigating Book Overload Most books are trash—seriously. Most could be condensed into booklets, booklets into essays, essays into articles, articles into paragraphs, and paragraphs into tweets.

To handle the avalanche of books published each year, get picky—grab the ones that really speak to you, match your vibe, and have solid recommendations. Don’t trust those internet best-seller lists; they can be manipulated through “leapfrogging.”

When you crack open a new book, start with the intro. It sets the stage, tells you what to expect, and usually gives examples. Check out the table of contents and scan through a few sample chapters to see if it’s your jam before committing to a full read.

Also, consider old favorites—they stick with you better after a few rounds. Trust me; it takes a few passes to really get those ideas to sink in.

Why Amazon Banned PowerPoint

December 23, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of the distinctive features of the Amazon management system is its use of the long-form to facilitate decision-making. Jeff Bezos has claimed that banning PowerPoint presentations—more specifically disallowing bullet points for sharing ideas—as Amazon’s “probably the smartest thing we ever did.”

Since June 2004, Bezos has forbidden bullet points and PowerPoint at a senior leadership level. Instead of presentations, teams are expected to iterate an approach to sharing information that involves writing memos of running copy, usually a “six-page, narratively-structured memo.” Meetings typically begin in silence as all participants sit and read the memo for up to half an hour before discussing the subject matter.

Ram Charan and Julia Yang’s The Amazon Management System (2019) reproduces the original email from Bezos explaining this dictum:

Well-structured, narrative text is what we’re after, rather than just text. If someone builds a list of bullet points in Word, that would be just as bad as PowerPoint.

The reason writing a good four-page memo is harder than ‘writing’ a 20-page PowerPoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what’s more important than what, and how things are related.

PowerPoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the interconnectedness of ideas.

Using memos may seem counterintuitive in an age when communication is increasingly visual. However, long-form has a way of forcing rigor to think through ideas properly, reconcile viewpoints pro and con, iron out logical inconsistencies, and consider second-order consequences.

Bezos’s approach is brilliant not just because sentences and paragraphs enable a certain clarity in thought and exchange of ideas. It also inhibits some of the usual shortcomings of brainstorming meetings, viz., interruptions, biases that initiate groupthink, and the tendency to reward rhetorical ability over substance. Forcing all meeting attendees to read the memo in real-time prevents them from pretending to have read it before a meeting and then bluffing their way through the meeting.

Idea for Impact: Think complex, speak simple, decide better.

Bullet points and “decks” are often the least effective way of sharing ideas. Having a narrative structure allows you to clarify your thinking and provide a logical, sequenced argument to support your ideas.

The More You Write, The Better You Become

September 13, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Good writing is hard. No matter how much you practice, writing rarely seems to get easier.

The following guidelines are some of the most basic writing advice around, but they’re often overlooked.

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. Keep reminding yourself whom you’re writing for. Tailor your message for this audience.
Write from a plan. Write toward an ending. If you aren’t clear about your purpose, your reader won’t be either.
Be specific. Specifics outsell generalities. Restructure your sentences and try to say more with fewer words.
Avoid superlatives—fabulous, incredible, fantastic, always, never, and so on. Leave the exaggeration to used-car salespeople.
Lead with your most significant ideas. Keep your message simple. Prune needless words. Short sentences and common vocabulary make your material as palatable as possible.
Provide adequate supporting information to be compelling and helpful enough, but don’t over-complicate your message.
Tune your voice. Read drafts aloud. Examine for both form and content. Redraft. Rephrase. Reword. Revise. Rework.

Idea for Impact: If you want to get earnest about writing better, add these two reference works to your shelf: William Strunk and E. B. White’s The Elements of Style (1918) and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (1980.)

Yes, You Can Write a Book. But Should You?

May 20, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

There’s a disturbingly large number of popular books that have been drawn out from a well-received op-ed (example,) blog article (example,) TED talk (example,) or commencement speech (example.) All puffed up with blather and personal anecdotes and exhortations that are often remotely relevant to the core arguments.

Beyond the obvious motives for writing a book (credibility, publicity, vanity,) many books aren’t really necessary. If they are, they deserve to be no more than page-length articles—paragraphs even.

The rise of self-publishing and on-demand printing has only exacerbated the precipitous decline in originality. Formula writing proliferates. There’re no gatekeepers to decide whether you can publish your book—and save you from your own ego.

If you believe you have a book in you, don’t even think about publishing it. Keep it inside you, where it belongs. Unless you’ve got something worthwhile and unique to say, or you can do good writing for its own sake.

Idea for Impact: Save the time. Save the typing. Save the trees. Spare us from your fluff.

Lessons from Amazon: ‘Mock Press Release’ Discipline to Sell an Idea

June 17, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you have a brilliant idea at work, the modern workplace demands that you distill your ideas into a killer PowerPoint presentation to enlighten, entertain (with animations and special effects,) and convince your audience.

As I mentioned in my previous blog article, presentations may make ineffective communication tools. They tend to promote “a seductive laziness of thought that is anti-rigor, anti-elegance, and—most damaging—anti-audience.”

Amazon’s corporate culture agrees. In Brad Stone’s The Everything Store, former Amazon executive Jeff Holden commented that “PowerPoint is a very imprecise communication mechanism. It is fantastically easy to hide between bullet points. You are never forced to express your thoughts completely.”

Instead of PowerPoint presentations, Amazon uses a narrative format called the ‘Mock Press Release.’ According to this disciplined approach, for every new feature, product, or service that employees intend to pitch within their divisions, they must produce a press release-style document wherein a hypothetical Amazon customer would first learn about the feature.

Amazon contends that if something isn’t interesting enough for a customer and can’t be eloquently expressed in a mock press release format, Amazon probably shouldn’t invest in the idea. Brad Stone’s The Everything Store mentions,

Bezos announced that employees could no longer use such corporate crutches and would have to write their presentations in prose, in what he called narratives. … He wanted people thinking deeply and taking the time to express their thoughts cogently.

Bezos refined the formula even further. Every time a new feature or product was proposed, he decreed that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch into its purest essence, to start from something the customer might see—the public announcement—and work backward.

Amazon’s famously customer-oriented culture argues that this disciplined innovation forces all ideas to be rationalized from the customers’ perspective. Therefore, Amazon encourages it’s employees to write these mock press releases in what’s internally called “Oprah-speak” (how the idea would be explained plainly on The Oprah Winfrey Show) rather than in “geek speak.”

Rather than have employees present their ideas using PowerPoint decks, attendees receive copies of multi-page narratives (as opposed to the one-page format used at Procter & Gamble) and study the ideas before ensuing debate and decision.

On Quora, former Amazon executive Ian McAllister argued the advantages of this narrative form:

We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features.

McAllister also provided a sample outline for the Amazon mock press release,

Heading – Name the product in a way the reader (i.e. your target customers) will understand.

Sub-Heading – Describe who the market for the product is and what benefit they get. One sentence only underneath the title.

Summary – Give a summary of the product and the benefit. Assume the reader will not read anything else so make this paragraph good.

Problem – Describe the problem your product solves.

Solution – Describe how your product elegantly solves the problem.

Quote from You – A quote from a spokesperson in your company.

How to Get Started – Describe how easy it is to get started.

Customer Quote – Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they experienced the benefit.

Closing and Call to Action – Wrap it up and give pointers where the reader should go next.

Also see:

Procter & Gamble’s ‘One-Page Memo’ discipline to sell an idea
STAR technique to answer interview questions. This story-telling format can help narrate direct, meaningful, personalized experiences that best demonstrate your qualifications.

Lessons from Procter & Gamble: ‘One-Page Memo’ to Sell an Idea

June 14, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In effective communication, less is often more. Brevity can communicate ideas more clearly.

Based on this idea, Procter & Gamble (P&G)’s corporate culture uses a powerful discipline called the ‘One-Page Memo’ for clear and concise communication.

P&G’s corporate culture requires any idea or proposal to fit onto one side of one piece of paper and must follow a predictable format. According to Charles Decker’s excellent book Winning with the P&G 99, the one-page memo consists of the following narrative elements:

Statement of Purpose: An introductory sentence that concisely and succinctly states the reason for the recommendation. Provides a context for the memo as a whole.

Background: Factual analysis that connects the purpose of the memo to the strategic objectives of the company or the brand. Also provides facts in relation to the problem the recommendation is supposed to address.

Recommendation: The specific proposal on how to solve the problem or exploit the opportunity detailed in the background section.

Rationale: The reasons for the recommendation, and the logic by which the recommendation was reached.

Discussion: Details of the recommendation, anticipated questions or areas of concern, risk assessment, identification of other alternatives, details of the recommendation.

Next Steps: Who will be following through on the recommendation, what target dates they would be working towards, what actions they would be taking to execute the recommendation.

Supporting Exhibits: Other supplementary information as applicable.

The last item, the supporting exhibits, provides additional data to validate the rest of the one-page memo.

Charles Decker states, “If you can learn to write a P&G memo, you can learn how to think. The memo becomes a knowledge codification tool, a way to present ideas, arguments, and recommendations in a language and style everyone at P&G understands.”

Winning with the P&G 99 also quotes an advertising agency executive: “P&G seems to have figured out that if you structure information certain ways, people will readily understand it, good ideas will emerge, and bad ideas will be exposed. I really think that is what has made them so successful. They make fewer mistakes because they find mistakes before they happen.”

Additionally, P&G’s renowned salesforce uses a Persuasive Selling Format (PSF) narrative that is structured along similar lines.

Presentations are Corrupting per Edward Tufte’s “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint”

June 10, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Presentations are one of the most frequently used methods of communication in the modern workplace. However, Edward Tufte argues that they reduce the analytical timbre of communication. In other words, presentation slides lack the resolution to effectively convey context, “weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis.”

Tufte, an American statistician and academic, is renowned for his work The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, a bestselling text on data, statistics, graphics, visualization, and information.

In his cranky pamphlet The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Tufte offers a sharp-tongued criticism of presentations as a communication format. He argues that we treat slides more as a medium for self-expression than as a medium to connect with our audiences. His most revealing examples of how presentations corrupt our elegance of expression are his critique of NASA’s slides from the Columbia shuttle disaster and a parody of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address condensed into a PowerPoint deck.

By forcibly condensing our ideas into bullet point-statements, phrases, and slides, Tufte contends that we break up narrative flow and flatten the information we’re trying to convey. In particular, he claims that presentations’ bullet points can’t signify logical relationships well and thus dilute the audiences’ thought process. The resulting message is watered down, lacks proper emphasis, and doesn’t communicate the context very effectively.

Tufte favors well-structured memos that convey ideas comprehensively, clearly, and meaningfully. In agreement, I’ll offer two articles next week about Procter & Gamble and Amazon’s use of these memos as a communication discipline.

Writing

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Think complex, speak simple, decide better.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?