Get ahead in your job with these three expert tips for making emails, presentations and meetings more articulate and effective.

It’s ironic that, for all our hi-tech communication devices, we often struggle to get our message across at work – especially in writing. Then we receive a virtual missive that sends us into a psychological tailspin after we perceive a non-existent subtext therein. Alas, those oh-so-helpful emojis aren’t yet acceptable in business. (If you’re using them, stop now.) Someone who doesn’t need to punctuate sentences with yellow smiley faces is Mr Jay Sullivan, a former attorney fluent in legalese who now helps all manner of professionals speak more plainly. His new book Simply Said: Communicating Better At Work And Beyond is suitably straightforward to comprehend, and chock full of easily digestible takeaways on everything from emailing to presenting. Here, MR PORTER has regurgitated a few choice morsels from Simply Said that will increase your own connectivity – and your prospects of an upgrade.

The problem is that we’re all inherently self-obsessed. “The easiest and most effective way to be understood more clearly is to focus less on yourself and more on the other person,” says Mr Sullivan. You’ll instinctively drill down to the relevant information and make it more accessible. Where possible, try to replace the pronouns “I” and “me” in correspondence and conference with “you” and “your”. (You might have to change the wording too, of course.) Since we all have such big egos, your audience will automatically pay more attention. Ultimately, they want to know what’s in it for them, whether that’s information to absorb, a task to execute or a benefit to reap.

NB: reserve reflexive pronouns – “myself” and “yourself” – for when the action is being done to the doer. Using them indiscriminately instead of “me” and “you” is a reflex of The Apprentice candidates who are trying to sound clever, and makes us want to shoot ourselves. Which is at least correct pronoun usage.

“The overriding key to presenting well is to simply be present to your audience,” says Mr Sullivan. “Listeners want to know that they have your attention.” Rushing or appearing preoccupied implies the opposite, as does talking to your notes or slides. Don’t scan the audience though: rapidly switching eye contact overloads your brain. Instead, pick one person and deliver one sentence or point to them. Then move on to the next person, and sentence (or point). Ever noticed how speakers are more natural when taking questions from the audience? That’s because they’re just talking normally, to one person, instead of “presenting” to many.

If you need to look at your materials, stop talking while your head is turned and indeed turning – what Mr Sullivan calls the “arc of silence”. Only speak to your audience. Otherwise they’ll feel less important than your PowerPoint. Besides, silence is your friend: pausing adds weight to your words, and gives your audience time to digest them. Trying to fill dead air is when you start babbling.

Some 205 billion emails are sent each day. But you can at least stop yourself from adding to the junk pile. “First, challenge every word you use and get rid of the clutter,” says Mr Sullivan. “Make sure they are the best words you can use to convey your idea: this means using strong verbs. Finally, make clear who is accountable for the action in the sentence.”

“Clutter” includes “zero words” that add no value, eg “currently”. (Unless you’re drawing a contrast with the past or future, it’s unnecessary.) Expunge verbose expressions and jargon, which just prove that we’re not thinking about our audience or we’re trying to look clever. Then make the main action of your sentence the verb instead of something weaker like “is”. So instead of writing that the project is delayed, write that someone or something delayed the project. This puts the “actor” up front, and allows for crystalline accountability. There are times, though, when you might want to avoid doing this in order to soften your message – for instance, if you’re giving negative feedback. Or if you’re the one who screwed up.