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Smart Brevity Guidance

Smart Brevity® editing guidance

We analyzed over 1.2 million examples of best-in-class communication — then built a Smart Brevity editing assistant to help make your updates more scannable, digestible, and memorable.

Make your communications worthy — not wordy

Smart Brevity Guidance is rooted in years of research. Our generative-AI features improve your text for clarity, suggest headlines or subject lines that make your message stand out, and elevate the style and format of your update.

Rephrase sentences
Reformat paragraphs
Remove filler
Rephrase sentences

Less is more for modern readers

Make your point quickly and clearly. Smart Brevity Guidance helps you distill your message to its core without sacrificing what's essential. Your readers get shorter, clearer updates. 
Reformat paragraphs

Stay scannable and approachable

Eye-tracking studies show long paragraphs literally make readers sad. Smart Brevity Guidance suggests strategic bolding, bullets, and white space to give readers maximum insight with minimum effort.
Remove filler

Write like you speak

Authenticity and simplicity are huge winners in the era of noise. Smart Brevity Guidance helps weed out non-essential words so your humanity, empathy, and clarity can shine through, without distraction.

Short, not shallow

Smart Brevity is rooted in the idea of efficiency, giving people only what they need and staying realistic about the amount of time they have to consume it. Four North Stars help us stay accountable to it.

Learn more about Smart Brevity
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Authority

You are a trustworthy source of information, and only an expert can understand an issue, evaluate what’s new or important, and distill it in an accurate, interesting way.

Be the expert, or find the expert. Axios HQ helps you collaborate. 
Brevity
Brevity

You stand out for being respectful of a busy reader’s time — giving them exactly what they need to stay productive, without leaving them hungry or unfulfilled.

Elevate what's essential. Axios HQ helps you survey readers to ask what's vital to them.
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Humanity

You can communicate with the full spectrum of human emotion, sophistication, and nuance, but push yourself to present it in a way that's warm and conversational.

Write like you speak. Axios HQ is a real-time editor so you can stay clear and genuine.
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Clarity

You can be frugal with words for the sake of brevity and so what you ultimately present to readers looks approachable, quick, and simple to scan in a realistic amount of time.

Watch how your readers engage. Axios HQ helps style text and track performance.
Delta4
Immediately, flight attendants noticed and appreciated when we adopted Axios’ Smart Brevity approach. It provides familiarity week to week and helps guide readers along so they easily key in on the most important and relevant information. Manager of In-Flight Communications

How Delta keeps 21,000 in-flight attendants informed

With their on-the-go lifestyle, flight attendants need a reliable one-stop-shop for all their critical updates.

 Read their case study

More about Smart Brevity

What is the Smart Brevity style?

Smart Brevity® is a communications methodology based on brain science and data that helps any leader style and format information to be clearer, more engaging and more memorable for their readers. It was developed in the Axios newsroom, defining the media organization's success, and has since become a popular communication style for leaders and internal and external communication professionals.

How do you write in Axios style?

Axios HQ is an AI-powered internal communication software that helps any leader communicate in Smart Brevity with their staff and stakeholders. In its simplest format, Smart Brevity helps you identify the "what's new" and "why it matters" in any critical update and format its details in a clear and effective way that readers are more likely to engage with and remember. Get the free checklist.

Why does brevity matter?

Workers are demanding transparency, meaning, attention and connection like never before. But many modern executives admit they're set up to lead in an era that ended years ago: the in-person workplace. That's a clear and present danger to their culture, productivity and success. And when poor communication leads to shoddy execution, employee distrust and lack of alignment, brevity is what breaks through.

How is Smart Brevity different from other AI writing or editing software?

Smart Brevity is a communication methodology developed in the Axios newsroom and popularized in internal communications by Axios HQ. While most AI software helps you produce "more" of anything faster, Axios HQ uses generative AI's productivity power and Smart Brevity's methodology to help leaders produce the right communications faster and in a clearer way. AI gives you more. HQ and Smart Brevity give you better.
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See Smart Brevity guidance in action

Book a demo to see how our AI-powered writing help and other features work together to elevate your internal communications.

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