When you write something, whether it’s a letter to a friend, a presentation to your boss, or a paper for your university course, you want it to be memorable. What’s more, you want it to be memorable for the right reasons: quality, clarity, interest, and impact. There are several things that you can do to increase the impact that your writing has, and one of the most important is knowing what words to use. The quality of your writing is closely tied to the vocabulary and phrases you choose, and also to how you arrange those words to communicate your ideas. A well-selected set of phrases can combine to form a message that readers will long remember.

As the American president Abraham Lincoln’s famous “Gettysburg Address” illustrates, it’s not the number of words that counts in the end, but how those words are used. This short speech, given by Lincoln in November of 1863, only consists of 272 words, but it’s still remembered and quoted today. Many people, when they’re trying to write to impress others, think that the more words they use the better. Another common mistake is to believe that using obscure, difficult, and polysyllabic words is the best way to showcase your skills as a writer. While a fancy set of vocabulary words might indeed impress people, it’s much less likely that they’ll walk away remembering the concepts you were trying to communicate.

There’s a time and a place for every word in your vocabulary. Make sure that you choose the words that are the most useful for each circumstance, fitting your words to the listeners or readers, and choosing quality words for their ability to express your ideas rather than overwhelming your audience with quantity alone.

Longer than a Twitter tweet but shorter than many e-mail messages – what would you choose to say in exactly 272 words?