I regret to say that I found this article unhelpful. Here's why:

1. One who preaches about good writing should not--repeat, NOT--lob in, right at the jump, two fragments (e.g., "Me too" followed by "So how"). I almost quit reading right there.

2. Mr. Ortel supplies us with twenty-three (23) links about writing. In my view, that qualifies him as someone who can't decide what's really great vs. what's just very good. It is improbable that any reader in an audience of busy professionals is going to go through twenty-three links. Truth be told, probably none of us will click on more than one or two because he dumped too-too many choices on us.

3. He omitted the single best tool for us over-educated professionals who tend to write too-too long sentences with words that themselves have too-too many syllables: The Fog Index.

I've posted on this blog before about that--here: https://blogs.stage.cfainstitute.org/investor/2016/10/10/poor-communica…, for those who might have missed it, here's an explanation: The Fog Index purports to infer, from a writing sample of at least several hundred words, how many years of education a person needs in order to understand that sample. We should all strive for a Fog Index 10. That is a tall order when writing about complex topics in finance, but it can be done. Mr. Ortel's piece above--excluding the laundry list of 23 references--has a Fog Index of 10.63. You can paste a sample of your own writing in here - http://gunning-fog-index.com/. Then click on 'Calculate' to see what your Fog Index is.

P.S. The Fog Index of what I wrote above is 8.59.