Concreteness: The Forth 7 c's of Effective Communication’s

Concreteness refers to being more specific, definite, and vivid rather than and general and repetitive. The main benefit of being concrete is obvious that the receiver knows exactly what is required or desired. The other benefit of being concrete is that the reply might be in the same way that may be interrupted by you as the receiver.

Concreteness comprises of the following points:

a. Using specific facts and figures

Whenever possible use specific, exact, precise statement or figure instead of general words which helps in making your message more concrete.

Examples:

• General, Indefinite: She’s a brain; Concrete, Precise: Her percentage have increased from 84% in S.S.C to 88% in H.S.C
• General, Indefinite: Eastern Europe is making progress in obtaining investments; Concrete, Precise: In 1990, investments in Eastern Europe were about US $30 million; today that figure has increased by 12%.
  

But sometimes when you don’t know the exact figures and want to be concrete you can write as “half the committee was present”

b. Put Action in your verbs

Verbs can bring your concreteness back to being alive and more dynamic. Use of verbs especially the active verbs make your sentence more Specific, Personal and Concise. Even the passive verbs are more useful sometimes when you want to avoid any personal or accusing comments.

Examples:

• “The Principal Has decided” is more specific then “A decision has been made”.
• “You will note” is both personal and specific than “It will be noted”.
  

c. Selection of more vivid and image-building words

This section refers to the use of language or words which are capable of creating an atmosphere in the mind of the reader that he imagines himself, being, in that situation rather than using words which would bounce over the gray matter. The inclusion of vivid words also helps in creating a scenario that the writer or speaker has a wider scope of imagination instead having an image of sticking to the basics.

Examples:

No Literal and dull More vivid and image-builder

• His work in group was exemplary He could be called the “The spark plug of the group”
• The results are very good this year and are expected to be very good next year.
  
• The results this year have been excellent and we expect them to touch the mountain in the coming year.