I have a tattoo on my hand. It is a small asterisk, the kind you might see at the bottom of a page pointing to a footnote. Most people do not notice it. The ones who do usually ask if it is a star or a scar.

I tell them it is a reminder.

Kurt Vonnegut started his writing career as a technical writer at General Electric in the 1950s. He worked in the marketing communications department, writing clear, straightforward explanations of how things worked. His job was not to be clever. He needed to be understood. If he wrote a sentence that confused a reader, that reader might wire something incorrectly or order the wrong part. Clarity was a safety requirement.

Vonnegut carried that discipline into everything he wrote afterward. Even when he was writing about time travel, alien abduction, or a man becoming unstuck in the flow of time, his sentences stayed short. His words stayed simple. He never forgot that the job was to communicate.

I got the asterisk to remind myself of the same thing.

The Technical Writer Who Wrote Weird Books

There is a misconception that clear writing is boring writing. People assume that short sentences and simple words mean you are writing down to an audience. Vonnegut proved that wrong. His sentences were clean, but his ideas were anything but.

Slaughterhouse-Five jumps between World War II and an alien planet. Cat’s Cradle invents a religion and accidentally ends the world. Breakfast of Champions features a science fiction writer who may or may not be God. These are not simple stories. But Vonnegut told them in a way that anyone could follow. He trusted the reader to handle the weirdness without making them work for it.

That is the lesson I carry into copywriting. I am not writing about time travel or alien planets. I am writing about software, services, and products. But the principle is the same. When a reader has to stop and untangle a sentence, I have lost them. My job is to make the complicated feel simple and to leave the simple alone.

What the Asterisk Means

Vonnegut used asterisks in his books as a visual signature. He would draw them in the margins of his manuscripts, and they started appearing in his published work as a kind of symbol. For him, the asterisk meant something like: pause here. Pay attention. This matters.

I borrowed the symbol and gave it my own meaning. The asterisk on my hand reminds me of three things.

First, clarity is kindness. Vonnegut believed that writing clearly was a way of respecting the reader. When you bury your meaning in complex sentences, you ask the reader to do unnecessary work. Clear writing says: your time matters.

Second, short sentences can hold big ideas. Vonnegut could write a short sentence that carried the weight of a whole novel. “So it goes.” Three words that contained everything he had to say about death, fate, and acceptance. Short sentences work when you choose the right words.

Third, weird is okay. Vonnegut never sanded down the strange parts of his work to make it more marketable. He trusted that readers would follow him if he wrote clearly. I try to do the same. I do not hide the personality in my copy. I just make sure the sentences do not get in the way.

Vonnegut’s Rules

Vonnegut once published a list of rules for writing. The most famous one is this: “Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.”

That is the whole job. Whether I am writing a landing page, an email, or a blog post, I am asking someone to give me their attention. They do not owe it to me. I have to earn it. The fastest way to waste someone’s time is to make them work to understand what I am saying.

Another rule: “Keep it simple.” Vonnegut admitted this was the hardest one. Simple does not mean easy. It means editing out every word that is not necessary. It means rewriting a sentence five times until it is clean. It means having the discipline to say something plainly when your ego wants to dress it up.

That is what the asterisk is for. When I am staring at a sentence that has gotten too long, or a phrase that is trying too hard, I look at my hand and remember. Short. Clear. Respect the reader.

So It Goes

I do not pretend to write like Vonnegut. He was one of a kind. But I try to carry forward what he learned in that technical writing job at GE. Clarity is a foundation. You can build anything on top of it as long as the foundation holds.

When someone reads my copy, I want them to understand what I am saying on the first pass. I want them to feel like their time was respected. And I want them to trust that if I can explain something clearly, I probably understand it well enough to be worth listening to.

The asterisk on my hand reminds me of all of that every time I sit down to write. It is a small mark. But it points to something bigger. A way of working that puts the reader first, always.

So it goes.

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I am currently looking for a copywriting role where I can bring this kind of clarity to brands that respect their audience enough to write clearly. If that sounds like the kind of work you need, view my portfolio or reach out. I would love to show you what clear writing looks like when it carries something worth saying.