Writing short. Writing long.

Writing short is hard. Writing a long chain of unneeded content is easy. 

Thoreau wrote about this: 

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

While on the other side of the Atlantic, the mathematician Blaise Pascal confessed:

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter. 

Even the venerated Shakespeare saw it clear with his: 

Brevity is the soul of wit.

And the rational William of Ockham commanded: 

Entities should not be multiplied without necessity. 

On more modern times, we can follow the ideas of William Zinsser in On Writing Well to write less nonsense.  
  • Use shorter words.
  • Cut unnecessary words.
  • Cut sentences to the cleanest components.
  • Cut the meaningless jargon. 
Was Zinsser advising a resuscitation of the extinct telegram? I don't think so. But cutting clutter and embellishment sounds practical for non-fiction texts. 

Time is gold because time is life. Why to bet on verbose writings? Inefficient. 

(This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon. It means that we may receive a small commission on your purchases without additional cost to you.)

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