Keeping brief
Is it just me, or is so much writing today just plain wordy?
There is certainly a trade-off between keeping an essay short and making yourself understood. In conversation with others, we can make ourselves understood with fewer words in many situations by use of our gestures and facial expressions for context. Or we can “negotiate meaning,” as linguists say, by asking for clarification.
But with the written word, we can’t read the other person’s emotions, we can’t sense how they are receiving the words we are speaking. We have to make assumptions about their understanding and consent.
Also, before the computer age, there were physical limits to writing. Written words had to fit within physical space on a page of paper. Whether in newspapers or magazines or in letters sent by mail, there were caps on the number of words.
In the computer age, written words take up imperceptibly small amounts of space in terms of pixels on a screen or electronic memory. It is left to the writer to hold back rather than holding forth.
Where once there were limits on the number of words or column inches of newsprint due to the costs of ink and paper, in the digital world there is no such limiting factor. The costs per word, line, sentence, and page are essentially negligible. You can chatter away to your heart’s content.
Besides, if you’re fortunate to have developed a fan base of devoted readers, it costs essentially nothing to give them more of what they want. It seems almost skimpy, in fact, to leave them wanting more. Why not serve them more of what they’ve presumably come for?
For one thing, because they’ve also got limited time and attention. There’s a lot of content available out there, thanks to the internet. There’s plenty of material to read about every subject under the sun—not to mention video to watch and audio to listen to—all of which takes some amount of time to consume. At least one reason to limit yourself is out of respect for your readers and the amount of time they intend to spend engaged with your words, or looking at screens.
Maybe your readers just want a taste of something—something of a cerebral snack rather than a full dinner. Sometimes readers want a brief overview of an idea rather than a full college course worth for multiple semester-hour credits. Plus, sometimes it’s better to keep things short to leave your readers wanting more rather than exhausted because you’ve worn them out.
What else can I say?
Also from TMD: Will 2023 be the year Americans beat their political addictions? Matt Welch is hopeful. “Already, we are seeing some preliminary indications of a turn away from political obsession,” he writes for Reason. “The media companies that fattened on anti-Trumpism are being starved of subscribers and shedding staff. Birth rates, having fallen steadily for 15 years, are experiencing a post-COVID ‘baby bump.’ Those who do politics for a living—journalists, consultants, hucksters—are letting the desperation show, trying to elevate possible Trump successor Ron DeSantis into a Nazi enabler or Joe Biden into an election-canceling commie. Returns are observably diminishing on doom-scrolling the news, arguing digitally with strangers, and mashing the ‘donate’ button to some person or group who shares and stokes your political hatreds. The effective methods for improving our personal, familial, and even societal dissatisfactions lie right there at our fingertips, or better yet, shoes—going out for a walk, participating in community institutions, getting the kids off of smartphones, reading an actual book, traveling to places we haven’t seen before.”
Some of us just come here. Thanks, again, MG!
From TMD: The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that, after lobbying from the U.S. dairy industry, imported baby formula will once again be subject to tariffs in 2023. Congress voted over the summer to temporarily suspend the tariffs—which can reach as high as 17.5 percent—in an effort to boost supply amid nationwide shortages, which are expected to continue into next year.
Disgraceful