The ironic thing in this instance is that in a way the author is clearly negating his point by needing to show the crossed-out text. Imagine you had followed the link, and the only text was "Fewer words create a more powerful message."<p>We would likely feel cheated at some level, like "That's it? How did one sentence get a whole HN link?" In a way we're conditioned to expect a bunch of garbage filler that we merely skim, and because that's what's in demand right now it's what authors are incentivized to provide.
When writing about technical subjects, however, you often need redundancy. People sometimes misunderstand concepts. When they do, the only thing that will alert them to their error is the second explanation crashing into the first.
Comprehension is what saves readers time. Write as much as it's needed for your readers to understand.<p>If I opened a page and fell on author's last one-liner, I'd be inclined to dispute the statement. It's void of context and arguments and we can surely find countless examples to contradict the notion.<p>Fewer doesn't mean simpler. Maths or programming expressions can be terse, yet so packed full of information that they take hours to decipher. We can find the equivalent in literature.<p>Sometimes to get your point across fast you have to use longer, yet more accessible sentences. To save readers' time, just write simpler, not shorter.
Counterpoint (specifically in the field of advertising), titled "Do long copy ads work? Let’s ask some of the greatest names in advertising history" [1]<p>Answer at the end: "Every one of the authors I have quoted is a giant in the field of advertising... And they all agree about the [positive] effectiveness of long copy ads."<p>[1] <a href="http://www.realityassociates.com/Articles/Art-LongCopy.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.realityassociates.com/Articles/Art-LongCopy.htm</a>
Brevity is good for some things.<p>A long description full of descriptive adjectives is absolutely critical for certain types of writing that require you to literally paint a picture of scenery, emotion, and dialogue.<p>Know what you're writing.
The OP has the right mindset but the advice is not very helpful. It's not just overall number of words, but <i>which</i> words you remove. In general, you should cut adjectives.<p>As C.S. Lewis notes:
<a href="http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/c-s-lewis-on-writing.ht...</a><p>> <i>In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."</i><p>Here's some advice from Woodrow Wilson that should strike a note with programmers who write modular code:<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=zjcUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA268&dq=%22when+you+frame+a+sentence%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cuMsUtCkNZGq4AOyv4DoBw&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22when%20you%20frame%20a%20sentence%22&f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=zjcUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA268&dq=%2...</a><p>> <i>The best teacher I ever had used to say to me, “When you frame a sentence don’t do it as if you were loading a shotgun but as if you were loading a rifle. Don’t fire in such a way and with such a load that while you hit the thing you aim at, you will hit a lot of things in the neighborhood besides; but shoot with a single bullet and hit that one thing alone.”</i>
For my recent technical book, I spent 3 weeks writing over 200 pages and then 3 weeks editing to get the book down to under 80 pages.<p>It's funny because I then had several complaints (from non-buyers particularly) that the book cost too much for an 80 page book.<p>Someone can certainly save their money and reproduce the experience of the book by spending a couple of painful weeks combing through documentation and hitting their head against walls. OR, they can spend less than what they probably make in an hour and get the same knowledge in 80 pages.<p>My target audience was people that value their time far more than their money, so that's why I spent so much effort making the book as succinct as possible.<p>As an aside: I'm really glad I put a price on the book. Initially I was tempted to have it be "pay what you want" so it would be more accessible, but that would have devalued it I think. Instead, I've offered a special cheaper option for students, junior developers, and those in countries where the book would be prohibitively expensive. So far, I've had about 50 people take me up on that.<p>The book has been successful enough to give me another month where I don't have to take contracts and I can focus on creating more content. If I hadn't charged sufficiently for it, then I'd have to pause everything and do contract work.<p>So, spending that extra 3 weeks making the book shorter and more focused was a win for both me and my target customers.<p>For anyone curious, here's the book: <a href="http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-ansible.html" rel="nofollow">http://devopsu.com/books/taste-test-puppet-chef-salt-stack-a...</a>
Sometimes it's good to support a position with argumentation. Brevity is saying the same thing with fewer words. In this case, the blog post is actually saying less. That may work for something obvious, but take care before applying this rule universally.
I think v4 has a very different message from v1-3. 1-3 seem to be saying value your readers time by writing as succinctly as possible whereas v4 says a shorter message is more powerful. This may sometimes be the case, but often it is not. Many of the most powerful speeches use repetition and deliberate at length on their message in order to emphasise it. Shortening them would probably have made the message less powerful.
The last sentence leaves out very important points made in the struck-through versions about valuing the time of your audience. I am currently looking for more information-dense delivery mechanisms, among other things. The struck-through versions provide vivid illustration of the point, which provides a kind of information-density. Words are not your only medium, not even in copy, much less online generally.
Write as little as possible, but not less. Consider your audience and purpose: if you write too little, it can only be understood by those who already understand it.<p>The Gettysburg address shows that less can be more. But, too little is nothing at all: <a href="http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/" rel="nofollow">http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/</a>
Stephen King's rule is that the second draft of his book should be ten percent shorter compared with the first draft.<p>Source: his biography On Writing (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft/dp/1439156816/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft/...</a>)
If you're going to make this point, I like the story of the Oxford literature professor (probably a reader or don or some other weird title, but professor in US terms) who walked into class on his first day and said:<p>"Omit. Needless. Words."<p>And then:<p>"Omit. Needless. Words."<p>And then:<p>"Omit. Needless. Words."<p>And then walked out. End of first lecture.
Id like to point out that this is similar to the idea of compression. Lossless compression is ideal, but you should not confuse lossy compression for lossless compression. To illustrate, going from v3 to v4 is very lossy. You lose the reason why shorter messages are better.
Start with a simple statement and follow up with the detail.<p>If you read a good newspaper article you will see it starts off with a paragraph containing most of the detail of the story and then expands on it later allowing the user to skim.<p>Blog readers, like newspaper readers, are viewing a number of stories and reading some of them just to get the gist and others to get the detail. So the headline is there to grab their attention and then the first paragraph has to give enough detail that they can go away with most of the details and move on. You can then expand later in the page for those that want a greater detail. It's quite a skill and one that journalist and editors work hard at.
Ironically though, without the author's previous revisions (saying the same thing multiple times) the article wouldn't deliver the message as well.
My own experiment in brevity: the Pitch Blurb.<p>(Ironically long) explanation at <a href="http://thinkinghard.com/blog/PitchBlurb.html" rel="nofollow">http://thinkinghard.com/blog/PitchBlurb.html</a>.<p>Lots of examples in one web page at <a href="http://thinkinghard.com/blog/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://thinkinghard.com/blog/index.html</a>.
Brilliant illustration.<p>Terse writing has more punch, true. And for some media and most audiences, that's what you want. Most authors use a lot of weaselly filler (like "most" and "a lot") but not every interesting idea can be adequately conveyed by a pithy sentence. If people keep that in mind, we'll all benefit from better writing.
There's a flip side of course<br/>
Just like there always is<br/>
Writing, whether text or source<br/>
Is about tradeoffs, not the biz<br/><p>Of perfect solutions. For example, you will find<br/>
That a rhyming passage will stay in mind<br/>
Far longer than a tweet.<br/>
This isn't a statement about grammar, or how to structure your writing pieces. Its about articles / blogs I stumble upon (from hackernews) which are needlessly long. I want to read something, understand the message the author is trying to convey, and I want to move on.
"The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter."<p><a href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TimeToMakeItShort" rel="nofollow">http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TimeToMakeItShort</a>
There's an obvious tradeoff between speed and information. People tend to be biased towards information (writing too much), but that doesn't mean that "write less" is good advice.
Same thing could be said about lectures in college. I'm amazed at how much professors can expand on for a simple little concept making the idea more convoluted than it should be.