Can You Be Too Concise?

Writers are often told to "omit needless words," to quote the famed William Strunk of Strunk and White, who literally wrote the book on good writing style. However, as this article points out, "The problem, for writers before Strunk and since, is identifying which words are needless."

The article goes on to give examples of how a few extra words, while appearing redundant at first blush, can actually serve a purpose. For instance, this sentence: "I just wanted to let you know that I love your podcast." Author, podcaster and grammar maven Mignon Fogarty, also known as Grammar Girl, decried the introductory "I just wanted to let you know" (adding that there was "no need to sneak up on the sentence") and championed simply saying, "I loved your podcast." Period.

However, Dave Wilton of Wordorigins.org had another view on the matter. Wilton wrote that those introductory words "announce that this is the entire purpose of the message and that there are no additional or ulterior motives. Also, simply saying something like 'I love your podcast!' can be construed as abrupt and a tad impolite."

Sometimes a little verbal padding can serve a useful purpose, it would seem. We don't have to chisel a sentence down to the bone to make it well-written, anymore than we have to reduce to a house to four plain walls and a plain roof to make it a suitable home.

Or to quote the article:

"'Brevity is a great virtue,' wrote the rhetorician Edwin Herbert Lewis in 1911, 'yet it may be overestimated. The reader's mind must be permitted to eddy around the subject.' Sometimes more words are merely padding, but sometimes they're the details that help a reader understand, the flourishes that give pleasure, the reassurances that you, the writer, are trustworthy. The goal of writing is not to deliver content efficiently, any more than the goal of dinner is to take in a specific ration of proteins and carbs.

"Yes, brevity is a virtue, 'but we must not make a fetish of it,' wrote Lewis. 'I have small sympathy with the people who worry because we eat up, eat down, drink up, drink down, and so on and so on. Must one never say great big dog because great equals big? Nay, it is a mark of man's overflowing vitality and sheer joy in emphasis to say great big dog.'"

(Hat tip to the (new) legal writer.)