
Brevity Is Beautiful - bhousel
http://betterexplained.com/articles/brevity-is-beautiful/
======
grellas
Brevity is not an end in itself but simply one goal of good writing. This
means: don't pad, don't over-elaborate, don't meander. Keep your writing
focused for its purpose.

But, if that purpose is, for example, to explain the meaning of restricted
stock and, as a lawyer, you tell a client that such stock is granted but made
subject to repurchase at cost upon termination of a service relationship
between the company and the recipient, creating a risk of forfeiture and
thereby requiring that an 83(b) election be filed so as avoid having
artificial income imputed to the holder as vesting occurs, that is a perfectly
fine if windy way to express oneself and creates no difficulty or
misunderstanding for the reader (at least I hope not). There is room for
variety in writing, and no writer should feel handcuffed by an _artificial_
need to keep things brief.

That said, by all means be brief where you can, and do aim for brevity as a
worthy goal of your writing. Just don't obsess about it. It has its place.
That is all.

Overall, a very nice piece.

~~~
lotharbot
The purpose of "good writing" is clear communication. Attempts at brevity,
done properly, result in removing fluff and unnecessary details, leaving the
key points intact and making them the clear focus. Done improperly, they
result in incomplete or mangled communication, with key points missing or
inadequately explained.

Be brief, but clear.

~~~
kalid
@grellas, @lotharbot, great points. Yep, the goal of writing is to communicate
an idea -- brevity is a tactic.

I love this quote by Einstein: Things should be as simple as possible, but not
more so. If something is truly necessary, then keep it, but be strict about
what is needed.

------
diziet
I've always been a fan of trying to organize my writing with several levels of
complexity embedded. For example, when writing any sort of FAQ or explanation,
I would briefly outline the steps, and then proceed to explain each one in
further detail so that a lay audience may understand. This way both someone
who's just looking to grasp or relearn an idea and someone who is very new to
the topic can benefit. Either way, you're making assumptions about the level
of minimum expertise of your audience.

~~~
kalid
Agreed -- good communication is about understanding your audience and circling
back into detail as needed. Aka, do a breadth-first sweep, vs. depth-first.

------
Ixiaus
The primary quality of prose style is _clarity_ while brevity in an exposition
ideally has these three qualities:

    
    
      * Context
      * Relevance
      * Cogency

~~~
kalid
Great point. I wonder, though: does first focusing on brevity bring natural
clarity, or the reverse?

~~~
count
Focusing on clarity will naturally bring brevity, in those instances where it
is appropriate. Saying something as plainly and simply as possible, while not
being couched in padding, is typically the most clear and most brief way to
say a thing.

~~~
Ixiaus
A concise summary. Clarity is a state all humans strive for, reach for clarity
in your writing and lucid expression will be a natural by-product.

------
andreyf
_Thought experiment: you see two reference books, one at 100 pages and the
other at 200. Do you wonder if the smaller book could be concise and well-
written, or do you immediately assume "bigger is better" and reach for the
tome?_

Seriously, people do this? What is wrong with them? I'd try to imagine every
justifiable reason to buy the 100 page one. Padded technical writing deserves
its own level of hell.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Obligatory: <http://i.imgur.com/RzRcw.jpg>

~~~
aoriste
And, if giving direction to a newcomer - I'd pass her the slimmer volume 9
times out of 9.

------
pedalpete
For an article on brevity, I found this to be a bit to drawn out.

This is the next article I read, <http://venturefizz.com/blog/how-pitch-
investor-90-seconds> and in comparison, this is a great example of brevity.

It's punch, quick, and gets to the point.

~~~
kalid
I debated the irony of having an essay on brevity that wasn't short. But, I
realized my goal was to have (hopefully) several meaningful thoughts, vs. a
single short one. These are basically the thoughts / fears that go through my
head when I think about what brevity is and why it's resisted.

That said, brevity is always an asymptotic ideal we're aiming for.

------
rflrob
"The unix command line ('cat foo.txt | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn') is
wonderfully concise and powerful". And yet, contrary to the author's
assertion, it can be made even more concise without sacrificing the power:

sort foo.txt | uniq -c | sort -rn

~~~
kalid
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, in this case I decided to keep the "superflous"
cat because it offers more flexibility/readability -- i.e., what if you want
another command before the first sort? With the 2nd version you have to remove
foo.txt and type your command, instead of just inserting "mycommand |" where
needed (and what if mycommand doesn't accept a file, just stdin, then you need
the cat anyway).

But it's a good point, and there's a balance between the absolute minimum and
flexibility. At one extreme you have code golf, at the other you have an
abstract FactoryFactory.

------
shadowz
_"Brevity is the soul of wit"_ \- William Shakespeare

~~~
ahoyhere
And Shakespeare had florid language like no other, so that's a funny
counterpoint.

It was florid but with a purpose. But it wasn't brevity.

------
ErrantX
This is absolutely true; especially, I find, here on HN where my concise,
clear comments tend to go down better.

(and, yes, this is deliberately concise :))

~~~
romland
...and down it went (I did not mod you down, by the way :)

~~~
ErrantX
I'm not sure why it was down voted. It's actually true (from my observation)

------
unwind
Linking to K&R and calling it "Introduction to C" is a bit sloppy and worth
editing, it really threw me off track.

~~~
kalid
Whoops, my mistake! Just updated.

------
jaybol
In the spirit of brevity: great article!

~~~
kalid
Thanks! :)

------
houseabsolute
Most of the time.

------
ahoyhere
Has nobody noticed that the best, most vivid, most engaging, most loved
authors were not the briefest?

Mark Twain. Shakespeare. Joyce. Toni Morrison. Gladwell. Ackerman. Etc.

It's true that brevity is better than futile padding. But brevity itself
shouldn't be a goal, unless you give up and admit up front that you're a
terrible writer, and brevity is the best way to make your writing go from
terrible to palatably mediocre.

~~~
kalid
Yeah, I think "brevity" isn't the perfect word because it seems to imply
shortness. I mean it to be more of making every word tell, which I think those
writers do.

~~~
ahoyhere
No offense, but what's the point then of regurgitating William Zinsser badly?
He said it better than you ever could.

If you really think brevity is important, read:

"On Writing Well"

