In some (most?) cases those 10% of the words that are actually used are not the same for all readers. What is fluff to you may not be to me. When it comes to be sure to be understood many express the same idea in multiple ways (discourse levels) consecutively.
Many (most? at the very least "more and more") consumers buy printed matter "by weight", they somewhat "score" by dividing the number of pages by the price.
It may be considered adequate for entertainment material, and may be adopted (for many/all types of goods) because it is our standard way of scoring goods. AFAIK there is no well-known generic method to a priori appreciate whether a good is adequate (adequacy being a part of "quality", which is always hard to evaluate).
It's quantity/quality, all over again. Only the former seems absolute to us, and a good scoring method delivers an absolute result.
IMHO there is a way to pepper a text with anecdotes/useless details, or even to structure it thanks to them, which gained traction in US newspaper material and now seems pervasive to me (thanks to our "global culture"?). It may sometimes be used as a trick to give life or credibility (fake news ahead! Liars tend to pile details up) to a story, or to appeal to some readers' empathy ("Wow, he uses a kettle pot similar to mine, so we are similar!").
A perfect thing "lacks nothing and nothing can be added" (Vitruvius). Aiming at perfection slows the building process, and most written material sold is short-lived ("long tail"). For a publishing company the editorial process (<=> refining contents by adding what is missing and also cutting fluff, in an often painful and always lengthy back-and-forth between the author and an editor) leads to more loss (an enraged author quits) and time-to-market (competing products are first on the market).
Paying the author according to the amount of written material he produces simplifies.
It's "good enough" and "on time", all over again.
A piece of text without repetition and rephrasing will only content the focused reader. Misread or misunderstand something and you are lost. Focused people are rare (and may even be more and more so), and even them often cannot read continuously in a proper (calm) environment for a long time. Therefore nearly all of us always skim. Most products are not completely devoid of contents, therefore upon skimming one will probably find some material interesting him, albeit skimming over dense material leads to a total failure.
Theoretically footnotes and the hypertext approach may alleviate part of this, but many readers just get lost in those links.
Many (most? at the very least "more and more") consumers buy printed matter "by weight", they somewhat "score" by dividing the number of pages by the price. It may be considered adequate for entertainment material, and may be adopted (for many/all types of goods) because it is our standard way of scoring goods. AFAIK there is no well-known generic method to a priori appreciate whether a good is adequate (adequacy being a part of "quality", which is always hard to evaluate).
It's quantity/quality, all over again. Only the former seems absolute to us, and a good scoring method delivers an absolute result.
IMHO there is a way to pepper a text with anecdotes/useless details, or even to structure it thanks to them, which gained traction in US newspaper material and now seems pervasive to me (thanks to our "global culture"?). It may sometimes be used as a trick to give life or credibility (fake news ahead! Liars tend to pile details up) to a story, or to appeal to some readers' empathy ("Wow, he uses a kettle pot similar to mine, so we are similar!").
A perfect thing "lacks nothing and nothing can be added" (Vitruvius). Aiming at perfection slows the building process, and most written material sold is short-lived ("long tail"). For a publishing company the editorial process (<=> refining contents by adding what is missing and also cutting fluff, in an often painful and always lengthy back-and-forth between the author and an editor) leads to more loss (an enraged author quits) and time-to-market (competing products are first on the market). Paying the author according to the amount of written material he produces simplifies.
It's "good enough" and "on time", all over again.
A piece of text without repetition and rephrasing will only content the focused reader. Misread or misunderstand something and you are lost. Focused people are rare (and may even be more and more so), and even them often cannot read continuously in a proper (calm) environment for a long time. Therefore nearly all of us always skim. Most products are not completely devoid of contents, therefore upon skimming one will probably find some material interesting him, albeit skimming over dense material leads to a total failure.
Theoretically footnotes and the hypertext approach may alleviate part of this, but many readers just get lost in those links.