This seems like as much of a non sequitur as "skipping" syntactic elements. The comparison is clearly syntactic, and thus factually incorrect – the second examp

This seems like as much of a non sequitur as "skipping" syntactic elements. The comparison is clearly syntactic, and thus factually incorrect – the second example is in fact longer than the first. Sure, if you swap in another example that is in fact shorter, then it'd not longer be an incorrect statement. Maybe I am indeed being silly, but it seems getting the hook-line-sinker arguments as right as possible is a worthwhile goal, particularly when at least one of them can be objectively verified. If by "shorter" you mean "less complex" than stop saying "shorter" and start saying "less complex" instead – just as you say they aren't the same thing. It'd mostly be redundant I guess, given "easier to read" and "easier to edit" implies "less complex", but at least it'd be harder to immediately refute.