This is a shallow dismissal. Note that the author's goal is actually "writing more". There is no a priori goal of conciseness, which is orthogonal. I'd wager

This is a shallow dismissal. Note that the author's goal is actually "writing more". There is no a priori goal of conciseness, which is orthogonal. I'd wager that what the author has been doing is finding themselves writing minimally in-the-moment, setting that aside as a draft with the self-imposed criteria that it needs to be beefed up[1][2] before publication, and then never going back to do that. So between the options of shorter and shortest, go for whichever actually results in "writing" (read: publishing) more. If that means the former happens more than the latter, it doesn't contradict what the author is actually advising here. 1. https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.html https://pchiusano.github.io/2014-10-11/defensive-writing.htm... 2. We're almost in strange loop territory: the kind remarks you're now making are the reason why author feels this need to have long, well-qualified posts—and therefore why he or she wrote this post. (It's also why I edited this comment half a dozen times.)