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The mathematician Gauss said, "You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words,
by vouaobrasil 3y ago
The mathematician Gauss said, "You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length."
This is what almost everyone on the internet gets wrong these days, especially writers on medium and other blogging platforms, but also writers on the BBC and the Guardian. Their articles are too long and padded.
I guess I can't fully blame them. Google prioritizes lengthy texts as a signal of being authoritative and comprehensive. Most texts these days are twice as long as they need to be.
- keiferski 3y ago“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” — Blaise Pascal Apparently also said by Locke, Franklin, and a bevy of other famous figures too. Good advice, even if the source is unclear.
- kubanczyk 3y agoSource is quite clear, Blaise Pascal, Lettres Provinciales (1657) (repeating after https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/)
- Obscurity4340 3y agoI feel like there has to be a way to optimize for economy the same way you can similarly write a program/code snippet that accomplishes a specific output in as few lines and operations as possible but I just can't seem to make it happen for the most part. Always the obsession to endlessly qualify, pontificate, and inabillity to settle on one simple idea with 100% conviction its necessary and sufficient and that I am "okay" for it.
- vouaobrasil 3y agoMy strategy as a professional writer is to take my near-final version and then simply have a goal of reducing it to at least 75% of the original. There are always superfluous words in a text which has not yet gone through a good reduction.
- darekkay 3y agoThere's a similar quote: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.", often attributed to Mark Twain.
- vouaobrasil 3y agoIndeed. I think that most excellent writers have realized the advantage of writing concisely. I just like Gauss's version the best because he is one of my favourite mathematicians.
- jyriand 3y agoAnd often attributed to Pascal.
- pluijzer 3y agoThis is the problem I have with long form articles. They are promoted as a counter reaction to short shallow articles without substance. Though most of these long form articles are just as shallow. Starting a articles on physics by the description on how a professor wiped his horn rimmed glasses that shimmered in the morning light only to have them steam up again by his first sip of chocolade brown coffee.
- riedel 3y ago> We met in a north London café lined with books, where he calmly unpacked his concerns about the quantum gravity status quo ...
- quickthrower2 3y agoThat is fine and quite humane. But sometimes one has to scroll to find the real start of the article.
- ssivark 3y agoNice example. At that point there's a subtle shift in emphasis from quantum gravity as the subject of the article to "my experience talking with a leading quantum gravity researcher" as the subject of an article. What the article is selling is the experience, rather than the knowledge. Which is fine in and of itself, except when that becomes an overly popular pivot and one feels inundated in indirection.
- boplicity 3y agoDo you want an experience, or do you want information? The right writing style is very much dependent on the answer to that question.
- version_five 3y agoFalse dichotomy. Tight writing produces both. For example, there's a quote about Simenon to the effect of "nobody else can in so few words recreate the entire atmosphere of a time and place (france in the ~30s)".
- apples_oranges 3y agoModern books are too long, too. Let's take something like "Atomic Habits", which was god knows how often recommended in various places.. it can be summarised on a few pages max. (Gauss would probably only need 1/3rd of a page..) I think it's psychology and psychology only why those books are too long: 1. more paper seems like it's worth more, so they can charge the $20 or whatever .. 2. reading 4 pages seems trivial, reading 400 is an accomplishment. Having accomplished something (even if its B.S.) increases likelihood that we recommend it, because we want to brag
- dingocat 3y agoA few pages? You barely need a single sentence. "Build lasting habits by recognizing how triggers lead to action."
- elboru 3y agoYeah, one of the problems with being too abstract is that it's open to many interpretations, most of them incorrect. Also, a few pages or paragraphs won't stick; I need examples. I'm not a computer; installing new ideas in my brain isn't like installing apps. My brain prefers storytelling to better grasp ideas and make them its own.
- Apocryphon 3y agoAgreed, but many self-help books either waste their time by making dubious claims from half-sourced research, using useless anecdotes, or repeating the problem in different ways. The best ones actually tell stories of different ways of using its method to solve a variety of problems.
- yulker 3y agoAbsolutely, that contextualization can be so useful even if some deem it fluffy. Also no one is obligated to read every single word of a book, if you don't want the anecdotes and case studies, you can skip them! They are helpful for the rest of us.
- 3y ago
- ngrilly 3y agoThat’s also true of many management books, where what could have been communicated in 10 to 50 pages has been diluted in 200 pages. I kind of understand why authors and editors were doing that when all books were printed: a 200 pages book looks more “serious”. But in the era of ebooks, it shouldn’t matter anymore.
- ekianjo 3y ago[flagged]
- Aaargh20318 3y agoNot just Google is to blame. In college it wasn't unusual to have minimum length requirements for written work. I once got into an argument with the teacher for a psychology elective. I asked her to indicate which oft the expected aspects I did not address, but she said she didn't even read it because "it was too short so it couldn't possibly cover everything". I padded it with a bunch of meaningless fluff, resubmitted it and it was accepted.
- einpoklum 3y agoReally? I've only ever encountered requirements of a _maximum_ length...
- TheFreim 3y agoI see that you are from Israel, perhaps there is a different practice as compared to my experience in the United States. All through middleschool, highschool, and college every writing assignment has had a minimum word or page count. Sometimes we had maximum requirements, but oftentimes just a minimum. I was nearly a straight-A student on writing assignments in college. I'd often write well below the minimum requirements by filling out my outline, then I'd add fluff around it to reach the minimum words without actually adding any meaningful content, still scored fine. Truly a profound waste of time.
- TheFreim 3y ago> I padded it with a bunch of meaningless fluff, resubmitted it and it was accepted. Similar story here. In college I got extremely good at adding fluff to reach minimum word counts, I performed well on almost all writing assignments doing this. I would write an outline, fill it out with useful information, and then turn a couple sentences of actual content into multiple paragraphs each.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoI had an advanced math exam (in physics) and I was at my second page for exercise 1 when the prof wandered around the class. He stopped at me, read a bit, sighted and then said loudly "ladies and gentlemen, I just would like to point out that if your handwriting is not too big, the solution to exercise 1 could fit on one line, max two. Thank you." What a way to fuck up my day :)
- jdjdjdjdjduuuu 3y ago[flagged]
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago>Their articles are too long and padded. because the algorithm rewards this. Which algorithm you ask? all of them.
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoIncluding this comment
- vidarh 3y agoArticles are also commonly paid for by the word, and so for anyone paid to write articles it rarely pays to spend more time per word unless doing so gets them a reputation boost sufficient to significantly boost their rate per word.