| Brevity and concision on their own are monotonous. You may have stumbled on this before but Gary Provost talks about writing 'music': "This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals—sounds that say listen to this, it is important. So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music." Stripping a sentence to its cleanest components is a worthy aim but not at the cost of composition. Because, writers are part composers. In gmail, you're not prompted to 'write' an email. You're prompted to 'compose' it. Brevity for its own sake isn't sustainable. |