[horsehead]

When writing for publication, I enjoy pondering this quote: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." From S. Shchukin, Memoirs

That is to say, if you're going to write something, every word has to have potency. This gets at the cut in half, cut in half, cut in half advice.

In short, good writing is concise.

[jamesbritt]

At some techie user group someone had a copy of a pretty brief O'Reilly Rails book. I observed that the book price seemed the same as what O'Reilly charged for "full-length" books.

A friend then said he would be happy to pay even twice as much if the author could have made it half-again as short.

BTW, I could have sworn that quote was from Chekov. Either way, on the money.

[StavrosK]

Yeah, it's Chekhov's gun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun

[horsehead]

Yeah, I think it's a variation of the Chekov quote (I pulled it from the chekov's gun's wiki. That was the quote that stuck out to me the most from my classes in Uni).