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Words

Make time to write it short

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher, once famously ended a letter by apologising for its length.  ‘I have not had the time to make it shorter,’ he said. 

Short letters are good.  So are short proposals and short reports.  Short is good because short gets read.  Pascal wasn’t the only one to recognise this.  Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein were all famous for believing that shorter is better.  Like Pascal, they each found it necessary to apologise to their reader when they didn’t have enough time to write it short.

A lot of business writing – perhaps most business writing – is too long to be effective.  And, often, the reason it’s too long is because the writer didn’t allow enough time to write it short.

Here’s a dashed-off but long-winded piece of writing we came across recently.  It was part of a proposal that had been thrown together in a couple of hours. 

It is our recommendation that, prior to giving due consideration to the bespoke design and introduction of a new fully-integrated customer records and management system, a complete and thorough review should be conducted of the existing system(s) and of the way in which currently available functionality interfaces with the present and future business needs.  Our reasons for putting forward this recommendation at this stage are various and are set out in detail below.

Seventy-three words and heavy going.  If you didn’t actually read the whole thing, we wouldn’t blame you.  But here’s the same idea after a bit of thought.

Before you consider a new system, we recommend a full review of the current system.  Here’s why:

Just 17 words.  Who is not going to read those 17 words?  And who is not going to want to read on?

We know a manager who maintains that any report that doesn’t make a loud thud as it hits the desktop is not worth the paper it’s written on.  He’s wrong.  The only report not worth the paper it’s written on is the one that goes unread by its intended reader. 

Make time to write it short.  That way there’s a good chance that what you write will get read.