Short Writing

Michael Kinsley has an excellent story in The Atlantic about newspaper articles that are too long.

“The software industry has a concept known as “legacy code,” meaning old stuff that is left in software programs, even after they are revised and updated, so that they will still work with older operating systems. The equivalent exists in newspaper stories, which are written to accommodate readers who have just emerged from a coma or a coal mine. Who needs to be told that reforming health care (three words) involves “a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system” (nine words)? Who needs to be reminded that Hillary Clinton tried this in her husband’s administration without success? Anybody who doesn’t know these things already is unlikely to care. (Is, in fact, unlikely to be reading the article.)”

Personally, I really like shorter stories, which probably has a lot to do with taking Stephen King’s “Omit Needless Words” doctrine to the extreme as a child. At the same time: random experts? Wordy leads? The urge to close with unnecessary forward-looking, closure-granting statements? I’m pretty sure almost everything I’ve read (or, ahem, written) lately involves at least two if not three of those, even when the article is only a few hundred words.

But as Kinsley says (see? unnecessary quoting!), that doesn’t make it OK.

“On the first day of my first real job in journalism—on the copy desk at the Royal Oak Daily Tribune in Royal Oak, Michigan—the chief copy editor said, “Remember, every word you cut saves the publisher money.” At the time, saving the publisher money didn’t strike me as the world’s noblest ideal. These days, for anyone in journalism, it’s more compelling.”