There is an option to stop writing.
There are also options to edit what’s already written, to cut, to shorten sentences.
More words don’t necessarily make it any easier to understand a message. As the 140-character limit of twitter demonstrates, communicating succinctly can be very effective: it concentrates the mind.
I can remember sitting in an exam and watching someone walk up to the front of the hall for more paper. I worried that I wasn’t writing enough. It didn’t matter: the few words I wrote answered the questions well enough for me to get an A.
I can remember a sales manager worrying about a tender and just writing more and more. In the end, they just repeated themselves to the point of confusion.
When standing up to deliver an elevator pitch, the most effective attention-grabber is often a pause.
Sometimes the words we leave out make those we do write and say even more powerful.
