No brevity without substance, please

“Brevity without substance is useless.” This statement in Bryan Garner’s HBR Guide to Better Business Writing spoke to me.

 

If you regularly read this blog, you know I’m a big fan of writing concisely, and observing the rule of 42-14-2. However, sometimes a longer sentence is easier to understand than a shorter sentence. And, a paragraph may be easier to understand than a single sentence.

Garner sums up your goal as follows; “Provide only the information the reader needs to understand the issue—no more and no less.”

 

Disclosure: If you click on the Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I link only to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.

 

The image in the upper left is courtesy of Nick Youngson  [CC BY-SA 3.0]