Johnson in The Economist reviews a new book, "Writing for busy people", which presents principle long prized by the Economist's own style guide.
Despite the inherent brevity in our world of tik toks, snaps, and tweets (or x's), it does seem that collectively we have failed to embrace also the importance of thinking about what we want to express.
As Mark Twain wrote "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
Perhaps that realization only comes with long experience. It is also a skill that needs to be honed through education and early work experience. The long held best practices around 5-slide business presentations suggest a similar desire for simplicity and clarity. However, one can always adjust the font!
As Johnson writes, "If everyone is a busy reader, everyone is a busy writer, too. That may make it tempting to fire off as many messages as quickly as possible and hope for the best. But from essays to text messages organising dinner plans, devoting time to the needs of readers has provable benefits. If you are so busy that you write an undisciplined message that readers scan, ignore and delete, then you might as well have not written it at all."
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