The Revenge of the Concise Writer

It’s taken years, but the world has come round to the type of writing I like to do. When I was in high school and university, my teachers were unimpressed by the brevity of my essays. As a language student (English, French, Spanish) I had to write lots of essays, but invariably I’d be marked down because they were too short.

Academic Writing

Then, as now, I was an excellent researcher, so no-one could find fault with the content. What they didn’t like was that I didn’t expand on it enough. It was considered de rigueur for Arts and Humanities students to write impressive and lengthy papers on any aspect of language or literature.

I never saw the point. The way I figured it was, if I knew the material and had shown that that I knew the material, what did it matter how many words it took me to prove that? In the end, we had to agree to disagree on that one — and since I still managed to graduate with honors, the story had a happy ending.

Journalistic Writing

Once I started working as a journalist, things began to improve. Although my first editor didn’t set strict limits on word count, it was better to write something relatively short so as not to cause problems when doing layout. (At my first paper they were doing paste-up, which probably reveals more than it should about my age!) To go with my well-honed academic writing skills, I learned the 6 Ws and the inverted pyramid and my inclination towards concise writing came into its own.

Writing Web Content

Fast forward to the present, and I’m in a writing world that my teachers did not foresee. Now I mostly write web content. That means I have to keep articles and blog posts short and to the point. Finally, being able to explain something in 300–700 words has become a gift rather than a burden. I’m doing the dance of joy! :)

(Photo: cathepsut)

Update: Check out the related poll on my Facebook page: what type of writer are you?