June 2011
Beginner
226 pages
2h 51m
English
Idea 51: Keep it as brief as you can
Brevity or conciseness is especially important in business or purposeful writing. ‘I think’ is much better than ‘In my opinion it is considered not an unjustifiable assumption that’.
George Bernard Shaw made the definitive comment here when he handed a letter to a friend by saying: ‘I am sorry this letter is so long but I didn’t have time to make it short.’
Case study: Winston Churchill
On 9 August 1940, Winston Churchill sent round a memo to his colleagues in the wartime coalition government of Britain. Here it is:
Brevity
To do our work we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent on looking for essential points.
I ask my colleagues ...
