Cut the Crap

Long ago I came in contact with a quotation, either in print, on radio, or maybe even a cocktail party, that has since lodged into my cranium.

"I apologize for the long letter, for I did not have time to write a short one."

I have tried in vain to run down the origin of this quote, or what I remember the quote to be, for it radically changed the way I thought about the art of writing. I analyzed the quote's intention, critiqued my personal writing style, and realized that for years, I had been duped by the educational system.

Throughout elementary, middle and high school, the criteria by which teachers would grade term papers and test essays consisted of many variables, including obvious ones like content, spelling and grammar. But one barometer often carried the heaviest weight - length.

"Miss Kringle, how long does it have to be?" is a question that undoubtedly still reverberates through the halls of schools everywhere. The numeric answer was a horizon, a signpost, of how much work had to go into the assignment.

Countless times I would write an essay, place my finger on the page, and slowly count the words. If the assignment called for one-thousand, and you only had 920, it was "filler" time. I would scan the page looking for holes to fill, short sentences to expand, and big vocabulary words to chop into slivers. The page count would slowly build. 930...946...965. By the time I hit the magic 1,000, the paper was long-winded, vague, and just plain wordy. But hey, I crossed the line, and the assignment was complete. I would repeat this process (like many others I'm sure) throughout my pre-college education.

Today, I am laboriously trying to undo this extraordinarily bad writing habit. E.B. White's book, The Elements of Style (a hardcover book I found used for a dollar at a library sale), said it best:

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

White's words, and the aforementioned uncredited quotation, are lessons I struggle with everyday, and should have been taught years ago. Simplicity and clarity are elusive, and only reveal their true beauty after considerable sweat and vigilance.