Let me begin with a cliché. Brevity is the soul of wit. The ability to express in a few words what one wants to say is considered an admirable quality. Short and sweet has a rare charm. Let me go after our liking for brevity in this post.
How many words it takes?
When it comes to writing or speech some people find it extremely difficult to make things short. Remember the many functions you attended where one speaker with his long speech has spoiled the entire function. Each one of us will know at least one person who cannot stop when a microphone is given and who forces us to look at our watches frequently. While he enjoys the long speech, nothing can be a greater punishment for the audience. A lot of people do not realise that short speeches are the most effective ones usually. The issue is the same with writing too. Some cannot express anything in a few words. They write and write and the reader loses the track midway. The question is why it happens? The point is that the ability to say things briefly is a skill we need to master. Whether speech or writing, being brief is something we should aspire and consciously pursue. This was something even some of our greatest writers pursued vigorously. In a short essay on his writing styles, Bertrand Russel shared his obsession for brevity. He writes,
“ I had, however, already a different ideal, derived, I suppose, from mathematics. I wished to say everything in the smallest number of words in which it could be said clearly. I would spend hours trying to find the shortest way of saying something without ambiguity, and to this aim, I was willing to sacrifice all attempts at aesthetic excellence.”
Of course, not many can pursue this objective as diligently as Russel did. Of course, there may be some writers who underrate this obsession for brevity. In any case, the ideal of brevity remains particularly relevant in our age where time is in short supply and we are drowning in multiple distractions.
The twitter generation
The internet /Smartphone revolution has further brought the focus on crisp communication. We are in an era of fast and short communication. Lot of social media platforms encouraged conveying things in a few words. Some platforms even compromised on spellings and youngsters developed a charm for shortcuts to convey the matter. Before going into the merit and demerit of such usage of language, we must keep in mind that for many, communication in the shortest possible way was more important than the purity of the language and as people quickly embraced such platforms, communication itself acquired a new definition. What ultimately mattered was whether you communicated what is required effectively?
Then came the twitter and it opened an entirely new way of interaction. Communication in the shortest way acquired a cult status. Twitter tried something very different. To retain its unique position as a microblogging platform, it restricted the length of tweets to 140 characters. Recently it has been enhanced to 280 characters. The writer had to really plan what he/she wants to communicate and then tweet. When the length of your messages are limited, what happens naturally is you are forced to think before you write. Look at what one user had to say.
“I personally think the 140-character limit is a good thing. It forces you to really think about the message and content you put out. It’s harder to be concise versus rambling.”
In any case, this platform for short communication was lapped up by people across the world. Founded in 2006, it had 321 million active monthly users in 2018. It continues to be a hotbed of debates and news covering a variety of fields.
As our time gets increasingly divided between a hundred things, there will always be demand for conveying things in the most effective and shortest way.
The art of being brief
The trigger to go brief should come from the realisation that time is limited and everyone’s time is valuable. We have no right to demand it in excess quantity from anyone. So it comes down to an intense preparation before we speak or write. In fact lot of famous writers have devoted their attention to various techniques which can help people to be economical in the usage of words. We have our addictions and prejudices when it comes to the usage of language. If some have an obsession for a particular usage or word others are addicted to unwanted adverbs and adjectives. Look at what Stephen King, the famous American author of horror and supernatural fiction, says about adverbs.
” The adverb is not your friend. While to write adverbs is human, to write ‘he said or she said’ is divine.”
According to him, one should not write, for example, a sentence like, he closed the door firmly. The context should help the person to understand how he closed the door and hence the word “ firmly” becomes redundant.
In this context , it will also be interesting to make a brief mention about Chekhov’s Gun. Anton Chekhov was a famous Russian play wright and short story writer . Chekhov’s gun is a dramatic principle which states that every element in a story must be necessary and any irrelevant element should be removed. Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. This principle in Chekhov’s words is something like this “ If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” Though what Chekhov had in mind was the craft of a story, it is equally applicable to any written matter.
The point is that, if we want to say or write something in the minimum words it takes an effort. It is no wonder that we need the maximum time to prepare if the speech has to be delivered in minimum words. Look at this interesting anecdote from the life of Woodrow Wilson. A member of the Cabinet congratulated Wilson on introducing the vogue of short speeches and asked him about the time it took him to prepare his speeches. He said:
“It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”
This is the whole matter. As we have seen, the ability to communicate in a concise manner remains a noble pursuit. It is invariably linked to our profound respect for other’s time and the art of communication.
No Comments