Good Writing: Efficiency part 2

I didn't discuss everything I wanted to in my last post concerning efficiency. There's one aspect of the quality that's fairly universal in writing, and that's word economy.

It's generally considered better writing to describe a concept or other subject in as few words as possible. Of course if you take this too far you can wind up being too vague to communicate anything. A description of the universe and its workings could be "there's stuff," but that does very little to establish anything of importance about the realm of our experience. This doesn't diminish the tedium of an exhaustive list of traits the observable universe possesses. That may be useful for science, but not for an answer.

I don't have the confidence to provide you with what I think a good description of everything looks like.

I suspect I should provide some good examples of the merit of word economy. Take poetry. Especially today, with the prevalence of free verse, there is an emphasis on making every single word in the poem belong and carry as much weight as possible. The conventions of English grammar are loosened in this pursuit. Incidentally I find this to be part of the reason many people find poetry inaccessible. It is language abstracted, reduced and elevated by a presentation much unlike what you experience in spoken word or in prose.

But word economy applies to prose just as well. The word "that" is often extraneous, and can be omitted from many sentences without any sacrifice in meaning. Word processors and writing professors alike discourage the use of phrases that take more words to say the same thing as "like" or "but."

I guess what we're striving for is an utterance that comes as close as possible to meaning what it says. That's not to imply it says what it means. Buried meaning, that can be read into the diction or syntax or tone of what is written, is of high value in today's writing environment. It's probably why literature studies in school stress a search for symbolism in works. It is an effective way to encourage deeper reading, which is valued because of reasons I won't get into in this blog post.

Honestly word economy can be as hairy as any other aspect of efficiency. Fantasy descriptions can be florid with adjectives and compound sentences and adverbs, and plenty of people love it that way. I return to my question that ended the last blog post: is their preference indicative of a lack of culture via delight in archaic and "inferior" means of discourse?

I would say that aesthetics play a large part in the value placed on words, and there is a great deal of differing opinion over what is valued aesthetically and to what degree.

Just be careful when you're writing, because if it takes too ling to say what it's saying then people will tl;dr you right in the face.