“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” – Someone smart.

And now you know my favorite quote of all time. Let’s be friends.

Seriously, though. If you want to be a good writer, internalize this quote. (By the way, I wanted to write “take this quote to heart” but using the phrase “internalize” said the same thing in fewer words. See what I did there?)

A general rule of thumb for writing is that if you can say it in fewer words, you should. Because writing is not about “sounding smart” – writing is about conveying ideas as clearly as possible. And long sentences with convoluted syntax are not clearer. They are, almost always, more confusing. Don’t try to make your ideas “sound smart” – but rather, write smartly. If you care about crafting clear sentences, if your idea is smart to begin with, it will sound smart on paper.

There is one more brilliant quality to the above quote: it understands the sweat and toil of condensing your word count. Piling sentences one on top of the other and hoping that an idea will emerge by the end is easy but messy. Using as little words as possible to tell your story is difficult. It requires patience and the willingness to wrestle with your sentences to see if you can’t get them to be more economical.

In the spirit of this post topic, I will conclude in brief:

Tip of the day: if you can say it in 10 words, say it in 5.