Degrees of Concision: A Note on Writing in General
AdamsDrafting:
Normally I wouldn’t dream of going public with thoughts on writing in general. A vast number of people have busied themselves with that topic, so there’s no chance of my having anything novel to say. I regularly give thanks to the gods of writing that I’ve been given the near-virgin territory of contract drafting to explore.
But I’ll tell you how I spent my time yesterday morning.
I’ve been reviewing the page proofs of MSCD2; in a few more days it should be ready to go to the printers. Yesterday I noticed that I hadn’t included in the manuscript a sub-topic that I’d discussed in a three-paragraph blog item. The MSCD2 manuscript did, however, devote a single paragraph to a related topic. What do do?
I consulted the related MSCD2 paragraph and the blog item, then spent a total of about three hours, off and on, whittling down the MSCD2 paragraph by two-thirds, then distilling…