“Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.” -E.B. White
Short and sweet nonfiction has become a popular form, especially with the success of Brevity Magazine, a journal that publishes works of nonfiction that are 750 words or less. But what does it mean to keep your writing brief, besides just having a low word count? And how should one go about achieving brevity? Danny Heitman explores these question in his article “Keep It Short,” recently published by the New York Times. Heitman reminds us that getting a piece of writing to a place where it is concise often takes several reductive rounds of edits. Here, he talks about E.B. White’s penchant for succinct language:
“Perhaps no one exemplifies this principle more vividly than E.B. White, the magazine essayist and children’s author celebrated for his deceptively simple style. White excelled in a number of forms, including ‘Talk of the Town’ items for The New Yorker — graceful editorials that derived much of their charm from their compact scale. Although White’s gift for saying much in a few words looked effortless, he often achieved his pith by distilling one draft after another to its elegant essence.”
Read more of the article here!
