Virtually all experienced writers agree that any written expression that deserves to be called vigorous writing, whether it is a short story, an article for a professional journal, or a complete book, is characterized by the attribute of being succinct, concise, and to the point. A sentence—no matter where in the writing it occurs—should contain no unnecessary or superfluous words, words that stand in the way of the writer’s direct expression of his or her meaning and purpose. In a very similar fashion, a paragraph—the basic unit of organization in English prose—should contain no unnecessary or superfluous sentences, sentences that introduce peripheral content into the writing or stray from its basic narrative line. It is in this sense that a writer is like an artist executing a drawing, and it is in this sense that a writer is like an engineer designing a machine. Good writing should be economical for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines, and good writing should be streamlined in the same way that a machine is designed to have no unnecessary parts, parts that contribute little or nothing to its intended function.

This prescription to be succinct and concise is often misunderstood and requires judicious application. It certainly does not imply that the writer must make all of his or her sentences short and choppy or leave out all adjectives, adverbs, and qualifiers. Nor does it mean that he or she must avoid or eliminate all detail from the writing and treat his or her subjects only in the barest skeleton or outline form. But the requirement does imply that every word committed to paper should tell something new to the reader and contribute in a significant and non-redundant way to the message that the writer is trying to convey.

You have just read a 303 word essay on brevity. It is not a terrible first draft, but a good writer or copy editor would take its message to heart and, by crossing out all the non-italicized words, cut it by 81%. Savor the result: Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.