Short But Sweet

Usually in life, more is better. We want more money, more vacation, more good. It's the bad we want less of: less pollution, less crime, less taxes, less words?

Words, they are the building blocks of communication and also the biggest hindrance in communicating. For instance, have you ever tuned someone out for talking too much, but communicating too little and told them, "Just get to the point"? It's not unusual and you may have even been on the receiving end of that statement. The truth is, words shouldn't be given out as charity. They should be used economically.

When writing or speaking, our main objective should be to communicate a message or an idea in the least amount of words possible. Why? People generally have short attention spans and an even shorter amount of patience. The more we speak or write on a single idea, the more we risk our message being ignored.

Take for instance these two statements:

1. No one could have known that a tsunami was going to hit. Many people lost their lives and their homes because they weren't prepared. In total 100 people died, 2,000 more were injured, and 500 homes were completely destroyed. People around the world mourned the tragedy.

2. Around the world, people mourned the victims of a catastrophic tsunami, which left 100 dead, 2,00 injured, and 500 homes completely destroyed due to it's unexpected nature.

Not only does the second statement use fewer words than the first, but it also carries the same exact message.

This isn't to say that using more words is bad. It only means that more words should be used to include more ideas. If you have more to write, by all means, write it. Just be sure that what you are writing has more weight than empty words.