: Re: Verbosity: when's enough enough? In corporate life I've come across two general styles of writing: terse and cryptic or long and complete. In my own writing I tend to go too much in the

The classic answer comes from Strunk & White's The Elements of Style:

Omit needless words.
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 his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

I see a lot of overwriting in my corporate life. I believe much of it stems from writers who lack confidence in their ability to produce clear prose. I also believe it stems from writers attempting to sound intelligent.

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: Here is one (probably less traditional) approach, which covers the whole process: http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/01/meta-principles-i-learned-from-running-lean/ The idea here is to couple audience discovery

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: Is it so bad to end up with a "done before" plot? I'm not delusional about the nature of the science fiction novel I'm (very) slowly working on. A brief run down might be as follows: Set

@Martha805

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: What are some appropriate uses of readability tests? Do you use readability metrics (such as Gunning fog or Flesch-Kincaid) as you're working on a piece? If so, how do you use them, and what

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: In my experience, you're not likely to find much of anything useful without paying. The Association of American Publishers has some statistics for free (2009 Preliminary Estimates), but you'll

: Re: Verbosity: when's enough enough? In corporate life I've come across two general styles of writing: terse and cryptic or long and complete. In my own writing I tend to go too much in the

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: Here is one (probably less traditional) approach, which covers the whole process: http://www.ashmaurya.com/2011/01/meta-principles-i-learned-from-running-lean/ The idea here is to couple audience discovery

: Is it so bad to end up with a "done before" plot? I'm not delusional about the nature of the science fiction novel I'm (very) slowly working on. A brief run down might be as follows: Set

: What are some appropriate uses of readability tests? Do you use readability metrics (such as Gunning fog or Flesch-Kincaid) as you're working on a piece? If so, how do you use them, and what

: In my experience, you're not likely to find much of anything useful without paying. The Association of American Publishers has some statistics for free (2009 Preliminary Estimates), but you'll

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