When I first started to write this post, the title was just ”Brief is beautiful”, but then I thought ”In which cases is this not true” and then I had to change the title. One should always ask the question:
”In which cases are my line of thought not true, and why is that?”
When it comes to Breif is Beautiful, I am refering to written material for marketing. When explaining what you do or what are the benefits of your product, you should be as concise as possible, using just as many words as you need to get the point across. Write your texts as long as necessary, and as short as possible, keeping the following two points in mind:
1. Brief and to the point
2. Short and clear
This is the difficult and interesting point, as short as possible for one target group does’t necessary mean that another target group doesn’t need a more elaborate text to get the point of the text. It is always harder to write a concise text than a long rabbling text, and since more and more literature is produced online, it will be more and more important to be able to write short concise texts.
When is long beautiful
Long texts can be beautiful, and the most obvious case is when the text is not about selling, but building a stage or feeling, like books in fiction, biographies or history, in contrast to manuals, sales brochures or textbooks that are better off as concise texts.
Did you get my point, or do I need to be more concise?
One Comment on “Brief is Beautiful (or is it?)”
I recently learned a new, at least for me, very useful word: ”succinct”. It means
1. expressed in few words; concise; terse.
2. characterized by conciseness or verbal brevity.
3. compressed into a small area, scope, or compass.