But it is easier to be long than short. I have always found
compressing, cutting out, and tersifying a passage suggests more than
anything else does. Things pruned off in this way are like the heads
of the hydra, two grow for every two that is lopped off.
Omission
If a writer will go on the principle of stopping everywhere and
anywhere to put down his notes, as the true painter will stop
anywhere and everywhere to sketch, he will be able to cut down his
works liberally. He will become prodigal not of writing--any fool
can be this--but of omission. You become brief because you have more
things to say than time to say them in. One of the chief arts is
that of knowing what to neglect and the more talk increases the more
necessary does this art become.
Brevity
Handel's jig in the ninth Suite de Pieces, in G minor, is very fine
but it is perhaps a little long. Probably Handel was in a hurry, for
it takes much more time to get a thing short than to leave it a
little long. Brevity is not only the soul of wit, but the soul of
making oneself agreeable and of getting on with people, and, indeed,
of everything that makes life worth living. So precious a thing,
however, cannot be got without more expense and trouble than most of
us have the moral wealth to lay out.
Diffuseness
This sometimes helps, as, for instance, when the subject is hard;
words that may be, strictly speaking, unnecessary still may make
things easier for the reader by giving him more time to master the
thought while his eye is running over the verbiage.
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