{"id":24897,"date":"2020-11-19T13:54:06","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T17:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=24897"},"modified":"2023-12-27T12:04:25","modified_gmt":"2023-12-27T16:04:25","slug":"quotes-on-writing-concise-copy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/what-is-readability\/short-content\/quotes-on-writing-concise-copy\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on writing concise copy"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers & others say<\/h2>\n

\"Quotes

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“Most speeches are like Texas longhorns \u2014 a point here, a point there, and a lot of bull in between.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
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“Editing is like reducing a good sauce.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Attendee in one of Ann Wylie\u2019s writing classes<\/h6>\n
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“synopsize: To condense the details of a boring, two-hour meeting into a briefer \u2014 yet still as boring \u2014 version.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 BuzzWhack<\/h6>\n
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“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Truman Capote, author of the first “nonfiction novel,” In Cold Blood<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Axe, cut, compress, condense, decrease, delete, drop, eliminate, eradicate, excise, hone, lop, pare, prune, reduce, remove, revise, rewrite, sharpen, slash, streamline, tighten, trim, whittle. \u2026 Two dozen words to remind us that we almost always write too many words.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Theodore A. Rees Cheney, author of Getting the Words Right: How to Revise, Edit, and Rewrite<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“I like density, not volume.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Maureen Howard, American writer<\/h6>\n
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“Formula: 2nd draft = 1st draft \u2013 10%”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Stephen King, prolific novelist, in On Writing<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“The struggle is against words, words, words.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Samuel Menashe, New York poet<\/h6>\n
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“Most writers, when ordered to write short, make the mistake of writing the garbage compactor story, compressing everything in the notebook into a hard, indigestible pellet of news.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Writing to Deadline<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“The greatest artist is the simplifier.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Writing to Deadline<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“[Editing] is trying to fit ten pounds of shite into a five-pound bag.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 John Nolan, newspaper editor<\/h6>\n
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“The wastebasket is a writer\u2019s best friend.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Prize-winning author<\/h6>\n
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“There is but one art, to omit. Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad<\/em> of a daily newspaper.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish author<\/h6>\n
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“Omit needless words.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Strunk Jr., The Elements of Style<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Omit needless words<\/del>.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014\u00a0Barry Newman, \u201cKing of the A-Hed\u201d at the Wall Street Journal,<\/em>\u00a0editing Strunk and White<\/h6>\n
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“The difference between a book that used to be 400 pages and is now 200 pages and a book that has always been 200 pages is that the other 200 pages are still there, only you can\u2019t see them.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Elie Weisel, Nobel Peace Prize-winning novelist and political activist, quoted by Chip Scanlan in Chip on Your Shoulder<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“I recall a classic critique of a two-line poem: \u2018It\u2019s nice, though there are dull stretches.\u2019”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Alan Weiss, principle, Summit Consulting<\/h6>\n
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