William Strunk didn't go far enough
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Tuesday, Feb 21, 2012 / 3:30pm View more articles
In 1918, William Strunk wrote in The Elements of Style “a sentence should contain no unnecessary words.”
A century later, it's still true:
- Cutting word count in half doubles comprehension
- Mobile content is 2x harder to read than desktop
- Desktop reading is 20–25% slower than paper
- Users read only the first 2 words of a paragraph as they scan down a page
Strunk didn't go far enough. Don't just “omit needless words”. Cut everything. Then do it again. Readers will appreciate it.
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Very interesting, especially in light of the typical Congressional "act to do this that or t'other".