Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less

Smart Brevity emphasizes that today’s readers have limited attention spans and that writers will benefit from catering to this fact. In other words, meandering and long-winded prose is ill-suited for gaining the attention of modern readers, who do not read much content, preferring instead to scan and skim. The authors aim for the book to be a kind of modernized version of Strunk and White’s seminal guide The Elements of Style, albeit tailored to fit the needs of busy contemporary readers; in this sense, much of what the book has to say about certain principles of writing, such as the active voice being preferable to the passive, is nothing new. The book generally addresses the natural instinct many people have to say more in an effort to be heard and understood, making the case that, especially in the digital age, less is more.

However, yielding to current trends may not necessarily produce better writing. In a review for The New Republic, Colin Dickey points out that the authors of Smart Brevity concede to information consumption trends. Dickey accuses the book of adopting an ethos that suggests “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” Dickey says, “We are told again and again to put the most important point up front, instructed multiple times that headlines should have six words or less, and told ad infinitum that readers are too busy today to read inessential writing” (Dickey, Colin. “The Axios Guide to Writing Well Is Neither Smart nor Brief.” The New Republic, 15 Sept. 2022). Such minimizing of word count can have several negative effects. First, for example, Dickey notes how the book’s recommendations would strip information of context: “There’s very little in here that advises how to maintain depth or nuance as one cuts prose to the bone.” The omission of context can mislead readers, risking the headline becoming the entire message; this issue can be especially problematic if the headline’s takeaway and the real story, placed in context, do not entirely align. Second, as another example, Dickey observes that “[t]he book is designed less to be read than it is to be consumed.” The book is only looking to present information in a way that readers can devour rapidly; it aims to ensure that readers do not have to actively reflect on or process what it is they’re reading or, as the authors argue, what they are scanning and skimming. This approach raises a larger question of whether reading in the typical sense of the word is what any writer should expect from their audience.

Moreover, in the digital age, books ostensibly offering advice may be more heavily oriented toward building their authors’ brands; the authors of Smart Brevity, who are professional content producers, are indeed using the book as a powerful branding tool. Writing for ObjectiveJournalism.org, Ivan Fernandez argues that the book is primarily part of a commercial enterprise. Fernandez says,

The list of those that made and make smart brevity relevant is a who’s-who of sub-elites who work to sell something to someone all of the time. It gives the impression that smart brevity isn’t so much designed to publish news effectively as it is to peddle information to a specific consumer base (Fernandez, Ivan. “Smart Brevity: Who Suffers When Information Is Oversimplified?” Objective Journalism, 14 Mar. 2023).

The implication here is that the book is simply a product to be sold and consumed. Indeed, the authors of Smart Brevity often direct readers to their website and openly encourage readers to consider purchasing products to be found on the site. The final chapter of the book is also a marketing pitch that is a fairly bald attempt at what Fernandez refers to as “growing their brand.”