the beauty of brevity

(To make this post short - 140 characters no less) "Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words"Apocrypha, Ecclesiastics 32:8

(To make it a little longer) short is becoming more sweet in communications. While good communications is exactly as long as it needs to be in order to convey a message, I suggest that this length is reducing. As the cost of generating and transmitting information falls, people are increasingly overloaded with information. They have less time to digest individual messages and less patience to apply. This is no less so than in a business (see an engaging presentation on the issuehere).

Further, people transfer experiences from different media into general communications expectations; texting and micro-blogging (Twitter) in particular, are causing people to interact with extreme brevity. Even less is becoming even more - and while this doesn't encourage depth or richness it does act to reduce reader attention spans.

Good sales writing has always reflected the beauty of brevity - cutting to the chase respects your customers reality and increases your chance of engaging them. The art is in the writing - but in addition, with the tools of today, sales can more easily employ multi-sensory media to support their story and offer in situ links to greater subject depth - whether online or appended. As the ante is raised, so are the tools to reach it - enough said.