Concise writing sometimes cut away important information that cannot be conveyed in a concise manner.
It's like a sonata where we have a favourite part. Why don't we just play that part?
This is not an argument against editing or improving the information density.
Re:Some thoughts on writing
by paulpauper on Monday December 13, 2021 @09:53PM
(#29547644)
Concise writing does not go viral like long writing does. I have observed that longer articles have more success even if few people read them in their entirety. Slate Star Codex articles are often long and go viral.
What's particularly aggravating is that he knows, more or less, what clear, concise writing is (cf. his discussion of "classic style") and goes out of his way to not write like that. Yes, I read his justification. No, it's not good.
Someone is going to chime in by saying that I must be wrong because his articles frequently reach the HN frontpage. But correlation is not causation. The actual information content is generally really good – that's why they're popular. But they'd be even better with more attention to the mechanics of writing.