A few years ago, I got my company to sponsor me in a technical writing course. I don’t remember a lot of the course content now. However, there was 1 lesson I will always remember, the teacher used a lot of writing examples from Ernest Hemingway. She described his writing as:
Clear, concise and Ernest has the ability to describe (or tell a story) in the least no. of words possible without losing the message.
It’s stuck with me. Even til Today.
And then I came across an article about making better user experience by using fewer words. It gave 3 examples of how he reduced the no. of words without losing it’s message. One such good example is Fewer words 101: In the classroom. He reduced the original sentence from 16 words to 2 words. And it was all the reader needed to know!
In the context of this article, he described the objective of using fewer words as:
It’s how UX writers reduce the text to create experiences that let people to do more of what they want to do — not waste their time reading explanations of how to do it.
Not that different from the lesson I learn many years go?