I like reading Letters of Note, a blog about letters throughout history. What’s interesting to me is how many of these are concise and to the point.
I wonder how much of our approach about writing changed just because we don’t write on paper anymore. With paper, you run out of room. You have, at most, a front and back side to get your point across. The default is the front side of the paper. So that’s what most letters use.
On blogs, your website, and emails you send – there is no end. You can keep going on and on and on if you want with no consequences other than boring your reader. You won’t run out of paper or ink. There is no default imposed by the medium.
Keyboards make it easier to write at length, even if you don’t need to. Computer screens deceive us into thinking how much we’ve written. Take this letter from Albert Einstein to Erik Gutkind:
Yikes, right? But when Letters of Note transcribes it this letter turns to be about 4 paragraphs long. Suddenly it’s not so bad.