Every edit this week cut a sentence, not added one. The first draft of this issue ran fourteen hundred words. What you are reading is six hundred, and it says more, not less, because most of what got cut was throat-clearing. "I think," "in my opinion," "it's worth noting that." None of that is an argument. It is a hedge.

The best writers you know already do this. They just do not talk about it, because talking about your own restraint is its own kind of showing off. So consider this the one exception.

"The best paragraph is the one you deleted."

Three ways to cut, this week

Further reading

The five-word rule , issue 22

Why your bio is fifty words too long , issue 31

The email nobody finished reading, and why , issue 15