After an MSG-laden meal of Chinese food recently, I opened up my fortune cookie to find the following words: “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
Now, while this was not technically a fortune revealing my life’s destiny, the words on the little scrap of paper did offer guidance for future endeavors: to be succinct and precise in one’s use of language. This is valuable advice for those struggling to improve their writing and oral communication skills (or their campaigns for electoral office).
This advice is also, apparently, quite old. I’ve been reading A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L’Engle (author of the children’s book A Wrinkle in Time), which is kind of messy and rambly, but is mostly about her experiences as a writer, teacher, mother and wife. On page 149 she cites an anonymous poem written several centuries ago:
The written word
Should be clean as bone,
Clear as light,
Firm as stone.
Two words are not
As good as one.
So there you have it: a centuries’ old anonymous poet and a modern-day anonymous fortune cookie manufacturer are in agreement. Keep it short and sweet.
“Short words are best”, said Winston Churchill, “and old words when short are best of all.”