The following chart shows the maximum amount of text users could read during an average visit to pages with different word counts.

-Jakob Nielsen

(click to enlarge)

(via Josh Sowin)

Admission: Twenty-two words isn’t enough to be completely clear.

Defense: No matter how much an author writes, there will still be misunderstanding.

Gifted writers make each sentence propel readers to the next.

Another strategy is to just finish before readers have time to quit.

Consider when editing yourself:

Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. (Proverbs 17:2

If you feel tempted to promise your audience that you’ll be brief, then your content probably warrants that you keep your word.

One minister suggests writing sermons as concise as Lincoln at Gettysburg.

Extra words will be added only to … enhance those 279 words.

Molly invented a girl name she thought I’d like:

Breva Dee.

But now she says we can’t ever use it. What gives?

The most important claim in Scripture—what all the rest of the Bible must be founded on—is the shortest: “I AM.”