GENERAL OBSERVATIONS: ON BREVITY OF STATEMENT 647 



of men use more words to express an idea than are actually 

 necessary, if the best words had been chosen. Study the mean- 

 ing of words, their shades of meaning, and re- write a subject 

 twenty times, if necessary, to state it cogently and with brevity. 

 Remember: nearly everybody will read a brief statement on an 

 interesting subject, while only the most phlegmatic and deter- 

 mined will hold themselves to a long-winded one. You will 

 more than treble the number of your readers by halving your 

 paper! Moreover, for the necessity of those who can't spend 

 even the minimum of time necessary to read a short paper, and 

 for the convenience of everybody, especially of the foreigner, 

 it is your solemn duty to sum up the substance of your contribu- 

 tion in a series of brief conclusions which everyone will read, 

 and which, if well put, may induce many to turn back and read 

 your whole paper. No little thing vexes me more than to take 

 up a paper two hundred pages long, let us say, often in a foreign 

 language, and find no summary. I dip into it here and there 

 trying to find what it is all about, without actually reading it 

 word for word, and if I cannot do this the chances are that I 

 throw it aside. Other people beside an author have some rights! 

 Once I might have read it verbatim, but I have read too many 

 such without profit, and now I am wary. It may be nearly all 

 ambrosia, but how is one to know if its author has not respected 

 it enough to provide a summary of its contents, as an appetizer? 

 Study then with all your might how to be brief, how to say 

 much in little, and do not use a word more than is requisite! 

 Yet at the same time, use all the space that is necessary to follow 

 your subject into all its various ramifications, and to present each 

 and every feature of it clearly. Brevity is never desirable when 

 it leads to obscurity. Often, especially in abstracts of papers 

 read at scientific meetings, a few words more, especially if well 

 chosen ones, would have converted a glittering generality which 

 tells nothing, nothing exactly and usefully, and therefore is worth 

 nothing, into a helpful note. There is a great opportunity 

 for reform in this particular. Either journals should publish 

 no abstracts whatever, or else exact, useful ones. Not every 

 one can make a good abstract, in fact, very few can; and in 

 general you should consult original papers rather than abstracts 



