• porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
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    21 hours ago

    It depends on how much you’re expressing with it. There’s a difference between being concise and not having anything to say. I think the former is a great virtue. Whittling your text down to the minimum which can still convey what you want forces you to really understand the content. Of course, if you want to add emotional depth you’ll still need more words than you would for raw information.

    • Foxfire@pawb.social
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      20 hours ago

      Yeah, that’s very true. Writing should be structured, concise, and flow well, as opposed to being a disjointed mess of empty paragraphs. It’s not that more words is inherently better, but more of a reminder that writing can be a fun and creative activity, and you can impart that joy onto others too. I actually left a pretty big hole in my reply for the sake of humor, which is the overarching context of the meme being a school assignment. You addressed it thoughtfully, but I was waiting for a silly response along the lines of:

      Sir, this is a 6th grade essay about George Washington.

      Arbitrarily shoving words where they don’t belong, into a premise you aren’t interested in writing about, isn’t ever going to be a fun time. If anything, it might put folks off of writing in the same way that dry school book assignments can for reading. When you spend more time with writing though, something you’re generally interesting in talking about, more words tend to come out—and that’s usually a good thing! Concise is not inherently minimalist, nor is it required to be devoid of emotion. Find your voice, let the words flow, and you’ll likely end up painting a more complete picture of what you want to convey.