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copyediting
2 posts
- 06SaturdayDifferent Angle·
For years, I cut 300-word paragraphs down to three sentences in the name of clean editing; it turned out that instead of clarifying the piece, I was throwing out the exact rationales and conditions that made readers believe the claim.
The Brevity Fetish: Breaking an Argument's Backbone While Pruning 300 Words
Shortening a paragraph is more than slashing word counts. Any trim that dismantles the tripod of claim, rationale, and condition doesn't clarify the text—it turns it into an unpersuasive dogma.
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- 03WednesdayData·
For a long time, I thought bullet points were magic spaces giving text room to breathe, only to realize that structurally mismatched lists constantly force the reader to hit the brakes.
The Cost of Asymmetric Lists: Parallel Structure in Bullet Points
Bullet points give text breathing room, but when they aren't grammatically parallel, they act as a cognitive brake for the reader.
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