One of the best English classes I took was technical writing: first assignment was to write a 5 page paper; second assignment was to turn that paper into 2 pages; then 1 page; then a single paragraph. We cut out ALL the fluff.
“and that’s how you write a work email.”
Fucking fantastic.
When I wrote essays in school I pretty much did the opposite process to get to the length I needed. I think I’m generally just a very terse person. That is all.
Most classes require you to do the opposite to hit some arbitrary word or page count. I only ever had one prof who called that out as stupid. “Your coworkers will HATE you if you take the habits learned in most English courses into the workplace. Less is more.”
It’s really hard to unlearn after spending years being as verbose as possible to inflate an essay.
One trick is to tell 'em stories that don’t go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. “Give me five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
Grandpa, is this you?
My friend says “long story short” then spends 25 minutes telling me about every detail of his doctor’s appointment anyway.
I usually go with “long story shorter…” because I know no matter how much I try to condense things, my explanation will be long simply due to my need to over-explain.
I do this on purpose
I don’t explain what the right answer is
I explain to context of what was considered before coming to the answer.
I think I might work with you.
So I tied and onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.
Because there is a minimum paper length?
Because I find this useless information fascinating!
What if I already do that? #AuDHD
I do it AFTER the rambling story.
“…… short story long, (insert tl;dr verbally)”
It’s like “and then I found 5 dollars”
What do I want for dinner? Well, it all started with this dream I had…
It’s called a voice message.
Are you my SO?
Some people think their partners are emotional dumpsters, it’s a toxic trait for sure
Some people actually like getting more information than “I went to the store and grabbed some new clothes.”
Yeah but going on and on for hours without the other person speaking at all, repeating variations on the same information over and over, that’s annoying. I’ve seen it a lot.
That’s definitely the other side of the curve.
It’s not like they are encouraged to do so, and punished if not. Oh wait…
Found my colleague
Nate the snake anyone?
Leave my mum out of this.
Thank you for your service Mr. Data.
