Remember when Blaise Pascal wrote, “I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter”?

(That was in 1656 so I’m using “remember” a bit loosely, since none of us was there. Anyway.)

Twitter provides a needed corrective for the expansive nature of electronic communications. When you are printing a book, a newsletter, or a brochure, fairly quickly you get to the point of paring down content, condensing, and providing only the most valuable information, in order to save on printing costs (if nothing else).

On the web, you can bloviate nearly infinitely, although if you do, your communications will fail because people’s attention spans and patience are both limited.

The discipline of saying something of substance in 140 characters is the same discipline you using paring down a line or a stanza in a poem, where compression is a critical skill — and it often happens in the rewriting, not the drafting. It’s also a critical skill in prose, but one that tends to get short shrift. When we find a prose writer who can do it well, we tend to call them “lyrical” as a nod to that poetic skill; Amy Hempel is a good example — if you think of others, add ‘em in the comments.

p.s. – you can follow me on twitter here: http://twitter.com/skanning