Inverse Proportion: # of Words, Time Per Word

by rrusczyk, Nov 18, 2009, 11:05 PM

Now that I'm shifting from writing the Precalc book to working on a site redesign, I'm crashing on a very frustrating truth. Halve the space you have in which to express something, and you double the time it takes to express it well.

Nuts.

writing

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Quote:

I apologize for writing you a long letter, but I didn't have time to write you a short one.

--Blaise Pascal

by nsato, Nov 19, 2009, 1:06 AM

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Quote:

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

by rrusczyk, Nov 19, 2009, 2:03 AM

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Quote:

Easy reading is d-a-m-n hard writing.

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

by Ravi B, Nov 19, 2009, 2:28 AM

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I'm leading an effort to refresh the social networking / knowledge management tools in my business unit. One of our HP Fellows recommended that I read the book Groundswell. I haven't finished it, but it seems to have some insights into how digital communities develop and evolve.

http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/index.html?cm_guid=1-_-100000000000000000029-_-3034887488&cm_mmc=google-_-Groundswell_-_Opt-_-Groundswell_General_-_Opt-_-groundswell_book%7C-%7C100000000000000000029

Oh, and:

Lex Luthor: Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.
- Superman (1)

by djcordeiro, Nov 19, 2009, 12:26 PM

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For English, we had to write a 100-word essay. My rough draft took up 600 words, and I spent around thirty minutes on it. Cutting it down to shreds took an hour. Realizing that it was terrible, I got rid of what I had and completely rewrote it in 120 words, in a little over an hour. Trying to figure out which twenty words to cut took even longer.

by isabella2296, Nov 19, 2009, 9:58 PM

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Math FAIL.

I believe you mean that the total time is inversely proportional to the length, so that the time *per word* is inversely proportional to the length squared.

by sandor, Dec 4, 2009, 6:05 AM