Read an interesting piece on here about the need - indeed the necessity - for sometimes taking the Swann Morton’s (designers of a certain age will know…) to your writing. 

Or having the temerity to take it to others. 

Point was, and it’s a good one, that some instances need the trim, the line of attack being audiences really like you to get to the point. No time for slack-jawed, gum-chewing dawdling in those lines of industry. 

And I totally agree. 

Good, so having got that non-argument out of the way, it set me to thinking where does ‘content’ end and ‘style’ begin - or vice-a-versa? 

How does the notion of the least best (ha ha!) work when you want to get across the who (without any doubt) is behind the what?

Is it a even a problem at all (as Maximo Park’s Paul Smith remarked, when is the signal ever removed the sign)?

My conclusion (well, as in the deadline limitations of the time I’ve afforded to writing this, which amounts to a conclusion. For now) is that you can still pack a personal(ality) punch in a paragraph without needless drawing things out or driving the reader either a. into a coma or b. to the competition. 

Of course this idea is all well and good in practice - or rather isn’t, as demonstrated daily in my fartMusings - but it has to be a good maxim, no?

After all, if Irvine Welsh could sell a book about Scottish heroine addicts with the opening line “The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.” just ten words can sometimes do the job. 

Ok, admittedly, maybe the accent helps. Can’t see that getting through the approval process. Maybe twelve words down to the bone then.