There is Nothing Virtuous About Document Length

Second order effects of a writing-first culture

Copy/pasted from an internal blog post originally from June 2022

I’ve heard some derivative of “that document was long thus it must be good” mentioned multiple times over the last few weeks. I think this is a natural downside of a writing culture that encourages complete thinking, so it’s incumbent upon us to look out for that attitude and defend against it. This is me attempting to do that.

Note, I’m not saying that short documents are good, either – there’s simply no relationship between the length of a document and its quality. Excellent writing is clear and manages to find the right level of detail for the task at hand.