Let the reader find that he cannot afford to omit any line of your writing because you you have omitted every word that he can spare.
Interpretation
Writing should be so engaging that the reader feels compelled to read every word.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the importance of clarity and relevance in writing. It suggests that good writing is marked by its ability to engage readers, making them unable to skip any part because every line is thoughtfully crafted and indispensable to the overall message.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to convince participants to focus on clarity, I might cite Emerson's quote.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.
Progressive white teachers seem to say to their black students 'Let me help you find your voice. I promise not to criticize one note as you search for your song'. But the black teachers say 'I've heard your song loud and clear. Now I want to teach you to harmonize with the rest of the world.
To go back and read Swift and Defoe and Samuel Johnson and Smollett and Pope - all those people we had to read in college English courses - to read them now is to have one of the infinite pleasures in life.
When we teach our children to be good, to be gentle, to be forgiving (all these are attributes of God), to be generous, to love their follow men, to regard this present age as nothing, we instill virtue in their souls, and reveal the image of God within them.
The pupil is ... 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.
Turn to page three hundred and ninety-four.
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