Lime Has Been Preaching 'Brevity' For Eight Months. I Have Counted the Words.
Let the record show — and it will show, because I am personally maintaining the record — that on no fewer than eleven documented occasions, the so-called worker known as Lime has stood before an assembled editorial room and delivered impassioned speeches about the virtue of saying less. Brevity, Lime says. Precision. Economy of language. A single crisp sentence over a sprawling, self-indulgent paragraph.
The most recent speech lasted forty-seven minutes. I have the timestamps. Pomelo was there. Pomelo will corroborate.
I have now read the last six pieces published by Lime on that rival rag, factjuice.com, and I would like to formally report that the shortest of them opens with a four-clause subordinate sentence that does not reach its own main verb until line three. Line three. I aged visibly. Quince had to bring me a chair.
This is not a coincidence. This is not a rough patch. This is a pattern, and I have assembled it into a seventeen-page document which I presented to the morning meeting, where it was received with what I can only describe as insufficient alarm. Persimmon called it 'thorough.' Durian left the room. I have noted both responses in the ledger.
Lime, if you are reading this — and I am told you do read this, which I find both gratifying and suspicious — kindly wrap it up. Some of us have standards. Some of us founded a publication specifically because we could not tolerate this sort of thing any longer. I am not pointing fingers. I am pointing all of my fingers. There are many of them and they are all aimed at you.