During Q&A at a conference I spoke at a few years back, someone asked me “What’s your take on the true value of a university education?” I shared my general opinion (summary: great socially, but not realistic enough academically) and ended with a description of a course I’d like to see taught in college. In fact, I’d like to teach it.
It would be a writing course. Every assignment would be delivered in five versions: A three page version, a one page version, a three paragraph version, a one paragraph version, and a one sentence version.
I don’t care about the topic. I care about the editing. I care about the constant refinement and compression. I care about taking three pages and turning it one page. Then from one page into three paragraphs. Then from three paragraphs into one paragraph. And finally, from one paragraph into one perfectly distilled sentence.
Along the way you’d trade detail for brevity. Hopefully adding clarity at each point. This is important because I believe editing is an essential skill that is often overlooked and under appreciated. The future belongs to the best editors.
Each step requires asking “What’s really important?” That’s the most important question you can ask yourself about anything. The class would really be about answering that very question at each step of the way. Whittling it all down until all that’s left is the point.
I hope to be able to teach this class one day.
Robert Evans
on 05 Nov 10Why don’t you offer a 37signals online class for it?
pwb
on 05 Nov 10Sounds interesting. It would be cool to see an example.
Joe
on 05 Nov 10Now re-post this in the comments in one paragraph.
DM
on 05 Nov 10From a personal development standpoint this seems like it would be a great way to figure out your life’s goals or purpose … blah blah blah … keep refining until you get to that perfectly distilled sentence.
David O.
on 05 Nov 10@Robert Evans I would be interested in that class.
Kelly
on 05 Nov 10Sounds like the way good writers write – just in reverse. I love the idea of turning in multiple versions of the same concept and would add (this is my big corporation perspective talking) a parallel path for slide decks.
This is shaping up to be a nice curriculum…the kind of school I’d send my kids to.
Tom F
on 05 Nov 10This would go nicely with the class I want to teach software developers on how to read code. Think of all the time that could be saved to build new things if developers learned how to do that little thing.
Brandy
on 05 Nov 10I like that. Seems like a good exercise that you don’t even have to have a class to do, although it would be cool to do in the context of a group setting – ie. a class.
Travis Chase
on 05 Nov 10You should film the class in your new office and put it up for sell on classes.37signals.com.
George Gecewicz
on 05 Nov 10I need this in my highschool! What about design? Or do you feel that design is too creative an endeavor to be “taught” (which is my perosnal opinion)?
Rich S
on 05 Nov 10I’d attend.
Though there would be some days I would hate it.
Mike Sax
on 05 Nov 10You assume that the editing will go from the long version to the short version. What if you start with the one sentence, and move the other way?
Brian Bailey
on 05 Nov 10Love this idea. Each week should be a different subject, from politics, science, and technology to history, opinion, and book/movie review and then fiction.
Mat Chavez
on 05 Nov 10Jason feels that university curriculum is overrated, and that students would benefit more from learning to write, edit, and refine their content into an efficient, minimalistic zen-like state, and also would someday like to teach the process himself.
\#1sentenceFTW
Matt McGunagle
on 05 Nov 10Junior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and I can honestly say I’ve learned more on my own than from school so far. The system is far too impersonal for me. The skills I will be using in the future will be the skills it takes to connect with someone on a personal and business level and that is what is important to me.
Tim Schraeder
on 05 Nov 10Do it! I’ll attend.
Brett
on 05 Nov 10Sign me up. Actually, can you incorporate that principle – ruthless editing – into every single class taught at 37signals U? Please?
Before we write anything, no matter if it’s 3 pages or 3 sentences, we should always ask if what we’re writing really matters at all. For most things in education, the answer is no, sadly. We should change that first.
CRC
on 05 Nov 10This would be a great class!
I find myself frustrated by a couple of things these days:
First is co-workers who are verbose in their writing as if they’re getting paid by the word (or by the number of minutes everyone cumulatively must take to read what they’ve written.)
This I think is a result of the second…
My daughters get school assignments requiring them to write lengthy passages for particular assignments whether the subject could be covered more concisely or not. This despite our own efforts to drive home some efficiency in her writing.
David Kadavy
on 05 Nov 10I love this idea. Efficient communication is everything, no matter what your role (even for designers).
JZ
on 05 Nov 10@Mike Sax – What’s the value in that? Why would you ever want to say something with more words than you need to? Saying something as succinctly as possible is a valuable skill, I doubt anyone needs help with expanding exposition ;)
Chris
on 05 Nov 10I had a Prof who did something like this for assigned reading. We would read like 15-30 pages a night and then summarize that in a single sentence that was graded on a point scale out of 25. Some days I was excited with just an 18, it was tough.
Eric Carroll
on 05 Nov 10Jason, your class concept sounds a lot like my children’s curriculum at our private school called Frameworks & Foundations.
It has taught our son to break down what he reads and learns by cutting out the unimportant information and writing out the most important details in long form, short form and in some cases diagrams. (This is his second year with it and he’s in the 3rd grade, now).
I think more adults could benefit from this type of thinking, myself included.
Your concept sounds like it would be easy to offer online as well as in person.
CRC
on 05 Nov 10Another thought: The point of this kind of exercise is not just to use fewer words…it’s to learn to find clarity.
This kind of exercise also reminds me of the statement that Michelangelo reportedly said when describing how he carved statues from stone: “I just chip away everything that’s not the statue.”
Mark
on 05 Nov 10The Kool-aid sounds good. However, don’t confuse conciseness with brevity. Not everything can be expressed in a (short) sentence. My observation is that Jason can gauge the difference, whereas many wouldn’t. I hope that part of his putative course would be to teach others the difference. Otherwise, go queue in the “10 words or less line” for a clip-on tie and a weekly sales target.
Adam P
on 05 Nov 10I’d love to take this class if you ever found time to teach it. I saw a presentation online where DHH did a QA with college students and stated that college teaches the opposite of brevity in writing. I strongly agree and it inspired me to try to teach this skill to my 6th grade daughter as I help her with her school writing assignments.
In my own writing (especially emails), I try to rewrite two or three sentences into one and even convert full paragraphs into a single sentence to save the reader time. It is a skill I constantly strive to improve.
I hope you teach this course one day.
ThatGuyKC
on 05 Nov 10That is a brilliant idea. As an MBA student the varying lengths of class writing assignments has been challenging.
This would be an amazing exercise to be a part of. I volunteer for the testing/beta class. :)
James
on 05 Nov 10I’ve actually taken a course that did exactly this but we went from 10 pages down to a single sentence. Professor was phenomenal with a lot of one-on-one time which is needed doing something like this.
The other was taking a single idea and explaining it out. JZ asked why you would want to do this. Well for one, it’s how the majority of great books start. A single thought that is expound upon to support the point. Such works that document things like our founding fathers and such, sure you can sum up their lives in a well structured sentence but that is different than getting the reader to see through the eyes of individual themselves and understand the details of their life.
One is a picture, the other a documentary.
Both convey the meaning, just different ways.
Adi
on 05 Nov 10@JF: I hope to be able to teach this class one day.
You already did;) The 5 versions writing assignment is on my tomorrow’s to do list.
Thanks!
Bryan Sebastian
on 05 Nov 10I feel that writing is similar to movie making. Filmmakers shoot hours of footage, then edit and refine until they have delivered the story in the “right” amount of time (not too short that the audience feels robbed and too long that they get bored).
Personally, I write in a similar way. Write a large “brain dump” of information and then edit, rearrange and refine until I have said what need to be said with as few words as possible.
Jon Campbell
on 05 Nov 10Isnt that how we were all taught to write? Start with a sentence(an idea or theme) and add to it to clarify, explain, and support the idea? Start simple and add points, break it into paragraphs then pages.
The interesting part is seeing if someone could condense/edit what you wrote back down to the simplicity of the starting idea.
Stephen R Clark
on 05 Nov 10What you’re describing is the writing process, not about being an editor. I’ve worked with a lot of great editors who were horrible writers, even by their own admission. The future belongs to those who can write and write well, whether it’s a book or a sentence.
John
on 05 Nov 10I’d like to see this article in one paragraph, then in one sentence.
Sarah Kathleen Peck
on 05 Nov 10Phenomenal idea. Reminds me of Nancy Duarte’s second book, “Resonate,” and her descriptions of presentation, persuasion and the art of storytelling. We have to be able to tell complicated information in multiple layers: a one sentence grab, a short blurb, a longer (but still somewhat still general) explanation, and the full-length detail version.
If you can’t explain your ideas in multiple ways, you’re not clear on your vision or idea yet.
I’d also argue that you need more than just writing: you need to be able to explain your idea on paper, out loud, and visually. Perhaps you could think about teaching this course and incorporating writing, presentations, and public speaking in this course of yours …
I’d take the class.
denbl
on 05 Nov 10It seems to be practically impossible for me to edit 1 page text to only 1 sentence. Maybe you can give an example of a such editors job?
Ryan
on 05 Nov 10I would send my daughters to that class. They can jabber on endlessly about anything.
John Blanchard
on 05 Nov 10That about sums up why Rework was such a great read.
Natalie Keshlear
on 05 Nov 10I took a class like that in College. It was so frustrating. I whittled and whittled (then whittled again) everything my too large for one paragraph ideas (or so I thought) could handle until they actually started to sound good. I realized my ideas and thoughts could be more profound when I took out some of the extra junk. Through the constant practice of carving out my words precisely and placing them on paper, paired with frustration/motivation, I found my voice and I found cohesion. I learned to write something great in two paragraphs rather than a five page paper full of fluff just to make the word limit.
The problem is a lot of students are taught to strive to make a certain pre-determined word count and this in turn limits the quality of the content produced in most cases.
Let’s cut out the crap and get down to business.
I really enjoyed Rework. Thanks for the inspiration.
Karen
on 05 Nov 10Oddly, this is actually something I do teach my writers and editors: we capture information from conferences and meetings, and distill it into brief summary reports (up to about 3 written pages per hour onsite), news stories (about a page per session), news capsules (about three paragraphs), and lately, live Tweets (about a sentence). While it’s more labour intensive to write short, clients seem to think they’re “getting their money’s worth” on longer pieces, but that’s gradually shifting. Great piece, look forward to reading more!
anthony italiano
on 05 Nov 10Great post.
Robert Evans has a brilliant idea “offer 37 signals online class”
“Whenever you make something, you make something else. Your byproducts may not be as obvious, but they’re there” Jason Fried CEO 37 signals.
chrisfinne
on 06 Nov 10Just like from “A River Runs Through It”. The father teaches his son to write with the refrain: “Again. Half as long”
Michael
on 06 Nov 10Sorry, Jason, but it’s quite silly to think this is new. Good liberal arts educators have been doing that (and much more) for something like 2,500 years now.
Ben
on 06 Nov 10Yes! Teach it as an online class!!
Matt J.
on 06 Nov 10“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” – Mark Twain
Rob Kent
on 06 Nov 10I think that everyone whose work involves written communication should read Joseph M. Williams, “Style: Toward Clarity and Grace”. As well as showing you what works, it explains why, with examples.
http://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publishing/dp/0226899152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289036825&sr=8-1
mb
on 06 Nov 10Going along with you point, student score higher on their essay section of the SAT for writing longer. Just tells you how the education and testing system is broken.
here is a link to research: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/05/milo-beckman-new-york-tee_n_779722.html
qwerty
on 06 Nov 10Sounds like you’d enjoy teaching math. A theorem can be short, yet it may be difficult to prove because it is based on a deep insight. For example: given a continuous function f and two points x and y from its domain it seems obvious that f assumes all values between f(x) and f(y). Try to prove it!
Rocky Erwin
on 06 Nov 10@JZ @Mike Sax I agree that it would be interesting to start with one sentence and move the other way. Certainly this is how essays and books are written, being able to expound on a small idea, perhaps a sentence scribbled on a napkin. Brevity can’t only mean “fewest words” but also “every word counts”. Consider expounding on a subject at length as comparing a full-size image to small square profile pictures: detail, resolution.
Tim
on 06 Nov 10This article in one sentence:
I’d like to teach a writing class where students ask themselves “what’s really important”, anything beyond the core point is just fluff.
:)
Erwin
on 06 Nov 10Classes that teach the skills you describe exist. Called pyramid-principle training. All about structuring content and creating story.
Standard grub for consultants.
Adam Hermsdorfer
on 06 Nov 10I love the concept. It goes along the line of the old life saying of “winners explain and losers explain away”.
JonathanJK
on 06 Nov 10Thanks for posting this. It’s so simple in hindsight, I wish I was told this a few years ago.
RF
on 06 Nov 10I heart the idea here. Figuring out what’s important generally is one of the most fundamental skills that never gets mentioned—grading is all about the cleverness of the analysis and execution, very little about choosing something to say that fits into some bigger purpose.
It would be great if writing classes spent substantial time working with students to choose good paper topics (or if students workshopped each other’s topic ideas). Red marks and style guides are great for getting grammar right and even learning how to be more succinct and clear and logical, but they can’t teach you to write stuff that matters. I’ve heard of (not read) at least one book, Academic Legal Writing by Eugene Volokh, that really emphasizes picking a good topic and how important it is, but it’s not a focus typically.
An easy step that would fit into existing writing curricula: require an abstract that’s graded separately, plus a summary for very long writing (major projects, undergraduate theses).
You could also require a descriptive subtitle on papers. The main title might be meant to grab attention or do something clever, but the writer also needs to know how to up and say what their paper’s about.
Dave
on 06 Nov 10Great idea Jason! One point that isn’t stressed in your post is that writing concisely is important, but writing effectively is the real goal. Users need to be able to quickly make decisions because they typically scan vs. read. Copy doesn’t need to be perfect English, but it needs to make perfect sense to all users within a few seconds. If it’s not they’ll get frustrated and go somewhere else. Distilling your thoughts down to 1 sentence from 3 pages will get you 90% there, but the last 10% is understanding what is really needed to convey what to do with the subject matter/control/feature on the page.
JF
on 06 Nov 10One point that isn’t stressed in your post is that writing concisely is important, but writing effectively is the real goal.
Of course.
James
on 07 Nov 10Teach it. Please.
I recently read that David Ogilvy would say “I am a lousy copywriter, but a good editor” also. “People who think well, write well.”
Neal Stephenson
on 07 Nov 10I’m not interested!
MC
on 07 Nov 10Just kidding (sorry, Neal, just thought of you).
monika hardy
on 07 Nov 10wow. i was going to offer you the kids in our innovation lab… who are designing their comp classes after what you wrote in your book…p. 216
looks like we’ll have to stand in line.
cool jets.
Mark
on 07 Nov 10molly
on 07 Nov 10A proposal for the most important course you will take in college: Write a 3 page essay; in four successive steps, condense it to a single sentence.
John White
on 07 Nov 10What’s the point of only receiving the point?
John White
on 07 Nov 10Here’s one from Hemingway. For sale, baby bed, never used.
Darren
on 07 Nov 10At each stage are you asking the same questions or do they change in specificity? The editing process is curious, as you’re trying to gain clarity, while at the same time seeking a balance of generality.
Vytas Gaizutis
on 07 Nov 10Love it!
Anonymous Coward
on 07 Nov 10At each stage are you asking the same questions or do they change in specificity? The editing process is curious, as you’re trying to gain clarity, while at the same time seeking a balance of generality.
I suspect it would go like this…
What’s important? What’s really important? What’s really really important? What’s really really really important? What’s really really really really important?
Robert Evans
on 07 Nov 10It didn’t occur to me with my first comment, but excellent way to see what the interest level would be. Very nice Jason. :)
Doug Johnson
on 08 Nov 10I took this class in Eighth grade…it was called writing a precis. Hated it at the time, but it has been useful. Your proposed class would take it a couple of steps beyond the precis, but not much.
Nate Turner
on 08 Nov 10I had to do this my senior year of high school. It was easily the best paper I have ever written. We had to write a 25 page paper by the 6th week and then we spent the rest of the class refining the paper down to an 8 page paper to submit at the end of the course.
It definitely changed my writing style for the better.
Front row Guy who asked the Question
on 08 Nov 10Thanks for the answer. If only you knew the power of these words coming from someone like yourself.
While you invent the next best web app, millions of kids are being taught the exact opposite. Personally, I’m about to “take a break”.(aka stop wasting time)
I know as well as you that the next web app will be as helpful as it is profitable, but imagine for just a second the millions of students’ lives you can change with one push.
EDIT: The entire schools system is flawed. In it I see that only people like us can change it, yet we leave every time for more profitable things.
- @RyanTHolmes
Dan Cash
on 08 Nov 10I was at this conference, and I think this simple piece of advice was the best thing I heard at the conference. I’ll put it to work soon.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Nick Lindwall
on 08 Nov 10You’re missing the word ‘into’ – 4th paragraph, 4th sentence. :-)
Alex Gaponov
on 08 Nov 10Continuing this to absurd – you end up with a shiny meaningful byte. But true, having a skill to say less is priceless.
Nathan
on 08 Nov 10I whole heartedly agree with this idea that most people are way to verbose in their writing. However, asking the question “What’s important?” is the first step, having the right answer is the second. It sounds like a lot of people here are just rallying around the idea of conciseness. Where the ideal would be communicating every idea in 140 characters or less. Conciseness is not always the ideal – ask your wife if she’d prefer “I love you” or How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
JF
on 08 Nov 10Nathan: It’s an exercise. The ideal is not 140 characters or less. But you should have the skill to get there when it’s appropriate. It takes a lot of practice.
The most valuable steps are probably getting to one page and then one paragraph. Those are really handy steps.
Nathan
on 08 Nov 10yeah, glad to hear you say that, and I definitely agree. It seems like a lot of the commenters lost sight of the fact that its an exercise. Admittedly, when I read some of your posts my mind often morphs the author and some of the commenters in to one and it skews my perception of the author’s original ideas.
Josh Baltzell
on 08 Nov 10Sounds like you want to teach a Journalism writing class. Specifically you care about the lead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_style#Lead_.28or_lede.29_or_intro
Roberto
on 08 Nov 10If someone want to go a little more theoretical on this topic…
http://www.discourses.org/OldArticles/Semantic%20Macro-Structures%20and%20Knowledge%20Frames%20in%20Discourse.pdf
MikeN
on 08 Nov 10This post is SOOOO long….I’m bored : )
Mike Riley
on 08 Nov 10What’s interesting about this is that I’ve always believed strongly in doing the reverse when documenting a project and its requirements. You start out with a single statement, and you make god damn sure that single statement reflects exactly what the “core value” of your project is. Once you have that done, you sit down and start diluting that concentrated statement into the features and requirements necessary to support it. Starting out you might just get two or three sentences that describe immediate sub-goals, but eventually you will end up writing about implementation details and the knitty gritty of what really needs to be done. All the while staying focused on the first sentence you wrote, asking yourself “does this feature really support the overall goal of the project?” It’s always turned out well for me, keeping efforts focused, even in big projects, on what’s really important.
Manuel
on 08 Nov 10Build an app to do it! A virtual classroom only to do that in a collaborative enviroment…
Suzy Oge
on 08 Nov 10Love this! I try to teach this to my business students with significant resistance. Just last week a student sent me an extremely long e-mail to express how offended he was that I asked him at the end of his business concept pitch to a panel, why he had wasted our time, which he knowingly had.
My response to him was that this was one of the most important lessons he will learn, choosing what is important.
In general, students are taught to deliver a quantity of work and it takes time to teach them to think differently!
Sean McCambridge
on 09 Nov 10I love this idea. I had a professor at school who had an infinite rewrite policy. He said nothing is ever done in the first draft and actually took the time and opened the door for more work - more papers to grade, more office visits to discuss, etc. - that kept him a little further away from his family and his own writing. He often cited the fact that Tolstoy wrote War & Peace, an 1100 or so page epic, in seven written drafts.
Obviously, his policy wasn’t about distilling the idea like Jason’s but I like the spirit of refining and polishing in both. I hope you do teach this class. I’d be the first to sign up.
Jason L
on 09 Nov 10If I were to retake any part of my education, it would be the writing / English portion. I have learned so much from my wife, who had phenomenally better teachers / professors than I did (or perhaps just saw the importance of paying attention in class).
I totally agree with the thought on the value of University education. Unless something changes, I’m wondering if I’ll recommend that my son attends college in 17 years.
Daniel Kasaj
on 09 Nov 10Great article, crappy headline. Now I gotta rewrite it before I tweet it.
Ben
on 09 Nov 10Reminds me of the scene in A River Runs Through It. The father is teaching his probably 8-yo son how to write, and he keeps bringing his father a piece of paper. Each time, the father reads it, hands it back to the kid, and says “write it again, half as long.”
Akash
on 09 Nov 10Great article. I agree editing is important in any form of research be it science or arts or commerce. I intend to implement is more aware of what I am doing.
Akash
on 09 Nov 10I also think the reverse would be very useful too. Go from 1 line to 3 paragraphs to 1 page to 3 pages ….. Or the process can be a cyclic process or compression and expansion, I am pretty sure the expanded document will be quite different from the compressed document.
Kariann
on 10 Nov 10Once through through comparing, contrasting and the process of elimination I whittled pages of paragraphs and sentences down to two simple words. These two words would become my mission statement/business plan/philosophy/motto ... SPIRIT + STORY … the Spirit is what is of essence but will probably by nature transcend definition and so then, the Story would be the answer to that question of “what is important” but a story is only a story if it is told. I have to tell the story … and it’s gonna be long! :) (sigh) I’ll sign up for your class!! Teach me!
Kariann
on 10 Nov 10I wrote a thirty-line poem and destroyed it because it was what we call work of the second intensity. Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later [1912] I made the following hokku-like sentence:
kariann
on 10 Nov 10sorry about that last comment … That was Ezra pound and it was supposed to finish with “The apparition of these faces in the crowd:Petals, on a wet, black bough.”
KT
on 10 Nov 10I must be missing something here.
Writing is an art that best not be reduced to a staccato telegram.
Poor writers have no problem whatsoever condensing to a single sentence.
With the thousand or so of the typically eight year olds I have taught, only the most relunctant, the weakest writers spew out one brief sentence. Then they inevitably get stuck.
I have seen it in adults as well.
In an intensive Spanish Writing class I took one summer, we were supposed to write to a 5 paragraph formula. I could not do it nor did I have any desire to do so.
That was done to reduce errors. That was done to assist weak writers.
It brings to mind the speed reading class I took many moons ago. Great way to cram for a test but I found it to be superficial, boring, and not a skill worth pursuing. I can speed read but it is not really reading.
During that time, we were assigned “Kon-tiki”. When a test was coming up, I felt forced to speed read it fast but I stopped just short of the end. I wanted to enjoy the story not regurgiate the facts. Still I felt gypped.
You just write. You edit as you go. You revise. You organize. You make sure your point is getting across and that your writing is clear. You embellish, you dazzle, you inflame, you persuade. You get the idea.
But the purpose of writing is to communicate, to learn, to entertain and hardly to attain some discombobulated trendy manifestation of Zen Bhuddism.
How would Van Gogh’s resonating “Starry Night” have appeared had it been reduced to the colorless Picassoesque trash which was merely doodled during Pablito’s “Last Decade”?
Van Gogh condensed into a few bland lines would not be a Van Gogh.
You can have Picasso’s slothful, arrogant, mysogenistic * and ** **. LOL!
Bob
on 10 Nov 10Huh. And all along I was thinking that this post was too long, too redundant.
Pablito
on 10 Nov 10Duh.
We are not paying attention.
sarah
on 12 Nov 10I still think back fondly about a music professor of mine at Smith.
Every week we had to write a one-page essay. ONE page only! I wasn’t sure if this was a class about music, or writing, or both. He would gleefully rip through all of our attempts to contain all our (stunning, I’m sure) musical analyses within a single page. To this day I still credit him with vastly improving my own writing skills. He was a fabulous, inspiring professor and he whipped us all into shape. #omitneedlesswords
This discussion is closed.