Thursday, May 14, 2009

E B White and Twitter

What some of us have learned from Twitter is that we can communicate better with fewer words.

E. B. White said it first in The Elements of Style (1918) with that famous line:

Omit needless words.

Not that it's easy to heed that advice, but therapists should be able to do it since our rule is:

Do more listening than talking.


On the other hand, we know that writing's therapeutic, very much like that empty-out-the-brain phenomena of talk therapy.

That in mind, two short posts coming right up.

therapydoc

11 comments:

positively present said...

I'm going to keep this brief so here's what I want to say:

GREAT POST! :)

Syd said...

I'm out of it--don't twitter but I agree with fewer words. Occam's Razor is what we call it in science.

Wait. What? said...

Agreed! Indeed! reading on.

therapydoc said...

That said, it's really therapeutic to blather on, isn't it?

jeanie said...

ha ha - I have not yet joined the twits - but then, I am the sort of blogger who uses 1,000 characters where 140 might do... but they are very evocative characters!

Mark said...

Looking forward to the brevity! Good luck.

therapydoc said...

Thanks all.

Jeanie, evocative is probably good. Note the "probably".

Dr. Deb said...

Well said, Therapydoc.

Samurai Scientist said...

I'd give it to Shakespeare over EB White:

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

Of course, old Polonius was a chatterbox.

Jew Wishes said...

I have visited some websites where they have "emoticons/icons", and individuals communicate entirely with them. No words are spoken, and only emoticons are shown.

I have not communicated on those websites, because for me, so much is left out when one is writing on the internet. There is no voice inflections, body language, eye contact, etc.,

nashbabe said...

Brevity.

  Bring them home, the Homeland Concert There's not much to say. Wait, I take it back. There's SO much to say it is too much. There ...