THE VIRTUE OF BREVITY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 85, 10 December 1913, Page 6

THE VIRTUE OF BREVITY.

A LOCAL INSTANCE. Officers’ reports to public bodies resemble Police Court proceedings as regilfds the quantity of essential principle. Long Court proceedings may result in nothing being said or done of any account, and the shortest and quietest proceedings may be worth the whole of the rest of the saying and doing. Similarly, an officer s report may be long and windy and be not worth the time spent in reading it, and another may be brief to the verge of brusqueness and still convey much useful information, manysolid opinions, and many fruitful suggestions. Of the officers in Stratford who furnish reports to publicbodies perhaps the most consistently brief is the Matron of the Hospital, whose report'is invariably as short as possible, consistent always, however, with" the rules of grammar and etiquette. Her report to the Board this morning contained forty-three written words divided as folohvs: — Information 17, address, super and sub-scription 26. The fact that twenty-six words were used on formal necessaries indicates that the rules

of etiquette were not forgotten, and tiie fact that the information supplied had merely to be copied out to form an acceptable “Personal” paragraph for the “Post” testifies to the fact that the unwritten laws of good taste in writing and the very much overwritten laws of grammar were well borne in mind.