On Automated Imagination's 'On Brevity'

Jeremy wrote about brevity today. His comments resonate with me, a little; I find myself omitting qualifiers like 'somewhat' and 'I think' from my writing when I reread it. Mark Twain has advice to the same effect:

Everywhere you wish to write 'very', replace it with 'damned'; then, your editor will take it out, and all will be as it should be.

That said, I have an essay on the back burner about the effects of intended (and actual) audience on the quality of any particular piece of work, and I think a sidebar from there applies here, too. Graham's advice works well for the kind of essay he writes, but not all blog posts are essays. It's a matter of tone and of intent.