Talk:Concision

Comments

Concision is the discipline to be concise in written and verbal communication. It is nothing more. It is not censorship. It is not gatekeeping.

- added as a comment - - - Healthy CONCISION is a strength to any culture. Long winded expressions dilute vitality, and cost us time. But there is a dark version too: everyday business goes awry by mis-understanding, and terms of agreement can be too complex OR TOO BRIEF. This hurts by unexpected or missed commitments and resulting disappointment and animosity; this is made worse by time pressures, debts, feuds, and other troubles. The classic "scam contract" contains obligations hidden by "CONCISION", and/or "PROFUSION" (lots of words) not quickly understood by a distracted mind. Even the bible warns "...beware of the concision ..." (part of Philippians 2:3 KJV, although this quote is not full context and not commonly taught application/interpretation)

"Texting" among mobile devices is a recent influence in our global community, which has brought an increase of dysfunctional concision. Not to lose any sleep vexed about the world (unless that's your calling); just be wise yourself and help anyone you can; we might need them someday.

How not to do it

>> When increasing concision ... it increases the effectiveness of communication by making it more efficient <<<

One has to laugh! A priceless example of how not to be concise. -- Picapica (talk) 15:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

How about this for an opening sentence replacing the current two: "Concision is the use of few words to convey an idea without omitting important information." Anyway brevity is a different thing. It is use of few words, no matter how much important information is obscured. And redundancy is not the only alternative to concision. Colin McLarty (talk) 15:11, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Merge and future directions

The decision at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Concision was to keep this page and to carry out some form of recombination with Succinctness. As an initial step, I have merged the entire content of Succinctness into a new section of this page, and made Succinctness a redirect to here.

Per the AfD discussion, there is probably a lot more that needs to be done, but exactly what that should be has not really been decided. Other editors understand the source material for this subject better than I do, so I am leaving the future steps to others. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

As a rather strong suggestion, I think that editors should particularly make sure that the result of the next edits conforms to WP:NOT#DICTIONARY and WP:NOTHOWTO. Good luck! --Tryptofish (talk) 16:35, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Article being too concise

I appreciate the humour in the irony of it, and maybe this is one of Wikipedia's long-running tacitly accepted jokes, but making this page as physically short as possible by removing all possible asides (like mentioning that Occam's razor is an aphorism, or that laconic speech can also be expressive and is named after a people's supposed style of speaking rather than some ancient Greek pottery or architecture or whatever else 'a Laconian' could be) doesn't seem to me to make it a better article. --Lord Belbury (talk) 11:43, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Your edits were pretty good (I didn't know there were actually people called the Laconians). I agree that the article should be worked on more; right now it says Laconic speech or writing refers to the bluntness of Laconians in ancient Greece. What about "Laconic" speech and writing refers to the Laconian people of ancient Greece? Overall, my take on this article is that it's pretty close to being a WP:DICTDEF to begin with; most of its content is a mix between summary and disambiguation of concepts that are related to it. I don't know that there is a whole lot to say about the subject. And as for humor, I think it would be a much better joke if the article were nauseatingly long and circumlocutory -- but that wouldn't be very encyclopedic ;^) jp×g 20:09, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Update: I've done an edit that restores the things you mentioned. Let me know what you think. jp×g 21:32, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Either it's a DICTDEF or it's a subject that's worth expanding on with cultural contexts, and reflections from writers on language. I don't know which.

But the current article is too concise, to the point of being mysterious: "But it is not valued equally in all cultures" (which ones value it? which ones don't? how highly can it be valued?), "in some places, people avoid it" (where? why do they avoid it?). I think the Laconian example still needs something like "pithy" in there to show that it's a quality that can be admired; the current "refers to the bluntness of Laconian people" leaves it unclear as to whether "laconic" is a term of praise or insult. And why are we hiding the article's only an illustrative before-and-after example of concision in a footnote?

Strunk and White remind us in their quotation here that good, concise writing "requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline", and we should heed that. --Lord Belbury (talk) 10:43, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Change name to "Succinctness"

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 22:41, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

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Concision → SuccinctnessSuccinctness – More common name detail below. ~2026-28091-73 (talk) 00:25, 9 May 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. Jeffrey34555 (talk) 03:03, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

The word "succinctness" is significantly more common terms for this concept in standard English than "concision".

Per Wikipedia's guidelines on common names and clarity, it's worth distinguishing the frequency of these synonyms. According to the Google Books Ngram Viewer data for the English corpus, "succinctness" has consistently outperformed "concision" in published English literature over the last two centuries. ~2026-28091-73 (talk) 00:25, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Comment @~2026-28091-73 how did you come up with the Ngram Viewer data, per this query "concision" well outperforms "succinctness". Best, Squawk7700 (talk) 19:33, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose Per Squawk7700. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 09:14, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.