You don¿t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala
Last week I had grumbled that along with the quality of English, the intellectual content of edits has declined very drastically with the result that youngsters are no longer told to read edits to improve their language and minds. When I mention this, I am usually told that the length of the edits can be a problem, at least as far as putting in some intellect is concerned.
Edits tend to vary between 375 and 550 words. Many people think 375 is too few and 550 is too many. I think the former view is correct but not the latter. Three hundred and seventy five words are indeed too few words to argue a case. Moreover, this leads to the writer making a series of assertions so that virtually every sentence stands open to challenge. The edit merely ends up irritating the reader.
Most newspapers these days tend to opt for around 450 words, which is perhaps worse because it gives an illusion of length without being long. The edit thus falls between two stools. The 550 word edit is slightly better but, in my view, it is the 600 word edits that are really worth reading. These tend to be very rare, though.
The question is asked: who reads such long pieces these days? This is a seriously stupid question because firstly, edit page articles tend to be over 800 words and more people read those than the edits. The reason is that the articles are better. Secondly, in terms of time, it takes around 90-120 seconds to read 500 words, so 600 words aren¿t going to take very much more.
It also seems worth mentioning here that editorials in The Economist are 600 words, and they get read very widely because of the quality of writing. So if anything makes a difference, it is quality, not quantity – provided the quantity is not such as to not allow quality to creep in.
It also beats as me as to why newspapers insist on running more than one edit every day. What is there to say about so many things on a daily basis? Why not publish just one well reasoned and long edit, of say about 700 words, instead of running two or more completely pointless edits?
The reader drop-off rate for the second edit is around 97 per cent because the reader who is no fool figures that if the editor himself is relegating the topic to second or third spot why bother reading it, especially if the quality is going to be spotty? I firmly believe that the impact of just one long edit will be more than that of two or three short ones.
So what would I recommend other than the length of the edit? If I were an editor, this is what I would tell the leader writers:
First 75 words: spell out the issue
Next 225 words: recount the background and the history
Next 250 words: debate the intellectual provenance of whatever the topic is
Last 50 words: take a stand.
No one, least of all an editor, likes to be to be told how to do his or her job. That is human nature. So I don¿t expect any takers for this template. But still, no one can now say that I only criticize and never offer any constructive suggestions.