Literature Network » Robert Browning

Less is more in good writing, too

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From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 19991212
Author:JAMES J. KILPATRICK

As Robert Browning told the tale, the painter Andrea del Sarto was talking to his wife about perfection in art. He summed it up: "Less is more, Lucrezia!"

The architect Mies van der Rohe picked up the phrase and ran off with it, but the thought was sound. Writers, no less than architects, should take the maxim to heart. We should prune our paragraphs as if they were topiary shrubs. Never let a sentence get leggy!

Consider, therefore, a paragraph from The New York Times' man in Paris:

"President Jacques Chirac, who called the elections a year early hoping for a new conservative mandate for the ...

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