Compress Yourself
Michael Moritz on Invest Like The Best, talking about how short his famous memos were:
Patrick: I'm curious about that notion of compression and the power of compression.[...]
Michael: For me, part of the training as a journalist — it's part of what I learned at college — being able to distill things to their essence and keep it very short has stood me in good stead over the years.
Patrick: Can that be taught? It seems more valuable than ever. There's so much information and bombardment.
Michael: I don't know. I think it depends a lot on reading. It's hard when people are fed a diet of a limited vocabulary.
[...]
And I think having a huge vocabulary at your fingertips that you can select from allows you to express complicated ideas in a simple manner.
A bigger vocabulary, fewer words. Compression is choosing as well as cutting.
Range is not there to make you sound clever. It is there so one word can do the work of five.
A small vocabulary does not make you concise. It makes you vague.