Get shorty, size doesn't matter

Let's address the elephant-sized scroll bar in the room: long articles don't automatically earn respect. They earn skipped paragraphs, and turning of the page. Somewhere along the way, op-ed writers began believing that seriousness is measured in word count. As if Hemingway would've been more profound if he'd just added 3,000 words about the trout. We live in a world where, despite X and social media's fondness for reducing 'Ok' by 50% to 'K', brevity is suspicious. The 2,000-word think piece titled 'A Reconsideration of the Socioeconomic Implications of the Khakhra Being GST Exempt' gets shared by people who didn't read past the strapline. Because nothing screams intellectual like pretending to understand something you didn't finish.

Let's be honest: most long articles are just short articles wearing stilts. They pad themselves with quotes from Tagore, one of the Vedas, and any Tamil poet from the 6th-12th c. The reader, meanwhile, is trapped in an intellectual hostage situation, flipping through paras like they're defusing a bomb. So, here's an idea: say what you mean, then stop. If your point can be made in 220 words (like this column), don't unleash a novella. Respect the reader's time, attention span and bladder. Because, in the end, it's not the length of the article that matters, it's whether anyone made it past the first para.