THE TEN-WORD VERSION

Take any argument you're making — written or held — and reduce it to ten words. Then to twenty. Notice what survives the compression and what doesn't.

The ten-word version is brutal. It strips out the qualifications, the rhetorical flourishes, the safety hedges. What's left is the actual claim. If your argument doesn't survive the compression — if the ten-word version sounds either trivial or wrong — you've learned something important about the argument.

1. 1.Pick an argument you've made recently. Written essay, debate, position in a conversation.
2. 2.Write the ten-word version. Exactly ten words. Cut everything else.
3. 3.Read the ten-word version out loud. How does it sound? Defensible? Embarrassing? Surprisingly different from what you thought you were arguing?
4. 4.Write the twenty-word version, allowing yourself one qualification. Re-read.
5. 5.Notice the gap between the ten-word and twenty-word versions — what survived the further compression?
6. 6.Now write the hundred-word version. Most arguments fit comfortably here. The longer original was probably padding.