This might seem like a strange statement from someone who’d write and publish 891 words about a specific model of railway ticket machine.
But I love punchy, concise writing.
It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with print advertising when I was a kid – and decided I wanted to be an advertising copywriter when I grew up.
The writing that inspired me most wasn’t flowery fiction or purple poetry (though I worked my way through plenty of that in my teens).
It was thrillingly economical prose like Bill Bernbach’s VW ads of the 50s, 60s and 70s.
The ad career never materialised, but a writing one did. And that’s when the sobering truth struck home. Writing as sparingly – yet effectively – as the likes of Bernbach did is hard. Really hard.
So when I come across someone who can do this, and do it well, I’m filled with a mix of admiration and (yes) jealousy.
My latest find is a guy called Ken Rockwell. He runs a photography website filled with tips, suggestions and product reviews. I stumbled across it while looking for more details on a camera we’ve recently acquired at work.
I think Ken’s reviews are terrific online writing: taut prose with zero fat.
Most importantly, they read like they were super-easy to produce. Which is – as we’ve established – the trickiest thing of all to pull off.
Read Ken talking about the Canon G11, and see what you think.
