In my dream, both speaker and hearer, I was gassing interminably. My garrulity disgraced and disgusted me. I knew better than to mar the sweet silence with my blather. Concision!, I almost roared, in my dream-anguish. Yet sometimes silence – or its spatial equivalent, emptiness – must be filled to avoid awkwardness. Ask Sheherazade.

Which set me to pondering, in typical dream-progression, what is concision anyway? How might I teach it to my alert, devoted class. In my sleep I’m often teaching – to a class almost dotingly attentive – convened for the love of learning, not to grub some grade – the contemporary equivalent of Socrates’ agora gatherings. If I could recruit such a class, maybe I would teach; but I know from my teacher friends, such astute students are a pedagogue’s wet dream. Even “post-docs” sometimes elicit their professors’ howls.

So here we go – Concision 101: what is it? How do you discern it? – achieve it? When is enough enough? And when, whatever the loveliness of one’s language, is one going on too long?

The principle is musical. We know without being told when a piece of music has outworn its welcome. If the melodist is a magician, loquacity might be forgiven. Stravinsky said of Schubert, “So what if you fall asleep, if you wake up in heaven?” Dr. Johnson harrumphed (one of the most precise prose-producers ever): “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” (Sage advice, but oh, my heart!)

Concision is measured not by the speaker but the hearer. One hearer’s garrulous is another’s terse. Even my beloved Dickens can feel long-winded when he repeats his excellent joke for the umpteenth time. Writing for a mass audience one’s words must be simpler than for the connoisseur, for the average comprehension is less.

Some beloved makers compose too succinctly at times. Certain of Emily Dickinson’s little poems are so compact I can’t unpack them, as sometimes Henry’s fur gets too tangled to unknot.

To track one’s hearers’ attention span, a writer must become them. We write to our self in the guise of another. I am writing to you now, but you exist only in my mind. I must imagine when your attention drifts or you glance – furtively, for you are polite and nice – at your watch. In this respect, writers resemble stand-up comedians, who know instantly when they’ve got the room and when they’ll get the hook.

Technology, alas, has abbreviated attention spans, which is bad for literacy. You can’t convey a thought on social media, only a grunt – a joke, gasp, emoji, gesture, that sort of thing. Such herd noises, however convivial, can’t be thoughtful, for thought requires thinking, which requires silence. Granddaughter Kai can read a book in a chattering room, but I sure can’t.

My self-tutelage I derive from Shakespeare mostly: never a dull phrase if you can help it. For my money, Hemingway (and his apostles Strunk and White) misunderstood prose, draining it of its inessentials so it works like a machine. I favor language that’s chewy, studded with morsels – unexpected metaphors, consonances, contrasts, swerves – igniting a reader’s curiosity what’s coming next. The best writing – poetry or prose – sets me a-thinking and a-tingling it’s so suggestive. After the first page of Pride and Prejudice, my brain feels it’s run a marathon, Jane’s periods are so, well, concise!

The test of concision is your own pleasure in what you’ve produced. Your yawn will be your readers’. OK is not OK. Concision grades are awarded based on effectiveness not efficiency of expression. Well-said is measured by smiles.