Short Shorts

Who likes short shorts?

Short-form content has three advantages over long-form, says journalist and teacher Roy Peter Clark.

Power, wit and polish.

Short-form's brevity gives it power, as Seth Godin proves every day.

Brevity also lets writers be witty, as David Meerman Scott often proves.

And brevity lets writers polish words and expose their luster, as Dan Bailes does.

Among short-form gems, Clark includes the arresting (but oft-forgotten) photo caption.

Photo captions force readers to hit the brakes, says blogger Sean D'Souza, preventing them from "zooming madly from the start to the end" of your content.

Curiosity—our compulsion to "be right" and "be in the know"—compels us to slow down and read captions, D'Souza says.

We can't help ourselves.