In a nutshell

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—or how did that saying go again? In any case, brevity is all the rage: everything should be as concise as possible, because otherwise people just won’t consume it anymore. This applies not only to texts, but especially so. Brevity has become a fetish.

But that doesn't get to the heart of the matter at all. It's not about brevity per se; it's about making sure people don't get bored. So would length be okay if the content were entertaining and/or relevant? Of course! Seven-hour podcasts, overly long movies packed with explosions, and the Eurovision Song Contest all prove this—though this selection also highlights the problem: what people find entertaining is a matter of taste. For some, the thrill lies in hours of cage fights in front of the White House; for others, in a 90-minute, irrelevant soccer game that ends 0–0. Still others sit through operas twice as long, and yet others spend twice as long trying—in vain—to solve a crossword puzzle. And yes, the fact that length in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing also applies to text. Harry Potter has around seven million characters (including spaces), and the never-ending series *The Three Exclamation Points* has reached 30 million characters so far (it probably includes plenty of exclamation points, too).

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And of all things, the caption for your Instagram post absolutely can’t be longer than 3.5 characters (including spaces), or else your target audience will be frustrated? Hmm, yeah, sorry—maybe that’s not the problem at all. Maybe the content is just too boring. Because people don’t stick around because it’s short, but because it’s awesome, exciting, enlightening, cool, beneficial, hilarious, or cute. Or because it’s about wizard students or young detectives. You probably can’t offer the latter, though. But for heaven’s sake: offer something!

And that’s exactly why this column will now appear in the print edition a little longer than before—but it will still be on page 7 as usual.

My thanks go to ChatGPT for counting the characters in *Harry Potter and the Three Exclamation Points*. I'm not going to check that right now.

Analyzed since 2025 Sarah Pally In her column "Blossoms and Pearls", she uses industry-related terms and comments on them with a personal touch, from a linguistic perspective - as well as with a precise view of developments in the industry. Pally is a partner in the Partner & Partner agency in Winterthur. She has been working in the fields of content marketing, text/concept and storytelling in the communications and marketing sector for 15 years.