Karl Whitney: Is it better to let ideas fumble on the long route or set them in stone?

Etching into stone implies permanence, and that requires an eye on the eternal. When a sentence is for life, it’s best to keep it short, writes Karl Whitney

The great comic actor Jack Lemmon’s gravestone reads: ‘Jack Lemmon in’; there's nothing like a gravestone to limit the word count. Picture: Barry King/WireImage

I was walking around a graveyard the other day — a good place to think about writing, particularly concision.

Nothing like death to focus the mind; nothing like a gravestone to limit the word count.