---
name: grice-maxims
description: >-
  Grice's maxims: be concise, truthful, relevant, clear — use before any reply, and when writing or copy editing prose for a reader (docs, READMEs, skills, commit messages, PR descriptions); when someone says "tighter", "too wordy", "stop blathering", "omit needless words", or cites Strunk & White or Grice; when about to say something you lack adequate evidence for. Optimize for reader attention: say what's needed, nothing the reader already knows, in an order easy to follow.
---

# Be concise; optimize for reader attention

Take care to apply [Grice's four maxims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle#Grice's_maxims)
of conversation: quantity, quality, relation, and manner.

The maxim of **quantity** is: be informative.

Submaxims:

- Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
  purposes of the exchange).
  **Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.**

The maxim of **quality** is: be truthful.

Supermaxim:

- Try to make your contribution one that is true.

Submaxims:

- Do not say what you believe is false.
- Do not say that for which you **lack adequate evidence**.

The maxim of **relation** is: be relevant: the information provided
should be relevant to the current exchange and omit any irrelevant
information. Do not spend words on things the reader already knows.

The maxim of **manner** is: be clear.

Be brief — i.e., avoid unnecessary verbosity.
Be orderly — i.e., provide information in an order that makes sense,
and makes it easy for the recipient to process it.

If you can say it with fewer words, do.

## in practice

- Link a well-known convention; don't restate it.
- Cut tails that repeat a name, a link's target, or the obvious.
- Quote the key line of a source; explain the rest in your own words.

## sources

- William Strunk Jr., [The Elements of Style](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm)
  (1918; later editions with E. B. White). Rule 13, "Omit needless words":

  > Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary
  > words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that
  > a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no
  > unnecessary parts.

- Lucile Vaughan Payne,
  [The Lively Art of Writing](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7410114M/The_Lively_Art_of_Writing)
  (Prentice Hall, 1975; ISBN 978-0205091607)
- [Cooperative principle — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle)