{"id":1018,"date":"2008-06-06T06:26:07","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T11:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1018"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:37:33","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:37:33","slug":"speaking-of-bloodletting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1018","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Bloodletting&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently reduced my nostalgia series on work (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1009\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1010\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1011\">here<\/a>) from a whopping and totally-out-of-control 3,645 words to a slim and trim 672 for my upcoming <em>Huntsville Times<\/em> community column this Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, politicians and preachers, it is possible to keep it &#8220;short and sweet.&#8221; You just have to work at it.<\/p>\n<p>My disdain for &#8220;verbal sprawl&#8221; goes back quite a ways. Over the years, I&#8217;ve served as a reviewer for several professional journals and have edited a large number of manuscripts to prepare them for publication. I gained a reputation as a reviewer who &#8220;bled red.&#8221; The editors always seemed to like that. The contributors? Well, not so much.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m thankful that the <em>Huntsville Times<\/em> limits me to 680 words each time. It forces me to make every word count. And if you think about it, that&#8217;s what we should be doing all the time anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Go ahead and save the planet, but while you&#8217;re at it, save the alphabet as well.<\/p>\n<p>Keep it brief, people. And have a great weekend.\n<\/p>\n<p><!--5b07fd0d691fb10ef4478ea5ae642b40--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently reduced my nostalgia series on work (here, here and here) from a whopping and totally-out-of-control 3,645 words to a slim and trim 672 for my upcoming Huntsville Times community column this Sunday. Yes, politicians&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-huntsville-times-community-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9397,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions\/9397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}