Yammering on about brevity

Sat 20 Oct 2007 09:22 AM

In a recent discussion with Mark about paper lengths, I claimed that my papers tended to be pretty short. My general inclination: Brevity.

Curious as to whether this claim is actually true, I dropped all of my papers onto latexcount. Since the files are not precisely the published versions, I've rounded off the numbers. To give it an air of authority, figures are in 1000s of words expressed with two significant digits. For full titles, see my cv.

8.2 Reid's defense... (forthcoming)

7.8 Realist ennui...* (2005)

6.9 Is there an elephant...* (2007)

6.5 Reckoning the shape... (2005)

5.9 Distributed cognition... (2007)

5.1 Williamson on knowledge...* (2003)

4.6 Background theories... (2005)

4.4 Peirce... (2005)

4.2 The price of insisting... (2004)

3.9 Success, truth... (2003)

3.3 Un... Identical Rivals (2003)

2.7 Whats new... (2006)

2.6 Hormone research... (2005)

1.7 Reid's dilemma... (2004)

My most recent paper is my heretofore longest, but I'm not sure that's part of a trend. My coauthored papers (marked with asterisks) are three of my six longest.