Just to show us that efforts to reduce jargon and wordiness are not a recent phenomenon…

The National Archives in the UK are the official archive and publisher for the UK government and guardians of over 1,000 years of iconic national documents. In 2013, the Archives’ official blog posted some documents dating from the 1940s and 1950s, by British Prime Ministers including Anthony Eden, but in particular Winston Churchill.

Amongst other comments were:

The number and length of messages sent by a diplomatist are no measure of his efficiency.

Below is one of the documents, but do have a look at the other papers, one of which contains the lovely word “short-windedness”, in the whole post here.