Deliberate omission strengthens a work when the omitted material is genuinely known to its author and merely unstated.
Hemingway's 1932 formulation: the dignity of an iceberg is that only an eighth shows. The condition is what makes it work — omitting what you never worked out reads as absence, not depth.
In practice
- A board paper that states the two options and leaves the third implicit reads as confident; one that argues at length reads as uncertain.
- A product demonstration that shows the feature working and does not explain the architecture persuades more, provided the architecture exists.
- Standing
- The condition matters: omitting what you never worked out reads as absence, not depth.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Rules for speaking, writing and disagreeing