The length comes from the problem

A small online seller in Riyadh has two listings side by side. One is for a phone cover. It runs to several paragraphs about the feel of the material, the way it catches the light, the pleasure of opening the parcel. The other is for a folding stroller. It says: lightweight, folds easily, suitable from six months.

The phone cover needed one line. The stroller needed a page.

A parent choosing a stroller has real questions. Will it fit in the boot of a small car? Can it be folded with one hand while the other holds a baby? Does the hood shade a child's face in the afternoon sun? How heavy is it on a flight of stairs with no lift? The listing answers none of them, so the parent messages the seller, buys somewhere else, or buys and sends it back.

We hear constantly that shorter is better. Attention is scarce, people skim, cut it down. Often that is right. A lot of writing is padded, and most explanations can lose a third without losing anything.

But shorter is not a law. It is a correction for one particular mistake. The opposite mistake is just as common and harder to spot, because a brief description looks tidy. It only looks wrong to the person who needed more.

The test is easy to state and harder to apply. How complicated is the decision the reader is making, and how much will it hurt them to get it wrong? A cheap, simple thing deserves a sentence. A heavy, expensive thing that carries a child deserves photographs from every side, measurements and plain answers.

The length should come from the problem, not from a habit.