On Brevity

There comes a point in any writing project, no matter its purpose or subject, and regardless of its length or importance, where it seems that, despite all need for brevity and all desire for concision, the twin, driving needs of eloquence and comprehensibility uproot all good intentions and tear down any attempt at pithiness, leaving the author adrift in a sea of his or her own words, helpless on the tides of explanation, until at last they reach the shore of their thought and are cast loose onto a single sand-grain of punctuation; that sand-grain being, of course, the period that marks the end of the sentence.