As a scientist, you learn to deal with page limits very early on. Articles for workshops, conferences, or even journals: they’re all subject to page limits. You try to convey your message as briefly and concisely as possible, but in such a way that the reader is convinced of the scientific contribution of the work and is able to reproduce it. As a columnist, you’re bound by word limits, although the digital Cursor is a lot more flexible in this respect than the printed magazine used to be.

Page or word limits aren’t commonplace everywhere at TU/e. For example, policy documents are generally not subject to any limit and the writers make grateful use of this. And don’t get me started on writers of legal texts, who are apparently paid per word.

As a writer, you’re easily tempted to use too many words. Recently, a colleague and I prepared a nomination letter. We had a beautiful text, we thought, but unfortunately it turned out to contain double the number of words allowed. So we had to make drastic cuts. The final text contains the same content, but in less than 1000 words. The assessment committee wants to receive the core message, which actually makes a lot of sense.

Policy documents are also often a problem. They quickly become far too long-winded, making it difficult to find the core message. In fact, if you read these documents in full, you’ll invariably encounter strange things. For example, the use of AFAS, Unit4, ProActis, and Osiris on a computer that wasn’t supplied by TU/e is in direct conflict with the Regulations on Computer and Network Use, and the most recent regulations on online exams place higher demands on students' laptops than the Notebook Plan.

Due to the size of these documents and the resulting inconsistencies, you cannot expect employees or students to read them very carefully. I therefore propose that we impose a page or word limit on all policy documents from now on. A vision should fit on one page, a strategy on two. An implementation plan can be five pages long. The program and examination regulations and the rules governing the examination committee? No more than 5000 words each.