I was recently told that it's unreasonable to expect anybody to read more than 500 words on any subject. Is that true? I often read more than 500 words, especially of books. But if I have to explain what words like epistemology and ontology mean as well, then that doesn't leave many words left. The best part of this lecture of Searle's is at 23:24 . I get into detail, with some examples from the 80s explicitly citing Searle in this post: John Searle's Chinese Room Argument . One way to save words is to leave it up to the reader to look things up themselves, but very often they don't do that, even when you provide links for them to click: I suppose that's because links just lead to more words! See Collaborative Mathematics . Subscribe to Philosophy Overdose .