
It’s like trying to reduce the size of pizza from a 12 inch diameter to a 9 inch diameter. Sure, you can make the pizza smaller by chopping a slice out of it, but it won’t have the same aesthetic appeal and appetizing look as one that comes out of the oven as a perfect circle! In the same way, slashing a paragraph out of article will make it shorter but is likely to disrupt the storyline and break any links the writer has carefully put in to keep the piece a unified whole. Much better to let your writers know beforehand how much space you have for the article so that they can create it “fully formed”.