At Cambridge University one professor asked us regularly for 100 word summaries instead of the usual long essays. This appealed to our resourceful sides while, more importantly, going half way to giving us a skill actually useful in the real world: precis.
The ability to summarise an argument in as few words as possible forces you to understand the material in the first place so that you can make it clear to your audience. Who might actually read it for once.
Gabriel Smy is a writer working on the web. His passion is making things clear. He is a Content Strategist for Fluent, a small but perfectly formed web company in Cambridge, UK. As well as SmyWord, he runs the poetry blog Verbatim and writes about his first novel at Tongues of Men. Of course, you should follow him on twitter here.