Brevity may be the soul of wit…but it's also the soul of this speech.

Not only is the speech itself brief—just twenty-six sentences in total—but the sentences within it are rather brief as well.

So what gives? Why so short and stuff?

Because there's a time for flowery prose and poetic imagery, and there's a time to get to the point. And if you're the President of the United States and your country has just been attacked in an unforeseen and unprovoked manner, it's time to get to the point.

The longest sentence up in this speech (other than the first sentence with all the shout-outs) is forty-three words long, which sounds kind of long until we do a wee bit o' math and discover that the average sentence length in this speech is twenty words.

And twenty is less than half of forty-three.

The shortest sentence in this speech, "[h]ostilities exist," is much more indicative of Roosevelt's tone throughout the address: short, not so sweet, but definitely to the point (23).

Brevity accomplishes a couple things in speeches.

First, as mentioned, it makes it real easy for the audience to pick up what's being laid down. In just twenty-six short sentences, we gather a lot of crucial information:

• Japan attacked the U.S. and a bunch of other places without warning, and it's bad.
• President Roosevelt is not happy about this.
• The U.S. is gonna defend itself no matter what.

It also conveys a certain amount of gravitas: short, authoritative sentences delivered in a no-nonsense tone by the POTUS himself? That's big news. Better hush up and pay attention.

For a bit of perspective, the longest POTUS speech ever was William Henry Harrison's inaugural speech back in 1841. It was one hour and forty-five minutes long. Outdoors. In the snow.

This speech? This speech was over seven minutes after it began.

Boxers or briefs? Looks like we're keeping it brief with this one.