Crossword Genius

Brevity and imperfect sense in half of chapters (9)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

terseness

'brevity' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'imperfect sense in half of chapters' is the wordplay.
'imperfect' indicates anagramming the letters.
'in' indicates putting letters inside.
'half of' indicates taking half.
'sense' anagrammed gives 'senes'.
'chapters' with half the letters taken is 'ters'.
'senes' placed inside 'ters' is 'TERSENESS'.

'and' is the link.

(Other definitions for terseness that I've seen before include "Brevity" , "Abrupt quality" , "Abruptness" , "Abrupt manner" , "Short and concise expressiveness" .)

I've seen this clue in The Independent.
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