No, I think he means longer. IN-ADDR.ARPA can only be delegated on octet
boundaries, so IN-ADDR for /16 and shorter prefixes will be delegated in /16
chunks. IN-ADDR for prefixes longer than /16 must still be maintained by the
root, since they cannot be delegated.
Silly me. I've been working with a tree that does non-octet delegations for
a few weeks and it has warpped my thinking. You are correct that in todays
world, longer is right. Sorry for the confusion.