Conference thebay::joyoflex

I couldn't agree with you more, Pat. Too often the bloated prose I referred
to is written by people who are trying to impress you with their verbiage,
not their ideas.

-- Bill

Absolutely true.  There is a longstanding adage which says, "If you can't
dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullsh*t."  What's particularly
annoying is that we see so much of that sort of thing in the electronics
business; it often appears, for example, in owner's manuals and similar
publications that should by definition be clear and concise.

Cheers,
Dick

I'd like see some examples of particularly offensive passages in Digital
publications (especially owner's manuals). I'm an editor at the Maynard
Educational Services site. An MY at the bottom of a reader's comments card
indicates the manual was produced in Maynard.

George Orwell wrote a wonderful essay called "Politics and the English
Language" which discusses the relation of thought and speech, and how
clarity (or its lack) carries over from one to the other. I highly
reccommend it.

Rob

This essay can be found in "The Orwell Reader" which you can buy at better
bookstores for less than $10.00.

Pat Sweeney

This quote is included in the "Effective Written Communication Student
Guide" (that you get when you take the Effective Written Communication of
Technical Information workshop given by Bob Marotta).  According to the
guide, this quote was written by A. Ecclesine (whoever that is) and appeared
in "Printer's Ink" a few years ago:


	When you come right down to it, there is no law that says you
	have to use big words when you write or talk.

	There are lots of small words, and good ones, that can be made
	to say all the things you want to say, quite as well as the
	big ones.  It may take a bit more time to find them at first.
	But it can be well worth it, for all of us know what they mean.
	Some small words, more than you might think of, are rich with
	just the right feel, the right taste, as if made to help you
	say a thing the way it should be said.

	Small words can be crisp, brief, terse -- go to the point, like
	a knife.  They have charm all their own.  They dance, twist,
	turn, sing.  Like sparks in the night they light the way for the
	eyes of those who read.  They are grace notes of prose.  You know
	what they say the way you know a day is bright and fair -- at
	first sight.  And you find, as you read, that you like the way
	they say it.  Small words are gay.  And they can catch large 
	thoughts and hold them up for all to see, like rare stones in 
	rings of gold, or joy in the eyes of a child.  Some make you
	feel, as well as see:  the cold deep dark of night, the hot 
	salt sting of tears.

	Small words move with ease where big words stand still -- or worse,
	bog down and get in the way of what you want to say.  There is not
	much, in all truth, that small words will not say -- and say
	quite well.


Notice that there aren't any words containing more than one syllable.....!

							-- Nina

Well, I'll be superamalgamated!

(Any Doc Savage fans out there?)

--- jerry

... and you may have alienated the sesquipedallianists (no claims made on
the correctness of that spelling)

I once inserted this sentence into a project plan just to see if anyone
was really paying attention:

        The project manager will also ensure that the status reports are
        disseminated in an effective communicatory manner while eschewing
        superfluous, sesqipedalian, or obfuscatory verbiage, and will
        eliminate and eradicate each and every redundancy.

Jon,

Was anyone really paying attention?

RE .9 -- Yeah, that's great!  Did you get any response?  Maybe I should try
it in my next doc plan (Digitalese for "documentation plan")...

							-- Nina

Alas, yes, they were paying attention. It got a few good laughs, though. A
couple peple who knew me well came to my office laughing.

Re .0 --

I see Pat's point; what I wonder about is how William Safire fit into the
Nixon administration (linguistically, not ideologically).

Also, who wrote Spiro Agnew's speeches -- remember the alliteration:
"nattering nabobs of negativism" etc.?

                  -mg_

In a Sunday Times Magazine article a few months back, Safire admitted writing 
the "nattering nabobs of negativism" speech.

					andrew

Another advantage of concise writing is that it allows hundreds of noters
to read notes files more quickly over the NET.

    I hope this isn't already entered in this file somewhere, but it seemed
    germane to the topic, so here goes.  It comes from a book called
    _The_Elements_of_Style_ by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White--a book
    which, if you don't own one already, you should get a copy of at the
    earliest opportunity.
    
         Vigorous writing is concise.  A sentence should contain
         no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary
         sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should
         have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary
         parts.  This requires not that the writer make all his
         sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat
         his subject only in outline, but that every word tell. 
         
    Roy

     Here is an example of some DECspeak I found in a spec, and what I 
reduced it to, after running my 'word compressor' on it.  

     Before:  "Table 1-2 provides a list of related documents 
containing additional information pertaining to the Nautilus system.  
The references listed in the table refer to documentation available 
at the system level only."

     After:  "Table 1-2 lists additional documents pertaining to the 
Nautilus system.  The list refers to system-level documentation only."