I just re-read some of my recent posts, and, man, can I be long-winded! No wonder it’s such a Herculean task for me to churn out at least one blog post per day*. I am in need of an editor or, at least, a more intimate relationship with the “Delete” key. All that stuff about the “three enduring myths” here in Seattle? Blah, blah, fuckin’ blah. Why didn’t someone stop me?
I’ve always had this problem. I tend to believe in providing too much information about a point, which often has the effect of causing no information to flow to the listener/reader. I suppose I can blame this on graduate school. My first few papers were full of big ideas and claims, but I was marked down for not backing everything up. At some point I must have unconsciously said: “You want supporting material? I’ll give you supporting material!” Hence, the birth of verbosity.
I used to get pretty irritated at people I worked with for not reading my email announcements. “What do mean ‘Why is the server down this morning?’ Didn’t you read the email I sent out the other day?” It never occurred to me that burying the server outage note under three paragraphs of exposition explaining and justifying it caused readers’ eyes to glaze over. Even after I figured that out and changed my ways, I was still resentful of people for not paying me the common decency of reading the words I had labored to produce.
So now, even though one of my goals in writing this blog was to hone my writing craft and to learn how to be more succinct, I find myself tending toward the plague of prolixity again.
A few months ago, I added a word counter to the footer of each of my posts; I now vow to be mindful of it and use it as a gauge to curb the logorrhoea.
* — I know I missed yesterday, so no need to tell me. But I thought about posting on this topic, so that counts.
Comments
Grad school = Verbosity??????
1st Grade report card, comments from Mrs. Sherlock:
1st Quarter: ...is a very intelligent young man. I wish that he would be more willing to share his information with the group.
2nd Quarter: ...is learning to share ideas with others.
3rd. Quarter: ... shares information well!
4th Quarter: ... is certainly a very verbal youngster.
That, my love, was 1st Grade!
Posted by: Your Mother | April 23, 2006 3:54 PM