ATTN: NOLODEMIEL

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hey, you come across to me as an interesting, intelligent person with things to say. Things that I am interested in hearing. However, you tend to use a lot of words, and it seems to me that what you're trying to say often gets tangled up in the words you're using. I was wondering if you would be interested in a thought/expression experiment, which is to spend one month, or perhaps just the remainder of March, trying to express  yourself using the fewest words possible?

Just a thought, no hard feelings if you don't want to try it.

[Triple Zero]

Oh dear, that sounds like it might be a good challenge for me too. Or is it? I often feel like I sometimes get way too wordy, I wonder if that's just me or whether other people feel the same about that?

The reason is, sometimes I go off writing something, and a lot of tangential thoughts come out too. I usually read back my post to check it and fix mistakes, but if I already spent a lot of time writing a post (and this can be a lot of time), I don't always feel like cutting large bits out and make it shorter, but hope that the people reading it will figure it out.

I have no idea if it's actually bad or hard to read or anything. But if it is, I should probably try harder because I don't feel it's fair to leave the burden to sort it out on the reader. After all, it's one person's effort for me to fix it, but it is over 20-50 people's effort to read it.

One thing I could see working for myself is--paradoxically--making the post forms larger. Especially the "Quick Reply" box is only 7 lines long so I don't always see how large my post is. If it was larger I would see "hey what I'm trying to say shouldn't require that much paragraphs or text". (The regular reply box is ~12 lines long, but you can drag the bottom line to make it bigger) Is this a good idea? I'd make them 20-25 lines by default maybe?

Another trick I find that works well is, reading back my last sentence, or the entire post, when fixing mistakes or considering stylistic alternatives, I try to go for the shortest versions possible. I used to think extremely terse sentences would also be hard to understand and there might be a "sweet spot", but in fact as long as the short terse sentence is correct, it is almost always better than a longer lingering one.

OTOH if people think "don't worry about it, Trip, you're not too wordy" then I'd love to hear that too

[Phox]

I think lots of people have the same problem you are describing, Trip. I don't really think it's a problem though. While it's true that you post long things quite often, I don't think your ideas trip over themselves (that WHN who said that, no t me. HONEST!  ). Which I think is what Nigel is talking about in regards to Nolodemiel. I THINK.

In short, I don't think you are too wordy, Trip, and I also don't believe it is necessary to expand the text boxes for posts. I mean, if you can't see the beginning of your post in the quick reply box, it's not really a "Quick reply", so if it bothers you, you might have wanted to go ahead and hit reply, yeah? Personally, I don't use the quick reply very often anyway, because it's a much bigger pain to quote with it, and I am occasionally forgetful of the format tags.

On the other hand, I do think that seeing more of what you are writing might be an incentive to be more concise for people, so maybe it's worth giving a shot anyway?

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Hey, you come across to me as an interesting, intelligent person with things to say. Things that I am interested in hearing. However, you tend to use a lot of words, and it seems to me that what you're trying to say often gets tangled up in the words you're using. I was wondering if you would be interested in a thought/expression experiment, which is to spend one month, or perhaps just the remainder of March, trying to express  yourself using the fewest words possible?

Just a thought, no hard feelings if you don't want to try it.

It's a "when I'm running hot" sorta dealie. "Aspie" probably wasn't clinical, but it prolly wasn't far off. Most of my posts don't make it out cause I trip over my own spewage.

Pills help, but if I can work my will-it-down muscle as well, why the fuck not...hitting the manipulation thread now.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If you tend to ramble, and feel like rambling is a productive writing mode for you, my suggestion would be to go ahead and ramble, but at the end, come up with a one-or-two sentence summary, and then put it at the beginning of your post so that people have an idea what you are getting at going into it, and can read the rambling (if they choose) in that context.

Another good approach is to ramble, and then prune/rearrange your ramble to make it more concise and comprehensible.

[Cain]

You may find this of use.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

[AFK]

Oh dear, that sounds like it might be a good challenge for me too. Or is it? I often feel like I sometimes get way too wordy, I wonder if that's just me or whether other people feel the same about that?

The reason is, sometimes I go off writing something, and a lot of tangential thoughts come out too. I usually read back my post to check it and fix mistakes, but if I already spent a lot of time writing a post (and this can be a lot of time), I don't always feel like cutting large bits out and make it shorter, but hope that the people reading it will figure it out.

I have no idea if it's actually bad or hard to read or anything. But if it is, I should probably try harder because I don't feel it's fair to leave the burden to sort it out on the reader. After all, it's one person's effort for me to fix it, but it is over 20-50 people's effort to read it.

One thing I could see working for myself is--paradoxically--making the post forms larger. Especially the "Quick Reply" box is only 7 lines long so I don't always see how large my post is. If it was larger I would see "hey what I'm trying to say shouldn't require that much paragraphs or text". (The regular reply box is ~12 lines long, but you can drag the bottom line to make it bigger) Is this a good idea? I'd make them 20-25 lines by default maybe?

Another trick I find that works well is, reading back my last sentence, or the entire post, when fixing mistakes or considering stylistic alternatives, I try to go for the shortest versions possible. I used to think extremely terse sentences would also be hard to understand and there might be a "sweet spot", but in fact as long as the short terse sentence is correct, it is almost always better than a longer lingering one.

OTOH if people think "don't worry about it, Trip, you're not too wordy" then I'd love to hear that too

tl;dr   

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

You may find this of use.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

#4 is a biggie. Noticed it myself before reading that. I'm not sure why it hits my writing so hard. Speaking in that manner is not a tendency with which I am associated. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You may find this of use.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

#4 is a biggie. Noticed it myself before reading that. I'm not sure why it hits my writing so hard. Speaking in that manner is not a tendency with which I am associated. 

Yes, passive voice is sometimes necessary, but is incredibly disengaging when overused. That's one of the things I loathe most about e-prime; it relies heavily on passive voice.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

You may find this of use.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

#4 is a biggie. Noticed it myself before reading that. I'm not sure why it hits my writing so hard. Speaking in that manner is not a tendency with which I am associated. 

Yes, passive voice is sometimes necessary, but is incredibly disengaging when overused. That's one of the things I loathe most about e-prime; it relies heavily on passive voice.

But isn't e-prime supposed to be disengaging? Gland free communication for a sedate tomorrow?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You may find this of use.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

#4 is a biggie. Noticed it myself before reading that. I'm not sure why it hits my writing so hard. Speaking in that manner is not a tendency with which I am associated. 

Yes, passive voice is sometimes necessary, but is incredibly disengaging when overused. That's one of the things I loathe most about e-prime; it relies heavily on passive voice.

But isn't e-prime supposed to be disengaging? Gland free communication for a sedate tomorrow?

Yes. It's a perfect form of communication for androids.

[Scribbly]

You may find this of use.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

#4 is a biggie. Noticed it myself before reading that. I'm not sure why it hits my writing so hard. Speaking in that manner is not a tendency with which I am associated. 

Yes, passive voice is sometimes necessary, but is incredibly disengaging when overused. That's one of the things I loathe most about e-prime; it relies heavily on passive voice.

But isn't e-prime supposed to be disengaging? Gland free communication for a sedate tomorrow?

Yes. It's a perfect form of communication for androids.

It seems like a perfect form of communication for androids. I am not sure we can know without their input.

Beep boop.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You may find this of use.

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/george-orwells-5-rules-for-effective-writing/

#4 is a biggie. Noticed it myself before reading that. I'm not sure why it hits my writing so hard. Speaking in that manner is not a tendency with which I am associated. 

Yes, passive voice is sometimes necessary, but is incredibly disengaging when overused. That's one of the things I loathe most about e-prime; it relies heavily on passive voice.

But isn't e-prime supposed to be disengaging? Gland free communication for a sedate tomorrow?

Yes. It's a perfect form of communication for androids.

It seems like a perfect form of communication for androids. I am not sure we can know without their input.

Beep boop.

[LMNO]

A thought: perhaps it's not "too many words" as "not enough precision when using the words"?

I'm usually hesitant to tell someone to use fewer words, because they might continue with their ill-defined usage while saying even less, meaning the resulting point will be even more obscured.

But perhaps this is already understood.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

A thought: perhaps it's not "too many words" as "not enough precision when using the words"?

I'm usually hesitant to tell someone to use fewer words, because they might continue with their ill-defined usage while saying even less, meaning the resulting point will be even more obscured.

But perhaps this is already understood.

The whole point of the exercise is to think more carefully about the chosen words, and assess whether they express the intended meaning.