- October 9th, 2016, 9:04 am
#275828
'' - Clarity, Concision, Simplicity!", the moderator rebukingly reminded me, his ardour in invoking this admirable motto seeming to convey - as he informed me of his latest scrupulous rejection of my attempts at posting to this site on the grounds of a deficiency in all three of these respects - seeming to convey, I felt, an almost boy-scout degree of principled dedication! Ah well - it seems I must yet further strive if ever I'm to boast of equalling the communication standards so regularly exhibited on this site by many of the paragons already deemed worthy to contribute!
Though seriously, regarding all this emphasis placed on, 'Clarity and Concision', I in practice found the moderator's criticisms of my attempt at posting to this site to be more a case of, 'Do as I say, rather than as I do.' - For example, the way the sentences in my post were faulted for being, 'Run-on.' Apart from this phrase sounding, to me at any rate, as if it had been cobbled together from the vocabulary range of a second year student of English as a foreign language - what exactly does it mean? You could say that obviously what the moderator intended to say was that my sentences typically contained too many clauses and that there content would have been rendered more intelligible if, instead of using additional clauses, I had used separate sentences. But then alternatively, he could by this phrase have meant to say that my sentences in fact contained too few clauses and that in his view the addition of more of the same would have had the effect of breaking up the otherwise ongoing train of my words into nuggets of sense more easily digestible in size? - Or might it be that both meanings were equally intended (together with anything else I might interpret the phrase to mean?) That's the trouble with English meant by virtue of being basic to also be both simple and direct - apart from the use of a limited generic vocabulary inevitably tending towards ambiguity of expression, it also frequently achieves merely simplicitude rather than simplicity. - Like the rather vague additional reason given for rejecting my post - that it, 'Could do with lot's of summary.' - Presumably meaning that the same points were stated so repetitively in the post that it could have been significantly abbreviated without any dilution of whatever sense it might contain - This presumably rather than meaning that my post was thought so significant that its' essential message deserved to be widely disseminated!
Though seriously, regarding all this emphasis placed on, 'Clarity and Concision', I in practice found the moderator's criticisms of my attempt at posting to this site to be more a case of, 'Do as I say, rather than as I do.' - For example, the way the sentences in my post were faulted for being, 'Run-on.' Apart from this phrase sounding, to me at any rate, as if it had been cobbled together from the vocabulary range of a second year student of English as a foreign language - what exactly does it mean? You could say that obviously what the moderator intended to say was that my sentences typically contained too many clauses and that there content would have been rendered more intelligible if, instead of using additional clauses, I had used separate sentences. But then alternatively, he could by this phrase have meant to say that my sentences in fact contained too few clauses and that in his view the addition of more of the same would have had the effect of breaking up the otherwise ongoing train of my words into nuggets of sense more easily digestible in size? - Or might it be that both meanings were equally intended (together with anything else I might interpret the phrase to mean?) That's the trouble with English meant by virtue of being basic to also be both simple and direct - apart from the use of a limited generic vocabulary inevitably tending towards ambiguity of expression, it also frequently achieves merely simplicitude rather than simplicity. - Like the rather vague additional reason given for rejecting my post - that it, 'Could do with lot's of summary.' - Presumably meaning that the same points were stated so repetitively in the post that it could have been significantly abbreviated without any dilution of whatever sense it might contain - This presumably rather than meaning that my post was thought so significant that its' essential message deserved to be widely disseminated!
- By Pattern-chaser
- By Ajiferuke Ajibola