Elsewhere on the board, there’s a discussion going on about calling young girls pretty. I have an issue about the way one Doper expressed himself in a certain post in that thread. I’m opening a new thread because I don’t wish to hijack that one. I won’t link to the thread directly, nor to the post, because I don’t wish to be needlessly antagonistic. My issue is with the style of writing rather than any Doper.
Anyway…in response to this remark
the poster in question wrote
Prompting me to remark
In reply, another poster wrote:
Bored yet? Well, in case you aren’t, here is my reply.
I didn’t say the sentence was ungrammatical. Rather, it is constructed in such a way that it is needlessly difficult to parse.
The sentence is 46 words long. Its only essential words are That is bizarre. The subject is forty-four words long; the predicate is two words long. The complex subject comprises multiple prepositional phrases and at least two separate subordinate clauses. You embed the simple subject in a nine-word phrase, followed by a subordinate clause lacking any markers of punctuation; that clause is eighteen words long and includes not one, not two, but three prepositional phrases. And you’re not even done with the complex subject at that point. No, there’s another one coming of the same sort.
The sentence is needlessly difficult to parse. Its complexity is disproportionate to its meaning. That is bad writing, in my opinion.
I will grant that my initial remark was snarky. But am I wrong in thinking that the 46-word sentence is dense and convoluted?
This thread has been brought to you by the campaign for obsessive and stupid OPs. Skald the Rhymer, president.
I had no particular reaction to it other than the “is was” typo. While commas or other kinds of restructuring could have been usefully employed, I didn’t have any feeling of the sentence as written being a burden; I think you’re being overly sensitive.
It’s a burdensome sentence to parse, no doubt. Why should reading such a simple thought be so much more work than writing it?
My default position is that any author too lazy to create an easily-understood sentence is usually also too lazy to create a well-thought-out opinion, and the time it takes to understand their musings is often wasted.
I know entire academic disciplines, thousands of published writers strong, who would disagree.
Although if you tried to pin them down on whether complex thought actually requires convoluted language, all but a few dedicated linguist-philosophers would change the subject on you so fast you’d smell the burning rubber.
What it comes down to - at least in academia - is that the world of ideas is an elite club, and the steeper the intellectual dues, the better. Clarity, often, amounts to giving away the store.
I didn’t intend to pit anyone. You’ll notice that I neither named named nor linked to threads. I didn’t even curse, unless you count taking the name of Zeus in vain.
If a passing mod could put this where it belongs, that’d be great.
I don’t wear white shoes, period. Long story involving accidentally wiping out the Smurf village. I would relate the tale but it makes me sad.
As mentioned above, I honestly didn’t mean to put this in the Pit, which is why I did not link to the postor thread. I have nothing against the Doper who wrote the original sentence. Besides, I’m sure I’ve penned much worse things just this week.
Quite right - I should have qualified that I was referring to the SDMB, where such posturing is rarely encountered, even among the numerous PhD-types found hereabouts.
I don’t know if it arises from a general desire for less formality, or a sense of egalitarianism, but I appreciate that the thoughts presented on this site don’t usually require multiple readings to discern their content. Here’s to youse guys.
