Could the OP, or somebody, please just link to the damn thread? The one mentioned in the OP about calling young girls pretty? What earthly justification could you possibly have for not linking to it? Not just not linking to it, but deliberately not linking to it:
This is just aggravating. How on earth would it be “needlessly antagonistic” to include a helpful link to the thread so that I can figure out what the hell you’re talking about?
Wait a minute… aren’t you supposed to be one of the greatest orators of all time? You’re telling me you used a handbook?
I want my money back!
I was checking it to make sure there were no mistakes 
Had I linked to the other thread, it would have seemed that I was trying to call the writer of 46-world sentence to task. Such was not my intent; I did not intend to criticize or insult the writer, but rather to complain about the practice.
That said, here’s the original post. Look to the top right-hand side if you wish to view the entire thread.
I’m not buying the idea that a sentence that is dense and virtually impossible to understand is making a more refined point; in my opinion, a difficult to read sentence (paragraph/essay/novel) indicates that the author needs to work on their writing skills, not my reading skills. I don’t just type out any old thing and hit “post.” I actually re-read what I’ve written, and if there is awkward stuff in it, I’ll re-arrange things and make it more readable. That’s MY job as the writer.
For example, in the example sentence in the OP, the writer could have made his sentence much easier to read simply by changing a couple of words around:
“That you feel this this common as dirt expression which is was often expressed by older men of a certain era as a compliment to female children needs to be deconstructed and teased into something inappropriate or an illumination of your father’s sexual inclinations is bizarre.”
becomes,
“It’s bizarre that you feel this common as dirt expression which was often expressed by older men of a certain era as a compliment to female children needs to be deconstructed and teased into something inappropriate or an illumination of your father’s sexual inclination.” {Corrections mine}
It’s still wordy as hell, but it takes you on a straight path from start to finish, instead of dancing around up and down and back and around, and you’ve forgotten where you started by the time you get to the end. The way the author chose to use an awkward structure instead of an easier to read structure tells me that either he is a bad writer, or he is a pretentious writer (which in some ways is the same thing, I’ll grant you).
Look, I can understand your rationale for short and to the point messages, Skald, particularly when one considers the ramifications of confusion over a needlessly elongated run-on with an misuse of grammar and a complete lack of punctuation simply because it marks the writer as one ill-equipped to use the tools necessary or - more to the point- to appreciate the beauty and finesse inherent in the English language; however, when one stops to consider the medium, one can clearly see that a mastery of English, while preferable, is not a requirement to the conveyance of the expressions within…and yes, I get from where you’re coming with this “rant” (i.e. that the subject matter in question was NOT understandable in any form or medium due to its inherent convolutedness), nevertheless, one mustn’t discount the possibility, nay, the probability, that while the fault lies squarely with the original author, the “crime” as it were, is not one rising to an occasion worthy of comment or reproach, though that’s just my opinion.
Always without exceptions?
And now you have lost the rhetorical device “That you would (verb)…is (adj)”.
Maybe that was the rhetorical effect the writer wanted to make?
I see what you did.
Well, I hate absolutes…
Perhaps that particular device is better used in a shorter, less complex sentence - its use in that sentence was a bad choice, making a difficult sentence even worse.
I am not arguing that it was a great sentence. But if that was the point the author wanted to make to the reader, who is the reader to complain?
Which is the reason I didn’t “fix” that in my version. What did you think of mine?
Well, that’s just peachy if you’re having a lecture and the author gets to be the pretty pretty princess who doesn’t have to put any effort into making sure the audience clearly understands what he’s trying to convey. But it’s not peachy if you’re having a conversation, it can’t be all about you, you, you and how you want to do things. There has to be a balance in there somewhere between how verbose and obtuse you want to be to make a point and how much effort your conversational partner(s) want to put into understanding you. And besides, if it’s worth saying at all, it’s worth making sure people understand it. If you’re just throwing out any old thing that’s not worth putting any effort into clarity, you’re just flapping your jaws to hear the sound of your own voice.
I didn’t really see the thread or the post the Orig Sentence came from, so I don;t know how it fits in the broader tone, but it does read smoother. And there is that repeated that for clarity and rhythm going for it.
That would be true if you know who your audience is.
But a corollary for “Write for your audience” is “write for the audience you want if you don’t know who the audience is”. And maybe in a place where “fighting ignorance” is the overall theme, that is not bad, and neither is “challenge the audience”.
Otherwise, your advice reduces to “Write for the lowest possible common denominator so everyone that comes across the writing can understand”. I don’t think you really want that do you?
You had me concerned that morefocusandprecision (Google that handle if you’re curious) started posting here.
I guess you find the compromise between suiting yourself and thinking of your audience. I do try to write posts that are easy to understand - using proper grammar and punctuation, separating paragraphs (even overuse of paragraph separation, because solid blocks of texts are intimidating), and re-writing things that I catch as being clunky and difficult. We don’t have to do any of these things (and some people obviously don’t), but I do like people to be able to read my posts easily. If you don’t care if people can read what you write easily, you can write any way you please, knowing that some people will just avoid your writing because it is too awkward.
I suppose some of it is personal preference, too - I choose readability over using some funky device every time.
But what people?
Awkward is in the eyes of the beholder. I am quite sure that for some topics, the audience can be expected to be able to handle complex sentences with 10 dollar vocabulary.
Other topics and audiences require Cat in the Hat level writing.
Me, I figure if the topic is complex enough to generate complex thoughts for me, then it is appropriate to have complex sentences to express the thoughts.
YMMV.
We all have our limits. I remember trying to read Gravity’s Rainbow and not getting very far, for example.
But when I edited a PhD dissertation a few years ago by someone from a top program. Then last year I had the chance to see one from a colleague in the same field from a bottom rank program.
Trust me, simple sentences are not always going to express what you want them to express.
Write for the audience you have, and if you don’t have the audience or know it, write for the audience you want.
That is good writing advice.
Great! You are not comfortable using them and/or your audience is not comfortable reading them. Glad that works for you.
Too bad you don’t seem aware that that is not the only audience available.
No, lcd is not striking a balance between how much effort you want to put into clarity and how much effort your audience wants to put into comprehension, which is what I advocated. The audience in this case is the people who are reading the Dope–people who are typically intelligent, educated, and sitting around killing time. People don’t, by and large, want to put the same sort of effort into their time-killer entertainment as they are into something serious. Good or bad, it’s the nature of the world.
It’s something we see over and over and over again here–some long convoluted screed that multiple posters have said “I’m not wading through that shit to figure out what the hell you’re on about.” When that convolution is the result of someone doing a stream-of-consciousness thing, the general attitude is that it’s the author’s fault nobody wants to read the post. But when that convolution is the result of someone basically saying “Look at how many tricks I know!” you seem to be arguing that it’s not the author’s fault nobody wants to read the post. Personally, I think both are examples of bad writing.
Thanks; sorry if I was snippy about it.
Sorry, maybe I have a finer sense of it, but it seems different topics and different forums here draw different crowds, with different types of discourse.
Are you suggesting that we only write that which everyone here might be able to read, even if there is nary a snowball’s chance in hell of everyone reading it?
Me too.
I figure those are the people not sufficiently interested or skilled or both to participate. So what? They are not the target audience, they themselves admit it. I am supposed to lose sleep over that?
But so what? Worst case, it is a POST FAIL. That’s life. Few newspaper readers read every article too, do the authors get upset over it every day?
Perhaps before you employ the trick of putting words in my mouth, you can actually show where I said that.
Look, if you or anyone else only wants to read or write Cat in the Hat style sentences, I am all for that. I don’t care. Just don’t whine because others prefer to read and write with more nuance, and they do.