Overheard

“We spent all of High School and College learning that your writing isn’t adequate unless you take what you can say in a sentence and make it take a whole page.”

Well, I think you might have missed the point in every single course, chica. I never had a professor or a teacher tell me that wordier is better. In fact, I seem to remember being told on numerous occasions that the aim of writing is “Clear, concise, and to-the-point” prose. I break the to-the-point rule ALL THE TIME. I am just not capable of talking in a straight line, at least not in the casual context. In a term paper or a professional writing, that’s not the case.

On one memorable occasion as a Freshman taking a course with the Ph.D students, I got the only A in the class on the midterm. The professor held it up as an example because it was the only test that didn’t blather on for pages. His theory was that the wordier an answer is, the more likely it is that the author is trying to camouflage weak ideas. I think I agree with him. For the most part, people who are compelled to use 50 cent words when a 25 cent one would suffice and need four sentences to say what could be phrased in one turn out to be the people whose thoughts have no substance to back them.