Betty by Gary Delainey and Gerry Rasmussen for February 07, 2024

Or they are not writing for you to read.

You have to be smart enough to understand it.

Language is words for ideas that already exist, some new ideas find preexisting language rather inadequate.

Didn’t you go to school, Betty? Or did you sleep through English class?

A couple of years ago, as a pandemic project, I read James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”, one of the more incomprehensible books ever written. Absolutely loved it.

Because a good, clear world does not exist and writing as such about it is incomplete and incorrect and shows a lack of good clear thinking.

Convoluted writing distracts from the message. I have read a variety of genres over the years, everything from youth novels to research papers. Often the more complex writing styles were accompanied by a reduced amount of information.

Peer to peer highly technical research is excluded, but I don’t think that is what he is writing. If he is more focused on content, then he should consider it the rough draft. Polishing the final draft is when you focus on making sure the audience actually hears what you want to say.

Otherwise, why bother trying to communicate?

More commas, footnotes that take a third of a page, and plenty of Roman numerals. A book length Forward?

“Why do I talk over the students’ heads? I’m aiming where their heads should be.”

Sometimes smart people write about things that are really hard to understand.

Like me. Me, me, me.

Truly smart people do not tell everyone how smart they are.

In much of the academic world, it is considered intelligent to write very obscurely in a manner that is only discernible by their colleagues, who are used to such writing.

“The reason we write is to show us how disorganized our thoughts are.” — Kurt Vonnegut (I think)

Words of wisdom from Betty!

What is well thought is well said, and the words to say it come easily. Boileau

When I got my degree in Communication (Journalism degree) they taught us to write at the 12-year-old level to be understandable by the most readers.

Writing can be good and clear, but still difficult to understand. Sartre and Dostoevsky are difficult to read — at least in their English translations — yet their works communicate interesting ideas. And mathematics texts can be brutal for the uninitiated to fully comprehend. Try almost any Wiki article on math, like this one on integers: en.wikipedia.Org/wiki/Integer (don’t just stop at the first few paragraphs; read down to the parts about unital rings and equivalence classes of ordered pairs).

Clear, precise writing about tough subjects is going to be hard to read regardless of its quality.

When I taught, and assigned research papers, I said simple and clear is easier to write and understand. Don’t try to impress each other with ornate writing. Leave that to Shakespeare and the English department. (engineering class)

Smart/educated people don’t always write for the lowest common denominator. :-|