Americans and extra words

[Commander Kinsey]

The man earns the money, the wife is the crafty thief. 50% of my partners have been theives, the other 50% won't shut up. I've never been stupid enough to marry.

[vjp2.at]

That goes back to the dichotomy between Greek terseness and Latin clutter, coming forth to the parsimonious Yankee vs Southern luxuriousness. Alas, there are not many parsimonious Yankees left, except perhaps in New Hampshire. I used to be like thta until I was made to attend a corporate writing course taught by an Ivy league instructor. I objected "Why should I write at the 10th grade level (fog index) when everyone here is at the 20th?" I was told "because even they read faster at the 10th grade level!" I was still unconvinced until I compared the writing of St Paul of Tarsus, who grew up speaking Greek, to the evangelists who learned Greek late in life. Paul's Greek is so much simpler so someone on the street in Athens today can understand it; The others compensated for their insecurity with complexity.

[vjp2.at]

cf the first chapter of HP Lang's western music text as well as Will & Ariel Durant's numerous writings.

[Retirednoguilt]

Sounds like a reasonable explanation for why most politicians don't know how to speak a simple declarative sentence. They're much too insecure! Of course argel-bargel speech isn't restricted to the Ivy league. It permeates academia. Another example: many physicians don't know how to speak to their patients without using all sorts of jargon and/or technical language that goes right over the patients' heads. Why talk to a patient about something on the "dorsal surface of the distal upper extremities" when you can just say "back of both hands"?

[invalid unparseable]

Same thing happened to me when I started my work and was sent to a writing course. With computers, this site makes it easy to check the fog index:

I recall that most newspapers are written at the 8th grade level (USA).

[charles]

It was called the 'fog factor' on my course - Right hand side of pond.

[invalid unparseable]

Not sure if it differs. Also see some changes made since I learned about it around 1965:

[charles]

mine was 1973/4

[Commander Kinsey]

When I was 13 I was in hospital with a broken arm with complications. The kids ward was full so I was put in the adult ward. A male nurse asked if my bowels had moved recently. I said I had no idea what that meant, so very loudly he asked "When did you last have a shit?!" That cheered up the other patients a bit.

[Commander Kinsey]

The fog factor is used when crossing the pond.

[Peter Moylan]

That reminds me of something I was reading by a French philosopher. The original was in French, but I was reading it in English translation.

It made me realise that a good writer can write something impressive in their native language, but the elegance can disappear when it is translated into another language. That's when the reader realises that it is content-free.

[T]

Don't deceive yourself. Orthodoxy defines me as a person. My personal relationship with God is a very real thing.

Because he loves it when you pray for someone else, not just your own needs.

[T]

Could it possible be that this mass GLOBAL delusion might just possibly have something to it?

Our personal relationships with God are very, very real to us.

[T]

Glory be to God!