Posted on 11/01/2005 9:10:26 AM PST by CarrotAndStick
Though copy editors and popular writers have known it for long, an experiment by a psychologist establishes the key to impressive writing - keep it plain and simple.
Writers who use long words needlessly and choose complicated font styles in print are seen as less intelligent than those who employ basic vocabulary and plain text, according to new research from the Princeton University in New Jersey to be published in the next edition of Applied Cognitive Psychology.
In the study titled 'Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly', Daniel Oppenheimer based his findings on students' responses to writing samples for which the complexity of the font or vocabulary was systematically manipulated.
In a series of five experiments, he found that people tended to rate the intelligence of authors who wrote essays in simpler language, using an easy to read font, as higher than those who authored more complex works.
"It's important to point out that this research is not about problems with using long words but about using long words needlessly," Oppenheimer was quoted as saying.
"Anything that makes a text hard to read and understand, such as unnecessarily long words or complicated fonts, will lower readers' evaluations of the text and its author."
The samples of text included graduate school applications, sociology dissertation abstracts, and translations of a work of Descartes. Times New Roman and italicized Juice font were used in samples to further assess the effect of fluency on rating levels.
Interestingly, by making people aware that the source of low fluency was irrelevant to judgement, Oppenheimer found that they overcompensated and became biased in the opposite direction.
In a final experiment, he provided samples of text printed with normal and low printer toner levels. The low toner levels made the text harder to read, but readers were able to identify the toner as being responsible for the difficulty, and therefore didn't blame the authors.
"One thing seems certain: write as simply and plainly as possible and it's more likely you'll be thought of as intelligent," Oppenheimer said.
"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
St. Exupery Wind, Sand, & Stars
If you notice, the words used are mostly commonplace. It's the lack of coherence that kills that writing.
Hee hee hee!
Hey friend, like Sowell? Try this:
" Since neither the creationists nor the evolutionists were there when the world began, why are our schools teaching either set of beliefs, when there are so many hard facts that the schools are failing to teach?"
From: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/column/thomassowell/2005/11/29/177141.html
To make a non-crevo point: Sowell is perhaps the clearest writer out there. I constantly recommend him to my teen-age kids. When Walter Williams was subbing for Rush and had Sowell on as a guest, I said it was not fair for them both to be there, smarter than everyone else. And now this article tells hapless me that it's only cuz their writing and speaking has been dumbed down for me!!
What is it Coulter says, shut up and sing? Political analysts should take that to heart snd either stick to their knitting or actually learn something about science.
We have established that if you express doubt on Darwinian evolution, you will be painted as an idiot by many. That's par for the course. But what about global warming? If you doubt the majority scientific view on that, many experts will again paint you as an idiot and dangerous.
Now, global warming? Yes, the best evidence is that the globe is warming. For years the satellite and ground measurements diverged and so I was skeptical, but lately errors have been found and acknowledged in the satellite analysis. I would not be at all suprised if additional errors weren't found. It's is pretty clear the earth is warming.
Is it, as they say, "anthropogenic?" Possibly but the evidence for this is quite weak - largely based on climate models. I think the historical temperature data shows clearly that climate is chaotic within a large band on a time scale of thousands of years. Without models that have clearly tracked climate for a very significant part of that time, how can one have much faith it them? But, as I say, it is possible.
Whatever the source, should we be worried? I think not. I predict that within a half century it will be feasible to control the earth's energy budget to a sufficient extent to avoid continued warming.
As a young man on the day of an examination or of a duel feels the question that he has been asked, the shot he has fired, to be very insignificant when he thinks of the reserves of knowledge and of valor that he would like to have displayed, so my mind, which had lifted the Virgin of the Porch far above the reproductions that I had had before my eyes, invulnerable to the viscissitudes which might threaten them, intact even if they were destroyed, ideal, endowed with a universal value, was astonished to see the statue which it had carved a thousand times, reduced now to its own stone semblance, occupying, in relation to the reach of my arm, a place in which it had for rivals an election poster and the point of my stick, fettered to the square, inseparable from the opening of the main street, powerless to hide from the gazed of the cafe and of the omnibus office, receiving on its face half the ray of the setting sun (and presently, in a few hours' time, of the light of the street lamp) of which the savings bank received the other half, invaded simultaneously with that branch office of a loan society by the smells from the pastry-cook's oven, subjected to the tyranny of the Particular to such a point that, if I had chosen to scribble my name upon that stone, it was she, the illustrious Virgin whom until then I had endowed with a general existence and an intangible beauty, the Virgin of Balbec, the unique (which meant, alas, the only one), who, on her body coated with the same soot as defiled the neighboring houses, would have displayed--powerless to rid herself of them--to all the admiring strangers come there to gaze upon her, the marks of my piece of chalk and the letters of my name, and it was she, finally, the immortal work of art so long desired, whom I found transformed, as was the church itself, into a little old woman in stone whose height I could measure and whose wrinkles I could count.
Any big words in there? --Proust
I ran across a sentence the other day, and it nearly flattend my tires.......
If it does not produce lines of code, it’s not good productive time for a project manager or team leader. Let the tech writer straighten it out until it’s time to drop her from the project.
Monosyllabic isn’t monosyllabic.
The concept is nuncupatory.
—Jack Vance
Freegards
13. Omit needless words.
I disagree. “The use of complicated wording as an overall literary technique needs to encompass graphic and individual comprehension to allow the reader to become acquainted with the unique terminological aspects employed by the author whilst not detracting from the application of the specific innuendos influencing the particular methods involved which reflect the tone of the major works in question, thereby altering the quality of the outcome.”
Got a point there. By the way, I’ve never had someone respond to a comment from six years ago before!
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