That statement is one of the most important and logical truisms of life. That is, to slop through anything with approximates is possible, but often at considerable risk.
Nobody wants a druggist to give them four milligrams when the prescription called for three or hire a home decorator who fails to notice a picture that’s not hung quite straight.
Narrowing that to the here and now, you have neither the time nor desire to read a paragraph a second time just because I, the writer, failed to write it to be readily understood the first time.
All too often the rationale is that nobody is complaining and it’s not the end of the world, so why all the fuss?
No answer to that question is acceptable because if it is, we are allowing other people to add still more to all the confusion and uncertainty to what is already out there.
As a reader of this column, you shouldn’t feel you must read it again because you didn’t “get it” the first time. It’s up to me, the writer, to prevent that from happening.
It might be okay if it stopped there, but it doesn’t. If I commit a fault often enough, you will unconsciously begin to believe that if it’s okay for me to do it, that surely it’s also okay for you to do it. That’s the reason I wince when I see or hear people whose words are read or heard by millions continue to introduce then use elements that make it difficult to impossible for the reader to easily, quickly, and accurately understand what they are reading.
A good example of the clutter that can keep that from happening is the use of the words “additional” and “additionally.” The ready answer as to why we use “additional” instead of “more” and use “additionally” instead of “also” is that the writer is trying so hard to impress that they fail to properly inform. Or maybe it’s just sloppy writing such as using “as well” instead of “also.”
Applying that to the everyday, nobody at the dinner table ever says the steak needs additional salt and that additionally, that applies to the corn as well.
Or consider this: The usual reason we are being deluged with the word “decade” is usually because the writer wasn’t willing to make the effort to find the exact answer. Some even substitute decades for years. For example, when we see a sentence that says: “It has been more than a decade” the actual period of time could have been any time interval of between ten and twenty years.
Far too often we also see time expressed, for example, as “for half a decade” instead of “five years” or “a century and a half” rather than 150 years — a ploy used by writers who exaggerate or want to sound important. A good writer does the math instead of forcing the reader to do it for them.
If that weren’t enough, one of the newest fads is using “gonna” for “going to.” Smile at that if you wish, but that’s the kind of shortcut that requires you, the reader, to do more work. That is, just as the use of “decade” requires you to convert decade to 10 years, so does “gonna” require you to convert it to “going to.”
Except for a clear and identifiable reason, no truly good writer will ask readers to jump through such mindless hoops to either be educated or entertained.
Finally, there are writers who use a long and complicated word few people have heard instead of a simple and often used word. An excellent example of that is “ubiquitous,” which is often used as an alternative to the word “common.” It’s bad enough that “ubiquitous” is an obscure word that’s difficult to spell. Even worse is that although the meanings of both words are misleadingly similar, they aren’t identical.
Life is complicated enough without having to engage in word gymnastics. Or, and I say this with a knowing smile, this is no time to contemptuously engage in the iniquitous obfuscated.
Finally, note that some writers will write a headline as a question or begin an article with a question. They do that not because they intend to provide you with the answer which they often don’t, but because they want to trick you into reading the article.
Good writers know not to sensationalize by asking but rather to satisfy by informing.
The world is starving for simplicity. So starting now, do your part by remembering that no matter what you hear and read or what you say and write, simplicity matters — a lot.
