Long posts was: breastle screen for HLA Adventure 865

CBFalconer

Silly insults are not at all productive...

But, as well EVERYONE reading here knows perfectly well, "being productive" and "conversing with BAH" are mutually exclusive concepts...

Without the insults, any discussion with BAH would be as "productive" as it would be WITH insults...

Hence, as it needs to be said and no-one has probably ever said it, I decided to "have the honours" of cracking out the "silly insult" first...

A concept BAH will be familiar with and doubtedlessly approves of: The "Pre-emptive strike" ;)

I completely disagree; In all my postings, the length is SOLELY determined by a singular attribute: What the CONTENT of that post naturally demands...

Indeed, as "brevity is the soul of wit", my humourous and "silly insult" postings are regularly mercifully short...

But content regarding such topics as "the rule of law" and such, cannot be done justice with artificial limitations of "one or two screenfuls" that have no bearing whatsoever on what the content demands...

Another perspective: Stephen King is a bestselling author and "verbose" is his middle name...J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter novels will soon require a rainforest for each copy printed, at the "verbose" rate she's going...unless you're reading Jefferson's "only the bits with Jesus" version of the Bible, then that's not particularly "concise" either...

While those who advocate "concise writing is best" are completely coincidentally those who directly benefit from this...your English teacher at school says "write only 500 words"...is this some "training" in the art of "accurate expression"? Nope, the "motive" is far more mundane: There is an episode of their favourite soap opera on at 8pm...while they have to mark numerous "essays" that night...artifical limitation of the length allows for "marking and soap opera watching" in one night...by the way, I worked temporarily as a teacher and am NOT solely talking from "theory" in this respect...plus, you wouldn't believe what else goes on in the "staff room" where the kids are "verboten" from entering...

The "boss" at work is also a fan of "conciseness"...ah, your scholarly education was merely "prepartaion" for the rigour of concise expression demanded in the fast-paced world of business? Well, not exactly...the "boss" has a round of golf scheduled in the afternoon...he's also partial to the practice of not bothering to find out a single thing about what's going on - that's for the "slaves" to deal with - before entering a "high-powered meeting"...hence, the "boss" also demands "graphs" and "bullet point lists" and all other manner of "instant wisdom at a glance" visual devices in your report in order to do what is colloquially known as "blagging" around these parts...the practice of "faking" one's way through something by dropping the correct "jargon" and "buzz words" in the correct places, to make it LOOK as if conversing with an "expert"...rather than someone who's first and only piece of understanding on the issue was glancing at the "bullet point list" and then arbitrarily reading out each "bullet point" with a thoughtful and inquizzative tone: "hmmm, what about our...'transcultural investment margins'?" (having no idea what that means, as they read it...but the "prompt" typically has the desired effect: "Yes, that's a very good question you pose there...if we turn to page 6, there's a graph on this"...the "boss" survives another day without his complete ignorance being revealed...nevermind, he does have a talent for getting Japanese representatives drunk at the 19th hole and then extracting their signatures on all manner of deals...well, everyone has their uses at some point, eh?

In reality, all bestselling authors are "verbose"...while all "concise" actually grants you is the boss's "approval", as you saved his neck once more with the appropriate "instant wisdom at a single glance" bullet-point graph-based report...and, as for "teacher", I can directly TELL you it's motivated solely by the horror of missing an episode of "Eastenders", for having to read a series of often tediously badly written "essays" on "what I did during the Summer"...which, itself, as we all know, is a "I have no imagination or creativity" kind of essay topic for teachers who always, in fact, wanted to be "rock stars"...and grudgingly continue, singing pbuttages of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" to themselves in their minds, as a rest knell anthem of their broken dreams...why else - but a broken soul - would anyone except wearing brown and beige, with "elbow patches"?

Nonetheless, I am, of course, shattering the illusion of the "orthodoxy" in stating this...and fully expect for not a word of it to pierce the inpenetrable armour of "I refuse to admit that I've believed the wrong thing all this time" concensus...indeed, this has persisted more than a "screenful or two", hence you've probably long since abandoned reading this far, anyway...

If brevity be the soul of wit, then rambling verbosity be its "beige elbow patches"...

Often; But not exclusively...otherwise, you would have dropped the "often" qualifier yourself...

"Taking lessons"? I wrote the textbook on the subject...all 330,071 volumes of it!

Beth :)