The Power of Accusation

[ThatGirl]

I understand the position that I need to make my language more coherent. I have been told this by numerous people.

One situation that comes to mind, was when a forum member was editing my term paper and found issue with this.....

It is easy to become overwhelmed with possibilities in a world where so many things seem to contribute to success or failure. Getting caught up in too many details can serve to inhibit progressive morale; however a successful state of mind can be achieved just as easily.

His issue was that I was putting together two words that don't seem to belong together, and we got into the discussion of language.

We went deep into the context of the paper, how that term was addressed, and the definitions of the two words. Turned out it was describing exactly what I wanted it to. However it was hard to understand because most people associate words with commonly used phrases. My chunking together multiple words, did in fact express the point I was trying to make, but it didn't read easily.

As Salome said, it is the responsibility of the person communicating to be understood. I get this 100%. I am also working on it, though it seems to be a bigger problem than I realized, maybe laziness. If you look at Highlander's interpretation of the sentence produced as evidence. You can see that it took a whole paragraph to sum up what I put in a sentence....yet, it was spot on with what I actually meant, so there is a structure there.

This only addresses the drama of the thread, as far as the relevant posts go. I completely agree with everything that has been said so far, so I don't know how to comment. I did find Salome's link to be interesting, and am going to take another look, and ponder some more....

Woot.

 

[highlander]

If you look at Highlander's interpretation of the sentence produced as evidence. You can see that it took a whole paragraph to sum up what I put in a sentence....yet, it was spot on with what I actually meant, so there is a structure there.

Your sentence was much more efficient in communicating the idea and I had this exact same thought as I was writing that. There is something I used to do back when I did application development. When I was designing a user interface, I tried to design it for the dumbest possible user. To some extent, I try to write this way too. I try to remove myself, pretend like I'm an outside observer reading what I write, and assessing it to see if what I have written makes sense to someone who lacks the context that I have. I'm always doing this - pretending like I know nothing and as if I am reading this thing I have written for the first time. Though it is a habit, it takes effort and time. In conversation, I'm not able to do it so easily because there is no time to filter and edit the language.

 

[Kasper]

The Days of our Lives interlude has been moved to the Graveyard.