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when I see people talking in tedious word soup, I often find myself thinking some mix of... 1. that's stupid 2. that's selfish 3. that's incompetent 4. that's tiresome etc how do you expect people to understand you? do you even care about being understood? 🤔
sometimes people will maliciously use word soup as a sort of camouflage. It's a pox on all our houses. George Orwell wrote about this back in the 1940s: https://t.co/WiGz3fXuUO https://t.co/ty8h6cmCaT
This isn't to say that you shouldn't ever use big words. Hey, I love big words. The point is to be clear in your communication https://t.co/5uG3DSowtS
having passionately dicked around with words for many years, i've come to find that big words don't flummox people nearly as much as convoluted structure. it's actually possible to use some gargantuan words and still be easy to read. you just need clear sentences to deliver them
If you're just starting out, you might not yet be sure of what you're saying – so you feel compelled to hedge everything. I feel you. But excessive hedging is like using too many strokes in sketching ("chicken-scratching"). It obfuscates. Make the decision to be clear https://t.co/HdMYeKZJgn
^ the word "obfuscate" is not exactly a small word. but it's presented in a way that you can figure out what it means, from the rest of the context. that's what I mean by clear communication https://t.co/z2j56Er9jW
I don't exactly go about my day thinking "visa don't use big words, don't use confusing sentence structure", etc. I think I just internalized a long time ago to respect the reader. I assume that you're smart, busy, and have lots of other things competing for your attention
actually even that might be a step removed from the truth – I write clearly out of respect for *myself*. https://t.co/qIiNH1pVYZ
this thread also makes me realise is that a big part of why I write is so I can think clearly without all of the inelegant clutter of (most) other people’s words, and models. It’s an act of compression. My goal is often to reproduce signal with less noise https://t.co/aPbOBPqysl
simple + clear thinking is robust construction material. you can build much bigger and more powerful lattices from it. you can interface with other people's thinking more easily. it takes a bit of extra effort at the start, but the upside over the long-term is tremendous https://t.co/OfogA9CrOp
@visakanv Yeah, never necessary, and simplicity is a good heuristic. But vocabulary is a cognitive advantage. Certain big/obscure words make it easier to think certain thoughts. Then that gets automated, and what feels stupid and pointless, even needlessly complex, is doing without them.
@visakanv Monotonic, valence, precisify, desideratum, materiel, hylomorphism, enthymeme, introject, epistolary, countervail, prosody, flotsam, panoply, demimonde. Never necessary but often valueable or even wonderful. Words are perspectives.