Multi-syllabic Musings Seldom Are Superior

June 21, 1999

In today's terrestrial sphere, obtuse expressions are crushing the denotations and connotations of regular words into infinitesimal fragments. I would like to manifest how this recitation is causing the easier vocabulary to become extinct sooner than the general populous contemplates it. Here are some inferences why superfluous words are not invariably the superlative.

A momentous malady is going on in this nation and it's our capability to neglect smaller utterances. Enunciation resembling such a practice, for example, the word scholar, which is defined in Webster's New World Dictionary as "a learned person, one trained in a special branch of learning, as literature, arts, etc.," but what many omit is that it is also referred to as "a student." This flawlessly frames our misconception that voluminous words are superior. We have been thrust into an opaque cloud of which no escape from the grasp of exorbitant assertions seems possible. Here is why we must revert to our primordial days and expose the elementary words maintaining the equivalent meaning.

Another colossal infirmity of ours is we have the fascination as long as we use excessive letters in our eloquence, we may be thought of as an intelligent individual. Many of your captive patrons think if you can articulate for an extended period of time, people may consider them cerebral. This is not so, for when President Abraham Lincoln delivered his oration at Gettysburg, it was infinitely more consequential than the person who was his antecedent. Now the jocular circumstance about this was that what he voiced in three hours, the president said in 21/2 minutes. I must urge you at your publication and many others to make your articles straight to the point and to terminate using verbose expositions to acquire the preeminence that you have already consummated.

Some of the only lore I can impart to you would be to please go back to a more simplistic manner of writing and ensue the absolute echelon of verbal irony: "Eschew obfuscation"; avoid big words.


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