Forum Posts Feed
Surfulater PrevGen on bits, again
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 2, 2013 at 05:21 PM
You’re welcome, 22111. And thanks for reacting the way you did :-)
Re: fora. It’s either “fora” or “forums”. There is no “fori” (but “foristi”).
OK, I admit it: Sometimes I like to show off - e.g. by using the correct Latin plural :-)
And: Yes, I noticed you kept the other thread short and to the point (you read Hemingway in the meantime, confess).
Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 2, 2013 at 07:56 PM
Strictly speaking, 22111 is correct: “foris” is the Latin dative plural of “forum”. However, Franz is also correct, in that it’s not used in English (only, alas, in Latin - and how many people read Latin any more?).
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 2, 2013 at 08:41 PM
22111 wrote:
>You’ve written about 40 or 50 books of your own, Franz, so you must know
>something about it: How to leave out so many details and hence preserve
>your message (necessarily not backed-up any-more to that degree then)?
Ha. That’s the difficult part. I know
a) nobody reads technical books from A to Z, nobody has to know every little detail (almost nobody)
b) the more pages, the higher the price - the higher the price, the less likely people are to buy,
c) if I leave something out, I make yourself vulnerable to criticism (“This so-called expert failed to mention that… And he also missed…”). What helps is always keeping in mind who I write for, what their needs are (ok, that’s guesswork) and what they need to know. And to know I cannot for the life of me be perfect (I tried that for years until I realized that I _can_ be perfect, but not all the time. Often, the time I spent trying to be perfect, was not worth the trouble.)
>My recurrent question has been: Why do people see length, in itself (!),
>as an aggression to them?
I can only speak for myself. Among other things, I teach people how to write. Particularly for the internet. I always tell them to write short and to the point. Nobody has much time, the attention span of readers on the internet is shorter than on paper. When I write, I usually take the time and shorten the text I initially wrote before sending it off or posting it on the web or giving it to my publisher.
And then there is somebody (who not even bothers to write under his name) and throws pages of text at me. On my 20 inch screen many of your postings continue to a 2nd page. And I know that you expect somebody (in this case me) to read all that. When I start reading, sometimes I find something that attracts my interest, sometimes explanations why you have to explain xyz (we call that “covering your a..”), sometimes boasting (“I am better than ...”), sometimes insults.
What makes me angry: I have to really dig deep to find the pearls. The pearls are there, yes. But hidden under words, words, words…
My understanding of my job as a writer: Dig out the pearls and present them to the readers (instead of forcing them to dig).
Franz
Posted by Cassius
Dec 3, 2013 at 06:23 AM
1. Verbosity is learned in school: “Assignment - write three pages about ...”
2. Brevity quotes:
Brevity is the soul of wit.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”
(Letter 16, 1657)”
― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters
“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.”
― George Burns
“Be sincere, Be brief, Be seated.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.”
― Shirley Conran
“Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.”
― Louise Brooks
“A novel is just a story that hasn’t yet discovered a way to be brief.”
― George Saunders
Example: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
-c
Posted by PIMfan
Dec 3, 2013 at 05:22 PM
Re: Cassius
Wit + Genius = Brilliance.
Done.