Whenever I read articles about society, or culture, I notice that the authors tend to use this allegorical style of prose. In my line of work I often have to use technical jargon and business buzzwords, but that comes with the territory. It is often unavoidable and much of it is in the form of acronyms or nouns. Is this, all the (nonsensical to me, anyway) verbose language the equivalent in print journalism or web blogging? Why do people do it?

Here's an example of what I mean:



WTF is this guy on about? It annoys me when I'm trying to read a review on a band and I get stuff like "Their unironic, gorgeously fey little tunes about the dangers and pleasures of amorous partnerships were almost histrionically obsessive." Maybe I'm dense or obtuse in not understanding whatever the hell being histrionically obsessive means, but why can't people just write something that's easy to understand?

At worst I'll write something along the lines of "Culverts shall be constructed to City of ___ Standards and Specifications." and not "A confluence of aesthetics and design methodology, subtends from, and shall complement, the architectual foresight of the City of ___". Do people actually enjoy reading that kind of stuff? Do any of you write in that style? Is it just to be pretentious, a display of superior vocabulary or is it the status quo expected of authors who work in these kinds of fields? I don't get it.

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My only theory is that some people need reaffirmation that they are in fact intelligent.

There's a certain breed of "intellectual" that masturbates via language.

The quoted piece suggests its author is one of the breed.

Sometimes when facing a deadline, one gets bogged down trying to get a point across in the most accurate words. When this happens, the resulting prose sounds something like this -- one doesn't have the time to get it right, only to get it out.

That's the only charitable explanation I can think of for the babble you quoted, Engineer. But I think its more likely that you have found another example of pretentious know-littles parading their willingness to jerk off with their dictionaries in public.

[Added upon re-reading: Oh, crap, I've done the same thing, haven't I? Damn.]

Of course the anti-East-Coast part of me says .... well, this is what you get when you pay attention to what New Yorkers say. 🙂

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Eng - If you know anyone in person who writes like the crap above, take the following book and slap them upside the head with it, sweep their legs, then continue pounding them in the face with the book over and over until they admit defeat. Then tell them to wipe the blood off of the book and read it.

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I think alot of times these guys think that if they use BIG WORDS that it somehow will make their point (whatever it might be) sound more believeable.
Me, i think it makes them sound stupid.
If you are writting so that the average person can understand you, you better make what you are saying understandable.

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Reminds me of Nonstop.. 😃

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Nah. Nonstop doesn't need masturbation, even via language. He's already oversexed.

He likes his vocabulary, but he never uses more than one ten-dollar word per sentence.

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True. NSD's writing style is elegant and easy to read. He occasionally will show off that he has a large vocabulary, but that's it.

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That's true.....he thinks "oral sex" means TALKING about it. LOL!

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Fixed for ya.