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Yes? It’s clear writing, it’s truthful and direct. You don’t like the style, but I’m sure there are many people who don’t like your preferred voice. The days o
by erikpukinskis 7y ago
Yes? It’s clear writing, it’s truthful and direct. You don’t like the style, but I’m sure there are many people who don’t like your preferred voice.
The days of one acceptable voice in trade writing are gone, and that’s a good thing. It was creating a gate keeping effect whereby people who spoke well and clearly but not “right”—according to some ethnic cultural moors—were not taken seriously.
Now everyone can be not taken seriously equally, each according to the weight of their words.
- jkaptur 7y ago"mores", pronounced "morays" :)
- elefanten 7y agoMaybe gp meant that ethnic-minority cultural Moors (read: like cultural Jews) have strong opinions about the prior gatekeeping effect of writing style conventions. =]
- erikpukinskis 7y agoNo, I just don’t know how to spell mores. :)
- gerdesj 7y ago"o tempora o mores" as some famous bloke once said. The world is going to hell in a handcart - or words to that effect. It really is so sad to hear about yet another iconic species shuffle (with unseemly haste) off to oblivion.
- marnett 7y agoI am all for using a more casual voice when writing about a subject for an audience outside of that particular domain of expertise. However, "Like, uh, their purpose." is grammatically and semantically meaningless. I am for using plain english to describe latin law terms. I am against colloquial, spoken styles slipping into written word.
- sov 7y ago> However, "Like, uh, their purpose." is grammatically and semantically meaningless How can something be grammatically meaningless? Further, because you're not able to understand the semantic meaning of a phrase does not mean it has no semantic meaning. I don't understand German--is German semantically meaningless? > I am all for using a more casual voice > I am against colloquial, spoken styles slipping into written word Are these not contrary to one another?
- marnett 7y agoRemoving the filler "uh" the sentence becomes "Like their purpose." Which could be semantically understood as "[I/He/They] Like (or enjoy) their (whale's song) purpose." A semantically ambiguous sentence is just that, ambiguous. This sentence can have multiple meanings. Also, conflating dialects, verbal fillers, and languages is asinine and you know that is not what my original point was. Writing casually about an expert domain is like, uh, different than writing spoken word as written, ya know?
- jacobush 7y agoIt adds emphasis. Translated: “Like, even their purpose!”
- sov 7y ago> Removing the filler "uh" the sentence becomes "Like their purpose." Which could be semantically understood as "[I/He/They] Like (or enjoy) their (whale's song) purpose." A semantically ambiguous sentence is just that, ambiguous. This sentence can have multiple meanings. Your argument supporting your prior assertion that "the sentence has meaningless grammar/syntax" is that... if you remove part if it, the sentence ceases to make sense? Their sentence isn't semantically ambiguous. You may not understand the meaning of their sentence, but your experience is not everyone's experience. The word "uh" in the quoted sentence serves a particular purpose--it's an emphasis of the ridiculousness about how little we know with respect to the animals. Moreover, it's a very concise way of communicating that emphasis.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- beat 7y agoMakes me think... I listen to a lot of avant-garde jazz from the 1960s/1970s, and watch documentaries about it, and this leads to listening to the speech patterns of some of the greatest players. Many of these musicians are outright geniuses, but grew up under Jim Crow, and didn't go to college - sometimes, didn't finish any school at all. They're brilliant thinkers, but they speak in such a different way, they'd be written off as fools by people who can't imagine thinking outside of the western college system. Listen to Sun Ra, or Milford Graves, or Miles Davis. It's amazing.