6 ms·

I can't stand this kind of writing, communicating, and conveying of ideas, concepts, and points which tries to pack, cram, and insert too damn many variations,

I can't stand this kind of writing, communicating, and conveying of ideas, concepts, and points which tries to pack, cram, and insert too damn many variations, subtleties, and nuances into each point in a sentence. It seems like a military thing. Though I know other people that do it whenever they're trying to summarize anything tersely (and think they're succeeding when they failing terribly).

jrexilius 6y ago
I seem to fall into that style of writing too often. I'll claim mea culpa on the overloaded terseness as well. The recent posts on here about editing and writing have been interesting and nudged me to start working harder on that skill.
navbaker 6y ago
This is intended to convey meaning to anyone engaged in military planning activities and it is assumed that the reader has the relevant education in military planning so they can quickly understand what is being said. It’s no different than reading a scientific paper where a single sentence may be unpacked on multiple levels because the reader/audience for the paper is someone who has a deep background in the subject.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  The intention may be such, but there is plenty of study on the mentally enervating effects of jargon that I can't help but feel the goal would be better achieved with shorter, more energetic phrasing. on edit: better structure
- neutronicus 6y ago
  As someone who has become practiced in parsing scientific papers, I do not actually think the format is a very good one. If you are not a sub-domain expert it is IMO much easier to get up-to-speed by reading a tangentially-relevant PhD Thesis or two than by reading even Review papers. > a single sentence may be unpacked on multiple levels because the reader/audience for the paper is someone who has a deep background in the subject. This supposed information density is often a pretext for obfuscation, though. The author is essentially hostile to the reader, fighting a vicious obfuscatory rear-guard action against their comprehension of anything beyond the conclusion they're meant to cite or the technique they're meant to implement (and cite). I often wonder whether I found student theses so much more helpful because they're long-form, or because either idealism or a less-developed sense of the threshold of acceptable bullshit they can get away with leads them to present their claims and process more clearly.
twirlock 6y ago
Maybe you just can't read very well.

jrexilius 6y ago

I seem to fall into that style of writing too often. I'll claim mea culpa on the overloaded terseness as well. The recent posts on here about editing and writing have been interesting and nudged me to start working harder on that skill.

navbaker 6y ago

This is intended to convey meaning to anyone engaged in military planning activities and it is assumed that the reader has the relevant education in military planning so they can quickly understand what is being said. It’s no different than reading a scientific paper where a single sentence may be unpacked on multiple levels because the reader/audience for the paper is someone who has a deep background in the subject.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
The intention may be such, but there is plenty of study on the mentally enervating effects of jargon that I can't help but feel the goal would be better achieved with shorter, more energetic phrasing. on edit: better structure
neutronicus 6y ago
As someone who has become practiced in parsing scientific papers, I do not actually think the format is a very good one. If you are not a sub-domain expert it is IMO much easier to get up-to-speed by reading a tangentially-relevant PhD Thesis or two than by reading even Review papers. > a single sentence may be unpacked on multiple levels because the reader/audience for the paper is someone who has a deep background in the subject. This supposed information density is often a pretext for obfuscation, though. The author is essentially hostile to the reader, fighting a vicious obfuscatory rear-guard action against their comprehension of anything beyond the conclusion they're meant to cite or the technique they're meant to implement (and cite). I often wonder whether I found student theses so much more helpful because they're long-form, or because either idealism or a less-developed sense of the threshold of acceptable bullshit they can get away with leads them to present their claims and process more clearly.

twirlock 6y ago

Maybe you just can't read very well.