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I've noticed what often causes rambling is writing a sentence that I'm only 50% sure conveys the idea. I'll keep writing variations of the same core sentence in

I've noticed what often causes rambling is writing a sentence that I'm only 50% sure conveys the idea. I'll keep writing variations of the same core sentence in the hope that one of them will work for the reader. The thought is clear in my head, but doesn't seem clear on paper. So I just throw a bunch of word spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks. It's better to tighten up one really clear sentence, and accept any complex thought will probably go over the heads of some percent of the readers.

burlesona 5y ago
This is very insightful. I tend to do this verbally as well, when I’m trying to explain something to people and I can see they don’t get it. In that context I’m trying to learn to stop and say “does that make sense” instead of rephrasing.
- kilburn 5y ago
  I've found that "does that make sense?" only works when the other party is humble and confident enough to say "no". This is rare when you are in an "authority" position (e.g.: teacher, boss) or with certain kinds of people. Some strategies that worked better for me are: - To ask them to rephrase/re-explain. This is best when the other party tends to get the general idea but misses key details. You can then fill these key details into their explanation, and they will stick much better. - To formulate follow-up questions. This is best to explore whether they got the general idea right. If they do, they will be able to infer some simple conclusions/consequences of what you just explained. - To get them to finish the next sentence. This is best to pace yourself during the explanation itself. When they can't see what comes next, it should either be an important revelation or you are going too fast.
posterboy 5y ago
In spirit of the top level comment, you do not do this entirely on purpose. At best you recognize what you are doing and rationilize it, but if you emulate the reader at this moment, you have to have been conscious of the structure and the gaps in it that you are trying to fill. On the other hand, in my own experience, if it's possible that I forgot to mention something and try to tack on the information, it's also quite likely that I lost oversight, that the information was already coded in and I just forgot and thus repeat myself. For example, I do frequently lose drafts by accident, and I'm particularly happy when I manage to reformulate approximately the same structure, but it has also been the case that I could not even remember what I was going to say. Some other times, I just completely lose it, so to speak, and butcher everything with deranged copy-pastes rearranged in the wrong place. Now my conclusion has been for a long time that this is simply due to a poor working memory, quite analogous to the browser crashes eating my drafts. On the up-side, the aphasia is self-healing to a degree, so I find it is a good memory training when I have to formulate a text before I can get to the writing, but the extent of my abilities is severely limited at that. Inasmuch as this is analogous to the thought process itself, the writing is symptomatic. However, there are also those cases where my thought process was not verbose, so translating from idetic memory to linear text is a huge problem, for example with regards to conjunctions. On that point you will note if you have ever written involved if-then-else structures, that repition and redundancy is impossible to avoid. Conversely though, recursive algorithms and functional data-structures that do look neat on paper do potentially have much worse run-time complexity, depending on the interpreter, for lack of a better word. More over, to stick with the programming metaphor, text may contain comments on a meta level, but we've all seen those useless comments and unhelpful documentation. Anyhow, what I was hoping to say was that redundancy has benefits. Scientific papers do it all the time and possibly on purpose. This is in no small part due to the medium. Locality matters, so in dialog you might be told where something was left unclear, or already known, and responses might serve redundancy for you, but in writing maybe there is the expectation of certain conventions. Legal writing, verdicts and such are another fine example of elaborate structure with sometimes staggering amounts of repitition. Finally, keeping the Title in mind, the itterative method you describe can count as "write more", and if it works like play generally does it will improve and the conclusion will actually be "but shorter" on average. Whereas, if the itterations tend to grow longer, it might be indicative of a lack of understanding indeed.

burlesona 5y ago

This is very insightful. I tend to do this verbally as well, when I’m trying to explain something to people and I can see they don’t get it. In that context I’m trying to learn to stop and say “does that make sense” instead of rephrasing.

kilburn 5y ago
I've found that "does that make sense?" only works when the other party is humble and confident enough to say "no". This is rare when you are in an "authority" position (e.g.: teacher, boss) or with certain kinds of people. Some strategies that worked better for me are: - To ask them to rephrase/re-explain. This is best when the other party tends to get the general idea but misses key details. You can then fill these key details into their explanation, and they will stick much better. - To formulate follow-up questions. This is best to explore whether they got the general idea right. If they do, they will be able to infer some simple conclusions/consequences of what you just explained. - To get them to finish the next sentence. This is best to pace yourself during the explanation itself. When they can't see what comes next, it should either be an important revelation or you are going too fast.

posterboy 5y ago

In spirit of the top level comment, you do not do this entirely on purpose. At best you recognize what you are doing and rationilize it, but if you emulate the reader at this moment, you have to have been conscious of the structure and the gaps in it that you are trying to fill. On the other hand, in my own experience, if it's possible that I forgot to mention something and try to tack on the information, it's also quite likely that I lost oversight, that the information was already coded in and I just forgot and thus repeat myself. For example, I do frequently lose drafts by accident, and I'm particularly happy when I manage to reformulate approximately the same structure, but it has also been the case that I could not even remember what I was going to say. Some other times, I just completely lose it, so to speak, and butcher everything with deranged copy-pastes rearranged in the wrong place. Now my conclusion has been for a long time that this is simply due to a poor working memory, quite analogous to the browser crashes eating my drafts. On the up-side, the aphasia is self-healing to a degree, so I find it is a good memory training when I have to formulate a text before I can get to the writing, but the extent of my abilities is severely limited at that. Inasmuch as this is analogous to the thought process itself, the writing is symptomatic. However, there are also those cases where my thought process was not verbose, so translating from idetic memory to linear text is a huge problem, for example with regards to conjunctions. On that point you will note if you have ever written involved if-then-else structures, that repition and redundancy is impossible to avoid. Conversely though, recursive algorithms and functional data-structures that do look neat on paper do potentially have much worse run-time complexity, depending on the interpreter, for lack of a better word. More over, to stick with the programming metaphor, text may contain comments on a meta level, but we've all seen those useless comments and unhelpful documentation. Anyhow, what I was hoping to say was that redundancy has benefits. Scientific papers do it all the time and possibly on purpose. This is in no small part due to the medium. Locality matters, so in dialog you might be told where something was left unclear, or already known, and responses might serve redundancy for you, but in writing maybe there is the expectation of certain conventions. Legal writing, verdicts and such are another fine example of elaborate structure with sometimes staggering amounts of repitition. Finally, keeping the Title in mind, the itterative method you describe can count as "write more", and if it works like play generally does it will improve and the conclusion will actually be "but shorter" on average. Whereas, if the itterations tend to grow longer, it might be indicative of a lack of understanding indeed.