5 ms·

For all of the New Yorker's clout in journalism, sentences like the following make me wonder where their editors are. The run-on and sea of commas is atrocious!

by NamTaf 12y ago

For all of the New Yorker's clout in journalism, sentences like the following make me wonder where their editors are. The run-on and sea of commas is atrocious! It's not the first time I've noticed this in the last few days either. "Hassabis, who began working as a game designer in 1994, at the age of seventeen, and whose first project was the Golden Joystick-winning Theme Park, in which players got ahead by, among other things, hiring restroom-maintenance crews and oversalting snacks in order to boost beverage sales, is well aware that DeepMind’s current system, despite being state of the art, is at least five years away from being a decade behind the gaming curve."

dragonwriter 12y ago
That's not a run-on, and all the commas are properly used. Its stylistically awful because there are way to many apositive/parenthetical phrases getting in the way, and because they are nested without using an alternative device (like setting the outer one off with dashes rather than commas) as well as pointless excess verbosity ("at least five years away from being a decade behind the gaming curve").
- NamTaf 12y ago
  When I say run-on I guess I mean the sentence just drags on when it could be two or three separate sentences with no negative impact. It makes it difficult to read and I, at least, lose track of where I am in it. It's not incorrect per se, it's just not well-written as far as I'm concerned. But what do I know, I'm not a journalist.
mjrpes 12y ago
Sentences like this are kind of the New Yorker's erudite (you could argue pretentious) style. It works better on the the printed page than on the web. If you read the New Yorker often enough your mind gets used to it and it isn't too much of a bother. Granted, this sentence would have been better off with a period in there somewhere.... it's a bit overkill.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  The problem is that, in this case, "erudite" means "directly serializing the writer's complex and nuanced thoughts without being able to serialize the writer's previous context that allowed him/her to hold all those thoughts in a single structure." We tend to break things down further when trying to communicate because we no longer assume a precise educational background common to All Educated People, but instead a diverse range of backgrounds. We still know the reader can handle complex, nuanced thoughts, but we need to break them down into smaller pieces that the reader can assemble according to their own framework of previous knowledge.
  - mercer 12y ago
    I'd argue that you just described the point where 'erudite' becomes 'pretentious'. I'm a voracious reader and a huge fan of 'unusual' words, for some reason (perhaps because I learned English through books).My general approach to language is sometimes judged to be 'pretentious' or at least 'bookish' by people who don't know me well. Once they do, though, they realize that I just love playing with words and language. While I don't shy away from using words that aren't too common, I always try to make sure to avoid needless complications, and I regularly rewrite sentences to make them easier to understand (while still using 'big' words because I just like them, or they best describe what I'm trying to convey). The New Yorker often seems to cross the line between enjoying the richness of the English language and deliberately overcomplicating things. I don't really understand why, unless the goal is to be pretentious.
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      I actually write a lot like that if I'm not deliberately trying to be clear and simple. I imagine the New Yorker's journalists have the same problem, but aren't trying to solve it.
m-i-l 12y ago
It is the umlauts (or technically in this case diaeresis), on e.g. preëxisting, that bothers me more - hasn't everyone else been using hyphens for decades?

by NamTaf 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago

That's not a run-on, and all the commas are properly used. Its stylistically awful because there are way to many apositive/parenthetical phrases getting in the way, and because they are nested without using an alternative device (like setting the outer one off with dashes rather than commas) as well as pointless excess verbosity ("at least five years away from being a decade behind the gaming curve").

NamTaf 12y ago
When I say run-on I guess I mean the sentence just drags on when it could be two or three separate sentences with no negative impact. It makes it difficult to read and I, at least, lose track of where I am in it. It's not incorrect per se, it's just not well-written as far as I'm concerned. But what do I know, I'm not a journalist.

mjrpes 12y ago

Sentences like this are kind of the New Yorker's erudite (you could argue pretentious) style. It works better on the the printed page than on the web. If you read the New Yorker often enough your mind gets used to it and it isn't too much of a bother. Granted, this sentence would have been better off with a period in there somewhere.... it's a bit overkill.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
The problem is that, in this case, "erudite" means "directly serializing the writer's complex and nuanced thoughts without being able to serialize the writer's previous context that allowed him/her to hold all those thoughts in a single structure." We tend to break things down further when trying to communicate because we no longer assume a precise educational background common to All Educated People, but instead a diverse range of backgrounds. We still know the reader can handle complex, nuanced thoughts, but we need to break them down into smaller pieces that the reader can assemble according to their own framework of previous knowledge.
- mercer 12y ago
  I'd argue that you just described the point where 'erudite' becomes 'pretentious'. I'm a voracious reader and a huge fan of 'unusual' words, for some reason (perhaps because I learned English through books).My general approach to language is sometimes judged to be 'pretentious' or at least 'bookish' by people who don't know me well. Once they do, though, they realize that I just love playing with words and language. While I don't shy away from using words that aren't too common, I always try to make sure to avoid needless complications, and I regularly rewrite sentences to make them easier to understand (while still using 'big' words because I just like them, or they best describe what I'm trying to convey). The New Yorker often seems to cross the line between enjoying the richness of the English language and deliberately overcomplicating things. I don't really understand why, unless the goal is to be pretentious.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    I actually write a lot like that if I'm not deliberately trying to be clear and simple. I imagine the New Yorker's journalists have the same problem, but aren't trying to solve it.

m-i-l 12y ago

It is the umlauts (or technically in this case diaeresis), on e.g. preëxisting, that bothers me more - hasn't everyone else been using hyphens for decades?