{"id":1681,"date":"2007-11-21T17:32:57","date_gmt":"2007-11-21T22:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1681"},"modified":"2007-11-21T17:39:01","modified_gmt":"2007-11-21T22:39:01","slug":"clear-as-snot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1681","title":{"rendered":"Clear As Snot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, I had to respond to this.\u00a0 King Banaian –\u00a0a college professor – wrote this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Have you checked his Blog Readability<\/a>? Go ahead, put the Berg blog in there and see what you get? Yes, Elementary School. Centrisity scores Junior High by comparison. All that pontification, all those twenty-years-ago-today piffle, and for what?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, what the hey, let’s go ahead and check that out:<\/p>\n

\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

Get a Cash Advance<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

\u00a0 Hm.\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 And SCSU Scholars?<\/p>\n

\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

Cash Advance <\/a>Loans<\/small><\/p>\n

\u00a0 Well, there’s <\/em>a big jump!\u00a0 Just for kicks, let’s try Powerline, Cap’n Ed and, say, Sheila O’Malley:<\/p>\n

Powerline:<\/p>\n

\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

Ed:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

Sheila:<\/p>\n

\"cash<\/a>Get a Cash Advance<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

So let’s get this straight:\u00a0 Ed and I – the only <\/em>two members of the NARN who’ve ever I <\/em>written for non-academic, non-professional audiences (I as a reporter and writing instructor, both of us as technical writers) for a living, who are both trained in writing clearly and precisely <\/em>(read: simply), along with Sheila, who’s a just-plain-great writer, scored “elementary school” level (i.e., simple and clear enough for pretty much any audience).\u00a0 King – a capable writer, but\u00a0mainly an academic – scored “junior high”, meaning more complex, ergo less clear.\u00a0 In the meantime Powerline – who are lawyers, ergo trained in writing to obfuscate – scored “Post-Grad”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are\u00a0those who\u00a0those – along with King –\u00a0have tried to pass this off as a negative, or even an insult<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baloney.\u00a0 Self-indulgent, gassy, bloated writing – the stuff my high school writing teacher used to call “EngFish”, because it stank like a rotting fish – is the easiest thing in the world (vide<\/em>\u00a0 a whole generation of business writers in this country).\u00a0 Self-disciplined, simple, clear writing, on the other hand, is a goal to be sought out – among those who pay attention.<\/p>\n

Which clearly leaves out economics professors and trial lawyers.<\/p>\n

And how about Minnesota Monitor, City Pages and Norwegianity?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Mon<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

CP?<\/p>\n

\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

The Wege?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

This is getting fun. How about the Mole?<\/p>\n

\"cash<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Good lord, how impenetrable must that<\/em> be? How about The Dump?<\/p>\n

\"cash<\/a><\/p>\n

Huh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Those of us who have the talent and self-discipline to write simply, clearly and directly should be<\/strike> are dang proud of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, I had to respond to this.\u00a0 King Banaian –\u00a0a college professor – wrote this: Have you checked his Blog Readability? Go ahead, put the Berg blog in there and see what you get? Yes, Elementary School. Centrisity scores Junior High by comparison. All that pontification, all those twenty-years-ago-today piffle, and for what? Yeah, what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}