atw: Re: SEC: UNCLASSIFIED Gerunds rule OK (WAS Re: Macquarie dictionary
- From: lofting@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 13:57:40 +1100
Howard,
the price of precision is a focus upon exaggeration and nominalisation - verbs
into nouns. This act 'pushes away' the relational nature of the verb and so
cuts off the writer of the phrase from the involvement in the activity; and so
no responsibility for the activity (think of the use of the verb "to divorce" -
people will nominalise it to "this divorce is killing me" where the terms imply
one has no control of it, it has become a 'thing', independent)
differentiating allows for precision but comes with a property of push away to
make the 'point'.
differentiating also focuses on assertion of universals such that
nominalisations are also exaggerated, can be made more 'grandious' in
expression.
The gerund reflects a superposition, verb and noun share the same space, and
context, be it personal or social, collapses the 'wave' into a 'particle'. The
more 'differentiating' the context the more a focus on using the noun. The more
integrating the context - the more a focus on using the verb.
The verb form is more organic, (AND oriented, linkage, relational) the noun
form is more mechanistic (XOR oriented, discrete, object).
Technical documentation will often reflect the attempt to universalise
something through pumping it up with 'energy', to over-emphasise the 'point'.
It will also reflect specialisation (a product of XOR thinking is
fragmentation) and so jargon develops.
If the technical documentation is FOR technical people then they can get off on
the jargon and over-emphasis - it is all about precision. The less technical so
the more 'feely' the document, more verbs, more flow, less bullet points
containing jargon ;-)
Chris.
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