atw: Vanity or strategy (Was: err, something about gerunds?)




It's not necessarily vanity.

There are many reasons why something might be hard to read.
The subject matter might be difficult, or the jargon unfamilar.
The reader might be distracted or just not mentally up to it.
The writer might lack the necessary writing skills, not
fully grasp the subject, or be pressed for time or lazy.

In a world where ten lifetimes wouldn't be enough to read
everything that's worth reading, we are forced to be selective.
If something is more difficult to read than it seems it should
be, it's both practical and sensible to move on to something
more rewarding if we have any choice in the matter.

This is especially true when it seems it could or should have
been written more clearly. If the writer didn't think it important
enough to do some hard writing to make for easier reading,
well, I trust their judgement.

Most people on this list are smarter than the average bear.
We read and write copiously for a living. If I find a
document difficult to read, it might be for any of the good
reasons listed above. But 'rubbish' is often a useful first
approximation for us busy readers.

---
Stuart "If a job's worth writing, it's worth writing well" Burnfield


Chris said:
> ... intellegent people, when they come across something 'unfamilar'
> will immediately pop into vanity mode - thinking to themselves, they
> are intelligent and they cannot understand X then X must be rubbish
> and immediately dismissed - since, they are, after all, intelligent.

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