Verbosity
Encyclopedia
Verbosity in language refers to speech or writing which is deemed to use an excess of words. Adjectival forms are verbose, wordy, prolix and garrulous.
The balance between being clear and being concise is probably as old as writing itself. William Strunk wrote about it in 1918. He advised "Use the active voice: Put statements in positive form; Omit needless words."
Mark Twain
(1835–1910) wrote "generally, the fewer the words that fully communicate or evoke the intended ideas and feelings, the more effective the communication."
Ernest Hemingway
(1899–1961), the 1954 Nobel prizewinner for literature, defended his concise style against a charge by William Faulkner
that he "had never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary." Hemingway responded by saying, "poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
Blaise Pascal
wrote in 1657, "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter."
Julius Caesar
, Roman emperor (100 BC – 44 BC) spoke concisely of one of his military successes:
"Veni, Vidi, Vici", that is, "I came, I saw, I conquered."
This could be seen either an effective stylistic device (eg expressing excitement or suspense), or as unnecessary bloating of language. The decision often rests with the reader.
Prolixity can also be used to refer to the length of a monologue
or speech, especially a formal address such as a lawyer's oral argument
.
. It is a combination of the Latin words grandis ("great") and loqui ("to speak"). It is often used by people in elevated political positions.
Warren G. Harding
, the 29th President of the United States
, was noted as a grandiloquent speaker, with a florid style unusual even in his era:
A Democrat leader, William Gibbs McAdoo
described Harding's speeches as "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea."
Senator
Robert C. Byrd ( of West Virginia
) lost his position as Majority Leader
in 1989 because his colleagues felt his grandiloquent speeches, often employing obscure
allusion
s to ancient Rome
and Greece
, were not an asset to the party base
. This trait has been exemplified by oratory
quoting Shakespeare in reference to the stock market.
and editing
, logorrhea or logorrhoea (from Greek
λογόρροια, logorrhoia, "word
-flux
") is an excessive flow of words. It is often used pejorative
ly to describe prose which is highly abstract, and, consequently, contains little concrete language
. Since abstract writing is hard to visualize, it often seems as though it makes no sense, and that all the words are excessive. Writers in academic fields which concern themselves mostly with the abstract, such as philosophy
, especially postmodernism
, often fail to include extensive concrete examples of their ideas; so an examination of their work might lead one to believe that it is all nonsense
, hence the pejorative epithet "pomobabble" (a portmanteau of postmodernist babble
).
In an attempt to prove this lack of academic rigor, physics professor Alan Sokal
wrote a nonsensical essay, and had it published in a respected journal (Social Text
) as a practical joke
. The journal kept defending it as a genuine article even after its own author rebuked the editors publicly in a subsequent article in another academic journal. The episode has come to be known as the Sokal Affair
.
The widespread expectation that scholarly works in these fields will look at first glance like nonsense is the source of humor that pokes fun at these fields by comparing general nonsense with real academic writing. Several computer programs have been made that can generate texts resembling the styles of these fields but which are actually nonsensical. Some examples include: * SCIgen
(which randomly generates fake research papers), "Mark V. Shaney" (which uses a Markov chain
method to generate nonsense based on another text), Dissociated Press
(which transforms any text into potentially humorous garbage), the Postmodernism Generator (which writes meaningless but superficially convincing essays in pomobabble), and the Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator
(which creates realistic but tumid rants).
Logorrhea can also be used as a form of euphemism
and obfuscation
, to disguise unpleasant facts and ideas and mislead others about them.
The term is also sometimes less precisely applied to unnecessarily wordy speech in general; this is more usually referred to as prolixity. Some people defend the use of additional words which sometimes look unnecessary as idiom
atic, a matter of artistic preference, or helpful in explaining complex ideas or messages.
"Politics and the English Language
" (1946), the English
writer George Orwell
wrote about logorrhea in politics. He took the following verse (9:11) from the book of Ecclesiastes
in the Bible
:
He rewrote it like this:
Orwell’s deliberate usage of unnecessary words only serves to further complicate the statement. For instance, the words "objective", "contemporary" and "invariably" could be cut, with virtually no loss of meaning. What both the Bible and Orwell were trying to say could be paraphrased (albeit abstrusely) in three words: "Success is stochastic
" or in four: "Fortune favors the bold" (obtusely) using alliteration
.
The physicist and storyteller Richard Feynman
describes a time when he took part conference discussing "the ethics of equality". Feynman was at first apprehensive, having read none of the books which the conference organizers had recommended. A sociologist
brought a paper which he had written beforehand to the committee where Feynman served, asking everyone to read it. Feynman found it completely incomprehensible, and feared that he was out of his depth — until he decided to pick one sentence at random and parse
it until he understood. The sentence he chose (to the best of his recollection) was:
Feynman "translated" the sentence and discovered it meant "People read". The rest of the paper soon made sense in the same fashion.
Further examples are easy to find or create:
found that verbosity can be dangerous if used by emergency services. It can lead to delay that could cost lives.
Some authors may feel that using long and obscure words may make them seem more intelligent. A recent study from the psychology
department of Princeton University
found that this was not the case. Dr. Daniel M. Oppenheimer did research which showed that students rated those with short, concise text, as being texts written by the most intelligent authors. But those who used long words or complex font
types were seen as less intelligent.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
~William Shakespeare
, Hamlet
Many common expressions can be made more concise. For example, 'near' instead of 'adjacent to', and 'to' instead of 'in order to'.
History
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
(1835–1910) wrote "generally, the fewer the words that fully communicate or evoke the intended ideas and feelings, the more effective the communication."
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
(1899–1961), the 1954 Nobel prizewinner for literature, defended his concise style against a charge by William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
that he "had never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary." Hemingway responded by saying, "poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal , was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen...
wrote in 1657, "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter."
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, Roman emperor (100 BC – 44 BC) spoke concisely of one of his military successes:
"Veni, Vidi, Vici", that is, "I came, I saw, I conquered."
Prolixity
Prolixity, from Latin prolixus, "extended" can take many forms in writing.This could be seen either an effective stylistic device (eg expressing excitement or suspense), or as unnecessary bloating of language. The decision often rests with the reader.
Prolixity can also be used to refer to the length of a monologue
Monologue
In theatre, a monologue is a speech presented by a single character, most often to express their thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media...
or speech, especially a formal address such as a lawyer's oral argument
Oral argument
Oral arguments are spoken presentations to a judge or appellate court by a lawyer of the legal reasons why they should prevail. Oral argument at the appellate level accompanies written briefs, which also advance the argument of each party in the legal dispute...
.
Grandiloquence
Grandiloquence is complex speech or writing judged to be pompous or bombastic dictionDiction
Diction , in its original, primary meaning, refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story...
. It is a combination of the Latin words grandis ("great") and loqui ("to speak"). It is often used by people in elevated political positions.
Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th President of the United States . A Republican from Ohio, Harding was an influential self-made newspaper publisher. He served in the Ohio Senate , as the 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio and as a U.S. Senator...
, the 29th President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, was noted as a grandiloquent speaker, with a florid style unusual even in his era:
"America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality..."
A Democrat leader, William Gibbs McAdoo
William Gibbs McAdoo
William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. was an American lawyer and political leader who served as a U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of the Treasury and director of the United States Railroad Administration...
described Harding's speeches as "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea."
Senator
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
Robert C. Byrd ( of West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
) lost his position as Majority Leader
Majority leader
In U.S. politics, the majority floor leader is a partisan position in a legislative body.In the federal Congress, the role differs slightly in the two houses. In the House of Representatives, which chooses its own presiding officer, the leader of the majority party is elected the Speaker of the...
in 1989 because his colleagues felt his grandiloquent speeches, often employing obscure
Obscurity
Obscurity may refer to:* Obscurity , German melodic metal band* Security through obscurity, a controversial principle in security engineering which attempts to use secrecy to provide security...
allusion
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. M. H...
s to ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
and Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, were not an asset to the party base
Party Politics
Party Politics is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the field of Political Science. The journal's editors are David M Farrell and Paul Webb...
. This trait has been exemplified by oratory
Oratory
Oratory is a type of public speaking.Oratory may also refer to:* Oratory , a power metal band* Oratory , a place of worship* a religious order such as** Oratory of Saint Philip Neri ** Oratory of Jesus...
quoting Shakespeare in reference to the stock market.
Logorrhea
In linguisticsLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and editing
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, logorrhea or logorrhoea (from Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
λογόρροια, logorrhoia, "word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
-flux
Flux
In the various subfields of physics, there exist two common usages of the term flux, both with rigorous mathematical frameworks.* In the study of transport phenomena , flux is defined as flow per unit area, where flow is the movement of some quantity per time...
") is an excessive flow of words. It is often used pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
ly to describe prose which is highly abstract, and, consequently, contains little concrete language
Literal and figurative language
Literal and figurative language is a distinction in traditional systems for analyzing language. Literal language refers to words that do not deviate from their defined meaning. Figurative language refers to words, and groups of words, that exaggerate or alter the usual meanings of the component...
. Since abstract writing is hard to visualize, it often seems as though it makes no sense, and that all the words are excessive. Writers in academic fields which concern themselves mostly with the abstract, such as philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, especially postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, often fail to include extensive concrete examples of their ideas; so an examination of their work might lead one to believe that it is all nonsense
Nonsense
Nonsense is a communication, via speech, writing, or any other symbolic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. Sometimes in ordinary usage, nonsense is synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous...
, hence the pejorative epithet "pomobabble" (a portmanteau of postmodernist babble
Babbling
Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in language acquisition, during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering sounds of language, but not yet producing any recognizable words...
).
In an attempt to prove this lack of academic rigor, physics professor Alan Sokal
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in...
wrote a nonsensical essay, and had it published in a respected journal (Social Text
Social Text
Social Text is an academic journal published by Duke University Press. Since its inception as an independent editorial collective in 1979, Social Text has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment...
) as a practical joke
Practical joke
A practical joke is a mischievous trick played on someone, typically causing the victim to experience embarrassment, indignity, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being fooled into handing over money or...
. The journal kept defending it as a genuine article even after its own author rebuked the editors publicly in a subsequent article in another academic journal. The episode has come to be known as the Sokal Affair
Sokal Affair
The Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
.
The widespread expectation that scholarly works in these fields will look at first glance like nonsense is the source of humor that pokes fun at these fields by comparing general nonsense with real academic writing. Several computer programs have been made that can generate texts resembling the styles of these fields but which are actually nonsensical. Some examples include: * SCIgen
SCIgen
SCIgen is a program created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that randomly generates nonsense in the form of computer science research papers, including graphs, diagrams, and citations...
(which randomly generates fake research papers), "Mark V. Shaney" (which uses a Markov chain
Markov chain
A Markov chain, named after Andrey Markov, is a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another, between a finite or countable number of possible states. It is a random process characterized as memoryless: the next state depends only on the current state and not on the...
method to generate nonsense based on another text), Dissociated Press
Dissociated press
Dissociated press is an algorithm for generating text based on another text. It is intended for transforming any text into potentially humorous garbage. The name is a play on "Associated Press".An implementation of the algorithm is available in Emacs....
(which transforms any text into potentially humorous garbage), the Postmodernism Generator (which writes meaningless but superficially convincing essays in pomobabble), and the Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator
Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator
The Automatic Complaint-Letter Generator is a website that automatically generates complaint letters. The website was created by Scott Pakin in 1994.It allows users to submit the name of the individual or company that the complaint is directed toward...
(which creates realistic but tumid rants).
Logorrhea can also be used as a form of euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
and obfuscation
Obfuscation
Obfuscation is the hiding of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, wilfully ambiguous, and harder to interpret.- Background :Obfuscation may be used for many purposes...
, to disguise unpleasant facts and ideas and mislead others about them.
The term is also sometimes less precisely applied to unnecessarily wordy speech in general; this is more usually referred to as prolixity. Some people defend the use of additional words which sometimes look unnecessary as idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
atic, a matter of artistic preference, or helpful in explaining complex ideas or messages.
Examples of logorrhea
In his essayEssay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
"Politics and the English Language
Politics and the English Language
"Politics and the English Language" is an essay by George Orwell criticizing "ugly and inaccurate" contemporary written English.Orwell said that political prose was formed "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed...
" (1946), the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
writer George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
wrote about logorrhea in politics. He took the following verse (9:11) from the book of Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes
The Book of Ecclesiastes, called , is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew title.The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qoheleth , introduces himself as "son of David, king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal...
in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
:
"I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
He rewrote it like this:
"Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."
Orwell’s deliberate usage of unnecessary words only serves to further complicate the statement. For instance, the words "objective", "contemporary" and "invariably" could be cut, with virtually no loss of meaning. What both the Bible and Orwell were trying to say could be paraphrased (albeit abstrusely) in three words: "Success is stochastic
Stochastic
Stochastic refers to systems whose behaviour is intrinsically non-deterministic. A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element. However, according to M. Kac and E...
" or in four: "Fortune favors the bold" (obtusely) using alliteration
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
.
The physicist and storyteller Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
describes a time when he took part conference discussing "the ethics of equality". Feynman was at first apprehensive, having read none of the books which the conference organizers had recommended. A sociologist
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
brought a paper which he had written beforehand to the committee where Feynman served, asking everyone to read it. Feynman found it completely incomprehensible, and feared that he was out of his depth — until he decided to pick one sentence at random and parse
Parsing
In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens , to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar...
it until he understood. The sentence he chose (to the best of his recollection) was:
- The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.
Feynman "translated" the sentence and discovered it meant "People read". The rest of the paper soon made sense in the same fashion.
Further examples are easy to find or create:
- The medical community indicates that a program of downsizing average total daily caloric intake is maximally efficacious in the field of proactive weight-reduction methodologies.
The benefits of being concise
An inquiry into the 2005 London bombings7 July 2005 London bombings
The 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
found that verbosity can be dangerous if used by emergency services. It can lead to delay that could cost lives.
Some authors may feel that using long and obscure words may make them seem more intelligent. A recent study from the psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
department of Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
found that this was not the case. Dr. Daniel M. Oppenheimer did research which showed that students rated those with short, concise text, as being texts written by the most intelligent authors. But those who used long words or complex font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
types were seen as less intelligent.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
~William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, Hamlet
Many common expressions can be made more concise. For example, 'near' instead of 'adjacent to', and 'to' instead of 'in order to'.
See also
- Demagoguery
- Elegant variationElegant variationElegant variation is a phrase coined by Henry Watson Fowler referring to the unnecessary use of synonyms to denote a single thing. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage he says:...
- Gift of the gab
- Logorrhea (psychology)
- ObfuscationObfuscationObfuscation is the hiding of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, wilfully ambiguous, and harder to interpret.- Background :Obfuscation may be used for many purposes...
- PleonasmPleonasmPleonasm is the use of more words or word-parts than is necessary for clear expression: examples are black darkness, or burning fire...
- Politics and the English LanguagePolitics and the English Language"Politics and the English Language" is an essay by George Orwell criticizing "ugly and inaccurate" contemporary written English.Orwell said that political prose was formed "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed...
by George Orwell - Tautology (rhetoric)Tautology (rhetoric)Tautology is an unnecessary or unessential repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing...
- NonscienceNonscienceNonscience is a book which claims to have the longest and most complex title in publishing history.Its full title is Nonscience and the Pseudotransmogrificationalific Egocentrified Reorientational Proclivities Inherently Intracorporated In Expertistical Cerebrointellectualised Redeploymentation...
(book) - Sokal AffairSokal AffairThe Sokal affair, also known as the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies...
- Cantinfleada
- Volubility
- GobbledygookGobbledygookGobbledygook or gobbledegook is any text containing jargon or especially convoluted English that results in it being excessively hard to understand or even incomprehensible...
- ReadabilityReadabilityReadability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. Various factors to measure readability have been used, such as "speed of perception," "perceptibility at a distance," "perceptibility in peripheral vision," "visibility," "the reflex blink technique," "rate of work" , "eye...
- RedundancyRedundancy (language)In linguistics, redundancy is the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more information, often via multiple means, than is necessary for one to be able understand the idea....
- List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English
- NominalizationNominalizationIn linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb as the head of a noun phrase, with or without morphological transformation...
- Plain EnglishPlain EnglishPlain English is a generic term for communication styles that emphasise clarity, brevity and the avoidance of technical language – particularly in relation to official government communication, including laws.The intention is to write in a manner that is easily understood by the target...