On May 20, 11:30*am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Winston" wrote in message
...
I've set up my newsgroup reader to mark the posts from select
participants like you, Ed and Pete C and Jim Wilkins, etc because
I find that I can generally understand your point effortlessly.
It almost doesn't matter what the subject is.

I spend so long editing the initial garbage that I spew for style and
clarity and logical sequence that the session often times out and I
have to copy and paste the text into a new one. That's why my posts
may contain complete non-sequiturs where I missed a major change at
line wrap, which isn't where you see it.

I find a startling qualitative difference between 'textbook'
presentation (which can be obscure *and* tiresome) and this
informal communication which I find clear and compelling.

It's frustrating because I can't reconcile the tacit goal of
the textbook with that of the newsgroup. They should both
communicate effectively but in a lot of cases I get a sense
that the textbook author is almost gleeful in his precise,
correct and totally useless presentation.

I began posting here for informal practice when I was having enormous
difficulty writing technical reports and manuals. The group may
complain but they don't write my review.

That pedantic, rigorous, and jargon-filled style is a valuable insider
shorthand for concepts not easily expressed in standard civilian
English. I just had an argument about Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in
another group and found myself writing that way.

MITRE offered a class on how to write technical Governmentese, which
is similar to Legalese in that some words have specific restricted
meanings. The instructor explained that the writing style of an
organization mirrors its balance between freedom of initiative and
personal responsibility, and the consequences of mistakes. He used a
bank as one extreme and an artists' collective as the other. An
investment prospectus and an art review are the same thing written
under different rules in radically different styles.

jsw