On Tue, 31 May 2022 14:32:55 +1000, Peter Moylan wrote:

> Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to this. I've had years of experience in
> grading student assignments and the like, and can tell padding whenever
> I see it. Anyone who has graded student work knows that excessive
> padding carries a message: "I'm trying to hide the fact that I don't
> know much about this topic".

You might enjoy reading Stanislav Andreski's book "Social Sciences as
Sorcery", especially the chapter on "The Smokescreen of Jargon"
> Or maybe it's because of my fields of interest. In high school I wasn't
> all that good at essay-writing - I had trouble making my essays long
> enough - but I was very good at precis-writing. My engineering studies
> added to this bias. Descriptions that were precise and succinct were
> valued, while waffle was not well-regarded. But I could see that English
> majors, for example, valued verbose prose.
>
> Whatever the reason, I really dislike fiction with too many pages.

It's not English majors who like verbose prose, but business majors.

Though I was not an English major, I've passed English 1 three times in
two different universities, and in neither of them was verbose prose
welcomed or appreciated. One of them prescribed "The Elements of Style"
by Strunk & White, which favours precision and conciseness.

I was also, for 13 years, an editor at a distance-education university,
and there the worst offenders were the Education Faculty, the departments
of police science and nursing science, and departments dealing with
public administration -- bureaucrats, in other words.

It was not English majors who substituted "going forward" for "in future"
or trivialised phrases like "reaching out".

--
Steve Hayes http://khanya.wordpress.com

>> ...... In high school I wasn't all that good at essay-writing
>> - I had trouble making my essays long enough

i wonder if this is a common problem.

On Wednesday, June 1, 2022 at 7:56:42 AM UTC-7, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Tue, 31 May 2022 14:32:55 +1000, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
> > Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to this. I've had years of experience in
> > grading student assignments and the like, and can tell padding whenever
> > I see it. Anyone who has graded student work knows that excessive
> > padding carries a message: "I'm trying to hide the fact that I don't
> > know much about this topic".
>
> You might enjoy reading Stanislav Andreski's book "Social Sciences as
> Sorcery", especially the chapter on "The Smokescreen of Jargon"
>
> > Or maybe it's because of my fields of interest. In high school I wasn't
> > all that good at essay-writing - I had trouble making my essays long
> > enough - but I was very good at precis-writing. My engineering studies
> > added to this bias. Descriptions that were precise and succinct were
> > valued, while waffle was not well-regarded. But I could see that English
> > majors, for example, valued verbose prose.
> >
> > Whatever the reason, I really dislike fiction with too many pages.
>
> It's not English majors who like verbose prose, but business majors.
>
> Though I was not an English major, I've passed English 1 three times in
> two different universities, and in neither of them was verbose prose
> welcomed or appreciated. One of them prescribed "The Elements of Style"
> by Strunk & White, which favours precision and conciseness.
>
> I was also, for 13 years, an editor at a distance-education university,
> and there the worst offenders were the Education Faculty, the departments
> of police science and nursing science, and departments dealing with
> public administration -- bureaucrats, in other words.
>
> It was not English majors who substituted "going forward" for "in future"
> or trivialised phrases like "reaching out".
>
> --
> Steve Hayes http://khanya.wordpress.com

in Am.Eng. it is [in the future]

On 02/06/22 00:56, Steve Hayes wrote:
> On Tue, 31 May 2022 14:32:55 +1000, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to this. I've had years of experience
>> in grading student assignments and the like, and can tell padding
>> whenever I see it. Anyone who has graded student work knows that
>> excessive padding carries a message: "I'm trying to hide the fact
>> that I don't know much about this topic".
>
> You might enjoy reading Stanislav Andreski's book "Social Sciences
> as Sorcery", especially the chapter on "The Smokescreen of Jargon"

Thanks, but I've already read enough papers in sociology, a field that
is notorious for content-free writing.

>> Or maybe it's because of my fields of interest. In high school I
>> wasn't all that good at essay-writing - I had trouble making my
>> essays long enough - but I was very good at precis-writing. My
>> engineering studies added to this bias. Descriptions that were
>> precise and succinct were valued, while waffle was not
>> well-regarded. But I could see that English majors, for example,
>> valued verbose prose.
>>
>> Whatever the reason, I really dislike fiction with too many pages.
>
> It's not English majors who like verbose prose, but business majors.
>
> Though I was not an English major, I've passed English 1 three times
> in two different universities, and in neither of them was verbose
> prose welcomed or appreciated. One of them prescribed "The Elements
> of Style" by Strunk & White, which favours precision and
> conciseness.
>
> I was also, for 13 years, an editor at a distance-education
> university, and there the worst offenders were the Education Faculty,
> the departments of police science and nursing science, and
> departments dealing with public administration -- bureaucrats, in
> other words.
>
> It was not English majors who substituted "going forward" for "in
> future" or trivialised phrases like "reaching out".

Yes, I'll agree that I was a bit unfair to English majors. They do have
a leaning towards lengthy essays, but that needn't imply padding.
Bureaucrats, and those who teach future bureaucrats, are particularly
bad for waffle.

I'm reminded yet again that any discipline with "science" it its name
probably isn't.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

Steve Hayes:

> In high school I wasn't all that good at essay-
> writing -- I had trouble making my essays long
> enough -- but I was very good at precis-writing.
> My engineering studies added to this bias. De-
> scriptions that were precise and succinct were
> valued, while waffle was not well-regarded. But
> I could see that English majors, for example,
> valued verbose prose.

In my opinion, verbosity has no correlation with
the length of the entire work. I can coceive of a
short story verbosely written, or a epic of many
volumes executed in a concise language.

Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
characterisation:

Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
dusk, the tip of the space pilot's cigarette
began to glow and foulder like the small scar-
let eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; -- and
an opal-grey vapor fumed in gyrant spirals,
like incense from an altar of pagany, across
the high auroral flames that soared from the
setting of the giant sun.

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On 22/06/22 02:08, Anton Shepelev wrote:

> Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
> characterisation:
>
> Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
> dusk, the tip of the space pilot's cigarette
> began to glow and foulder like the small scar-
> let eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; -- and
> an opal-grey vapor fumed in gyrant spirals,
> like incense from an altar of pagany, across
> the high auroral flames that soared from the
> setting of the giant sun.

That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

On 22/06/2022 1:49 am, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 22/06/22 02:08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>
>> Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
>> characterisation:
>>
>>     Ignited in the  rich  and  multi-hued  Antarean
>>     dusk,  the  tip  of the space pilot's cigarette
>>     began to glow and foulder like the small  scar-
>>     let eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; -- and
>>     an opal-grey vapor  fumed  in  gyrant  spirals,
>>     like  incense  from  an altar of pagany, across
>>     the high auroral flames that  soared  from  the
>>     setting of the giant sun.
>
> That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.

It sounds even more like a book I wouldn't want to write.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 10:49:59 +1000
Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

> On 22/06/22 02:08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>
> > Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
> > characterisation:
> >
> > Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
> > dusk, the tip of the space pilot's cigarette
> > began to glow and foulder like the small scar-
> > let eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; -- and
> > an opal-grey vapor fumed in gyrant spirals,
> > like incense from an altar of pagany, across
> > the high auroral flames that soared from the
> > setting of the giant sun.
>
> That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.
>
If it takes that long just to light a fag, how many pages does the chase scene take up?

> --
> Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

Peter Moylan to Anton Shepelev:

> > Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's
> > cigarette characterisation:
> >
> > Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
> > dusk, the tip of the space pilot's
> > cigarette began to glow and foulder like
> > the small scarlet eye of some cavern-
> > dwelling chimera; -- and an opal-grey vapor
> > fumed in gyrant spirals, like incense from
> > an altar of pagany, across the high auroral
> > flames that soared from the setting of the
> > giant sun.
> >
> That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.

The quoted sentence does not belong to any work of
fiction, but is Smith's entire contribution to a
challenge in a 1930's pulp magazine to charaterise
a cigarette so that the readers can guess the au-
thor. And here is one from a book, a noir detec-
tive I read about a year ago:

Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with de-
liberate care, sifting a measured quantity of
tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading
the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends
with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs
rolling the paper's inner edge down and up un-
der the outer edge as forefingers pressed it
over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper
cylinder's ends holding it even while tongue
licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb
pinching their ends while right forefinger and
thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger
and thumb twisting the end and lifting the oth-
er to Spade's mouth.

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In message <20220622085943.df23b7340200951bbc6da916@127.0.0.1> Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 10:49:59 +1000
> Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>> On 22/06/22 02:08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>>
>> > Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
>> > characterisation:
>> >
>> > Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
>> > dusk, the tip of the space pilot's cigarette
>> > began to glow and foulder like the small scar-
>> > let eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; -- and
>> > an opal-grey vapor fumed in gyrant spirals,
>> > like incense from an altar of pagany, across
>> > the high auroral flames that soared from the
>> > setting of the giant sun.
>>
>> That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.

It sounds like a story bulked up to fit a word count to me.

Also, I am not sure I've come across pagany before.

> If it takes that long just to light a fag, how many pages does the chase scene take up?

It's not the excessive description that's the issue, it's that it seems
to serve no purpose, and using flowery words, but not using them quite
right. "high auroral flames that soared from the setting of the sun"
certainly doesn’t make much sense since auroral doesn't describe flames
at all, and the other possible meaning is 'dawn' we're presented here
with a writer who is using a thesaurus without knowing the actual words.
"Oooo, that sounds nifty, I'll use that!"

There is a way to write that so that auroral and flames could work
together, but that is most certainly not it.

--
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

On 2022-06-22 10:05, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Peter Moylan to Anton Shepelev:
>
>>> Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's
>>> cigarette characterisation:
>>>
>>> Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
>>> dusk, the tip of the space pilot's
>>> cigarette began to glow and foulder like
>>> the small scarlet eye of some cavern-
>>> dwelling chimera; -- and an opal-grey vapor
>>> fumed in gyrant spirals, like incense from
>>> an altar of pagany, across the high auroral
>>> flames that soared from the setting of the
>>> giant sun.
>>>
>> That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.
>
> The quoted sentence does not belong to any work of
> fiction, but is Smith's entire contribution to a
> challenge in a 1930's pulp magazine to charaterise
> a cigarette so that the readers can guess the au-
> thor. And here is one from a book, a noir detec-
> tive I read about a year ago:
>
> Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with de-
> liberate care, sifting a measured quantity of
> tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading
> the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends
> with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs
> rolling the paper's inner edge down and up un-
> der the outer edge as forefingers pressed it
> over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper
> cylinder's ends holding it even while tongue
> licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb
> pinching their ends while right forefinger and
> thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger
> and thumb twisting the end and lifting the oth-
> er to Spade's mouth.

Yet another author (whoever it happens to be) I wouldn't read for more
than a page or so.

--
Yeah, Windows is great... I used it to download Linux.

Wednesday, lar3ryca quipped:
> On 2022-06-22 10:05, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>> Peter Moylan to Anton Shepelev:
>>
>>>> Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's
>>>> cigarette characterisation:
>>>>
>>>> Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
>>>> dusk, the tip of the space pilot's
>>>> cigarette began to glow and foulder like
>>>> the small scarlet eye of some cavern-
>>>> dwelling chimera; -- and an opal-grey vapor
>>>> fumed in gyrant spirals, like incense from
>>>> an altar of pagany, across the high auroral
>>>> flames that soared from the setting of the
>>>> giant sun.
>>>>
>>> That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.
>>
>> The quoted sentence does not belong to any work of
>> fiction, but is Smith's entire contribution to a
>> challenge in a 1930's pulp magazine to charaterise
>> a cigarette so that the readers can guess the au-
>> thor. And here is one from a book, a noir detec-
>> tive I read about a year ago:
>>
>> Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with de-
>> liberate care, sifting a measured quantity of
>> tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading
>> the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends
>> with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs
>> rolling the paper's inner edge down and up un-
>> der the outer edge as forefingers pressed it
>> over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper
>> cylinder's ends holding it even while tongue
>> licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb
>> pinching their ends while right forefinger and
>> thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger
>> and thumb twisting the end and lifting the oth-
>> er to Spade's mouth.
>
> Yet another author (whoever it happens to be) I wouldn't read for more than a
> page or so.

Classic pulp detective.

/dps

--
Ieri, oggi, domani

On 23/06/22 02:05, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Peter Moylan to Anton Shepelev:
>
>>> Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's
>>> cigarette characterisation:
>>>
>>> Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
>>> dusk, the tip of the space pilot's
>>> cigarette began to glow and foulder like
>>> the small scarlet eye of some cavern-
>>> dwelling chimera; -- and an opal-grey vapor
>>> fumed in gyrant spirals, like incense from
>>> an altar of pagany, across the high auroral
>>> flames that soared from the setting of the
>>> giant sun.
>>>
>> That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.
>
> The quoted sentence does not belong to any work of
> fiction, but is Smith's entire contribution to a
> challenge in a 1930's pulp magazine to charaterise
> a cigarette so that the readers can guess the au-
> thor. And here is one from a book, a noir detec-
> tive I read about a year ago:
>
> Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with de-
> liberate care, sifting a measured quantity of
> tan flakes down into curved paper, spreading
> the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends
> with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs
> rolling the paper's inner edge down and up un-
> der the outer edge as forefingers pressed it
> over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper
> cylinder's ends holding it even while tongue
> licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb
> pinching their ends while right forefinger and
> thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger
> and thumb twisting the end and lifting the oth-
> er to Spade's mouth.

It sounds as if you'd enjoy the Bulwer Lytton contest.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

On 23/06/22 02:05, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Peter Moylan to Anton Shepelev:
>
>>> Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
>>> characterisation:

By the way, is there really a newsgroup called rec.arts.boos? That's a
really creative name.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

On Wed, 22 Jun 2022 10:49:59 +1000, Peter Moylan
<peter@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 22/06/22 02:08, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>
>> Do you think vebose Clark Ashton Smith's cigarette
>> characterisation:
>>
>> Ignited in the rich and multi-hued Antarean
>> dusk, the tip of the space pilot's cigarette
>> began to glow and foulder like the small scar-
>> let eye of some cavern-dwelling chimera; -- and
>> an opal-grey vapor fumed in gyrant spirals,
>> like incense from an altar of pagany, across
>> the high auroral flames that soared from the
>> setting of the giant sun.
>
>That sounds like a book I wouldn't want to read.

I once bought a book of short stories that featured some by Clark
Ashton Smith, and gave up in disgust. It was really crap writing.

Thirty yeasrs later someone told me, in the context of a discussion on
new religious movements (NRMs), that there were some who believed in
the religions and deities propounded by a fiction writer called
Lovecraft, and in particular they believed that there really was a
book called the Necronomicon, kept in a vault in the Miskatonic
University.

Out of curiosity I read a couple of Lovecraft's stories, and found, as
my informant had reported, that some were not bad and some were dreck.
And gradually it dawned on me that Clark Ashton Smith belonged to the
same school -- and the same genre. I suppose one could call them the
"Eldritch" chool, because that's a word they like to use a lot, or
alot as their fans might write it.

--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On 23/06/2022 1:47 am, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 23/06/22 02:05, Anton Shepelev wrote:
>> Peter Moylan to Anton Shepelev:
>>
>>>> Do  you  think  vebose  Clark  Ashton  Smith's cigarette
>>>> characterisation:
>
> By the way, is there really a newsgroup called rec.arts.boos?

Sadly, no.

> That's a
> really creative name.

No, just a really creative typo.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

[dropped rec.arts.boos -- boo!]

lar3ryca to Anton Shepelev:

> > [...]
> > And here is one from a book, a noir detective
> > I read about a year ago:
> >
> > Spade's thick fingers made a cigarette with
> > deliberate care, sifting a measured quanti-
> > ty of tan flakes down into curved paper,
> > spreading the flakes so that they lay equal
> > at the ends with a slight depression in the
> > middle, thumbs rolling the paper's inner
> > edge down and up under the outer edge as
> > forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and
> > fingers sliding to the paper cylinder's
> > ends holding it even while tongue licked
> > the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinch-
> > ing their ends while right forefinger and
> > thumb smoothed the damp seam, right fore-
> > finger and thumb twisting the end and lift-
> > ing the other to Spade's mouth.
> >
> Yet another author (whoever it happens to be) I
> wouldn't read for more than a page or so.

Incidentally, Clive Staples Lewis gives one of the
reasons I remembered that passage:

Language exists to communicate whatever it can
communicate. Some things it communicates so
badly that we never attempt to communicate them
by words if any other medium is available.
Those who think they are testing a boуТs Сele-
mentarуТ command of English by asking him to
describe in words how one ties oneТs tie or
what a pair of scissors is like, are far
astray. For precisely what language can hardly
do at all, and never does well, is to inform us
about complex physical shapes and movements.
Hence descriptions of such things in the an-
cient writers are nearly always unintelligible.
Hence we never in real life voluntarily use
language for this purpose; we draw a diagram or
go through pantomimic gestures. The exercises
which such examiners set are no more a test of
"elementary" linguistic competence than the
most difficult bit of trick-riding from the
circus ring is a test of elementary horseman-
ship.

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