![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOn the one hand
I started writing this this afternoon, after trying to articulate it for a while.
There is a great urge, if you realise that what you want to say may be incomplete or may be misinterpreted, to add more explanation. Often this is necessary (like adding scaffolding to a building, or explaining something which is too detailed to encapsulate in one sentence) but often it isn't (like using too much duct tape instead of building something right to start with, or trying to retroactively remove a bad connotation).
This leads to horrible conglomerations where someone tries to retract something in a sentence, which typically only draws attention to it, or at least takes up more effort.
A clarification is a useful thing if both (a) it clarifies and (b) it takes LESS EFFORT TO READ than spelling the whole thing out in full, either because it's available in some axillary way, or because it has a standard phrasing the eye can scan past. If it doesn't, then using a so-called clarification will be very little better than just adapting the sentence to include it, and if you want to be clear, you need to decide up-front if the small cost of everyone reading a possibly-unnescessary clarification is better or worse than people having a chance of misunderstanding something.
"Did you see any tits in your garden (birds[1], not women)," is often not as useful as "Did you see any tits at your bird feeder?"
"Is [blah blah] legal? I know it's different in different jurisdictions, I'm just wondering?" is often not as useful as "Is [blah blah] legal under UK law? Are there any regional variations?"
On the other hand
Being clear is work, sometimes a very very large amount of work. That's why producing well-written prose is part of many professions. Thus, if you WANT to be clear, the advice applies. And if you spend more time writing the clarification than deciding and changing the problematic content would take, it's probably wasted. But if you're writing a comment on the internet, it is often NOT worth the extra effort to polish your prose and reduce it down.
The above advice is how to write more clearly if you have the time. If you DON'T have the time, slapping an incomplete disclaimer, or otherwise posting a comment that could yet be improved, is eminently reasonable, and only a problem if it's SO unreadable any sensible conversation is overwhelmed. So I shouldn't get annoyed at people being superfluous (unless they wasted disporportionate effort to do so, or are for some reason held to a higher standard of prose.)
Ironic footnotes
[1] I realise "birds" can also mean "birds" or "women", but (a) it's not slang I'd typically use, and (b) as it's used in contrast to "women" it's unambiguous what it means[2].
[2] The previous footnote is deliberately an example of a superfluous clarification, since I could easily have said "avians" instead of "birds". But I retained it not because it's clearer but because I think it's funny. If you're trying to be clear spurious clarifications are to be guarded against. If you're trying to be funny I find that very very useful. (Because they often make me laugh.)
I started writing this this afternoon, after trying to articulate it for a while.
There is a great urge, if you realise that what you want to say may be incomplete or may be misinterpreted, to add more explanation. Often this is necessary (like adding scaffolding to a building, or explaining something which is too detailed to encapsulate in one sentence) but often it isn't (like using too much duct tape instead of building something right to start with, or trying to retroactively remove a bad connotation).
This leads to horrible conglomerations where someone tries to retract something in a sentence, which typically only draws attention to it, or at least takes up more effort.
A clarification is a useful thing if both (a) it clarifies and (b) it takes LESS EFFORT TO READ than spelling the whole thing out in full, either because it's available in some axillary way, or because it has a standard phrasing the eye can scan past. If it doesn't, then using a so-called clarification will be very little better than just adapting the sentence to include it, and if you want to be clear, you need to decide up-front if the small cost of everyone reading a possibly-unnescessary clarification is better or worse than people having a chance of misunderstanding something.
"Did you see any tits in your garden (birds[1], not women)," is often not as useful as "Did you see any tits at your bird feeder?"
"Is [blah blah] legal? I know it's different in different jurisdictions, I'm just wondering?" is often not as useful as "Is [blah blah] legal under UK law? Are there any regional variations?"
On the other hand
Being clear is work, sometimes a very very large amount of work. That's why producing well-written prose is part of many professions. Thus, if you WANT to be clear, the advice applies. And if you spend more time writing the clarification than deciding and changing the problematic content would take, it's probably wasted. But if you're writing a comment on the internet, it is often NOT worth the extra effort to polish your prose and reduce it down.
The above advice is how to write more clearly if you have the time. If you DON'T have the time, slapping an incomplete disclaimer, or otherwise posting a comment that could yet be improved, is eminently reasonable, and only a problem if it's SO unreadable any sensible conversation is overwhelmed. So I shouldn't get annoyed at people being superfluous (unless they wasted disporportionate effort to do so, or are for some reason held to a higher standard of prose.)
Ironic footnotes
[1] I realise "birds" can also mean "birds" or "women", but (a) it's not slang I'd typically use, and (b) as it's used in contrast to "women" it's unambiguous what it means[2].
[2] The previous footnote is deliberately an example of a superfluous clarification, since I could easily have said "avians" instead of "birds". But I retained it not because it's clearer but because I think it's funny. If you're trying to be clear spurious clarifications are to be guarded against. If you're trying to be funny I find that very very useful. (Because they often make me laugh.)
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 06:33 pm (UTC)"Is [blah blah] legal under [Engish|Norn Irish|Scots] law?" is even more useful, and has the advantage of being correct -- differences are more than just "regional variations", they are three distinct legal jurisdictions, and jurisprudences, with different histories, doctrines, courts, and procedures, in both civil and criminal matters. (Which is why you can't qualify as a UK lawyer, but only as an [English|Scots|Norn Irish] lawyer).
no subject
Date: 2010-10-11 06:43 pm (UTC)Originally the example referred to US law (because I happened to once see a thread title which sounded like that, and remembered it for this example), but I decided there was no reason it should refer to the US.
But I localised it to the UK rather than specifically to England, which probably wasn't helpful (the countries in the UK are probably the best analogies to the US states, even though imperfect, which is I think what the original thread would have meant if it had asked for variations, which it didn't, but thinking but I was actually thinking more of the law in England as varies in small matters between counties or cities).
It would have been better to ask about English law explicitly, or to ask about the UK but phrase it differently. Although obviously, the fictional asker of the question, while still fitting an American model better, mgiht well not know even this much, but could STILL have phrased the question in the better way :)