Talk:Verbosity/Archive 2

POV check
Article tends to favor concise language -- a POV remark. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 01:21, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)


 * Bear in mind that I only began the article yesterday. It's incomplete, not even dry behind the ears. I suggest you wait a couple of days with my articles, in the future, before tagging them--especially with POV.


 * I had planned a section on informal speech. Have any other suggestions for POV? -- NathanHawking 02:47, 2004 Oct 25 (UTC)

Second draft
I just posted the second draft. It will benefit from additional work. I removed the NPOV flag as well.

NOTE: This article is about prolixity, words which are considered "excess'''". By definition, it is about just that, excess, a fundamentally pejorative view.''' Examples of when "extra" words work to advantage are given, but they are then no longer actually "excess," are they?

This article is not about the virtues of wordiness, nor should it be. It's about prolixity. Wordiness does not need equal time in this article. --NathanHawking 02:18, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

-- Then why the hell does verbosity (which is in fact about wordiness) redirect here? I actually arrived here from the (badly written and ridiculously uncomprehensive) anxiety page, clicking "verbosity" and expecting an article that at least contained some information about verbosity as a response to anxiety. Instead I get this freshman quality exegesis of the stylistic faults of Zane Grey and Raymond Chandler (neither of whom any wikipedia editor is fit to criticize, frankly). And all that under the banner of linguistics, when this article clearly concerns itself with literary criticism, or, more accurately, with prose composition. 24.199.122.123 (talk) 05:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Though this article has serious content issues, it seems that you must have followed a link that needs to be pointed at logorrhea (psychology). —  C M B J   09:10, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Removal of sections
Poccil:

You and your buddy Nohat need to reconcile your Wikipedia philosophies. He reverted an article after I removed four bloated sentences, insisting that I consult with him before removing anything he wrote.

You don't seem to share that view. By my estimation, you have slashed many more sentences from my article, without any discussion on the talk page, in addition to numerous short edits. Some of your revisions were good, some unnecessary, and some questionable.

Following Nohat's example, I'm reverting the page back to my last version. Following his example, I ask that you discuss major proposed changes to a new article-in-progress on the talk page first.

You and Nohat work out your differences, if they exist in real life, and let me know what you come up with. If you're right, I'll feel free to slash Nohat's bloat without consultation. If he's right, then you should discuss before slashing. Which is it? --NathanHawking 09:23, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

+ Not really a section but I removed "" as Prolixity is never mentioned in the Look and Read article. No words starting with prol... whatsoever.

Explanation for my edits
Here's the diff for reference.

Note that in much of my edit, I relied on the doctrine of letting the reader come to his/her own conclusions, as I did in removing the rationale of the "Radio Shack" quote and of rewording clauses, among other things.

I changed "wide of" to the more common "far from" since the former sounds strange.

The paragraph about concise language was an apparent opinion. Its removal to me was proper.

Obviously is one of the words to avoid, so I reworded it to "by definition".

[[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk)]] 03:22, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for responding. I'll give the RadioShack rationale removal more thought--you may well be onto something there--and the issue may become moot anyway, as I'm thinking of replacing that section with a better example.


 * No problem on the "obviously." Good catch, in fact. "Wide of the truth" is OK, and not unknown as a phrase. Google web for 750 hits, groups for 142 hits. "Far from the truth," of course, is a common phrase, with tens of thousands of hits. Your change was not a bad thing, but was not strictly necessary.


 * As for the paragraph about conciseness being opinion, of course it is--virtually everything which deals with art and craft is opinion. But it's an opinion shared and expressed by virtually everyone who presents themselves as an authority on formal speech and writing. Perhaps you would feel better about the opinion if I had quoted somebody instead of merely stating it. That is, in fact, what I planned to do--you should give an article-in-progress awhile to mature before wading in, perhaps asking the author if he or she is at a point where collaboration is appropriate.


 * In fact, my plans for the article finally came together this evening, and represent a solution to several issues. I plan a major rewrite, and my reasons will become apparent. Will you give it a day or two before doing any minor edits, and discuss before doing any major refactoring? That would be greatly appreciated. If you respond in the affirmative, I'll remove my request for page protection. --NathanHawking 07:36, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

Small caps
I think small caps is a lot better than small font (which was hard to read in Firefox), but it would be even better if someone could italicize the problem areas. Problem is that the book titles are italicized too. If the titles could be clearly separated and then the small caps changed to italics, the article would read even better. thejabberwock 20:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Template:Xt and related are a newer solution to this issue. —  SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 12:41, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced original essay
I am sorry to say that the article is very poor. The examples are bad. One of them was strikingly bad, so I removed it. The sentenses
 * Unfettered by any sense of responsibility, John allowed his mother to clean up after him.
 * John irresponsibly allowed his mother to clean up after him.

have quite different meaning. (the second one may well mean that "John mad BIG MISTAKE allowing his mother to clean after him: when cleaning dust from the keyboard she accidentally deleted the whole wikipedia article John toiled upon the whole night").

Expert's attention is necessary. `'Míkka 18:30, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Style judgement
Modern American culture tends to prefer simplified, telegraphic prose, and it's fine for this article to say that, but I think we should be wary of the kind of judgements of taste exemplified by, for example, the weasel-worded "benefits of concision" section. This is supposed to be a description of a certain variety of prose, not a style manual. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.79.22.210 (talk) 04:25, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Byrd & Shakespeare
I only skimmed it, but I couldn't find anything in the source to back up the claim that Byrd's grandiloquence was "exemplified by oratory quoting Shakespeare upon the death of his little dog Billy." Motion to remove? Ejectgoose 06:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The passage has been trimmed, but remains. Bears examination. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ  Contribs. 09:04, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Benefits of being concise section
Regarding your comments, Asarlaí, I am happy to comply. But I was trying to comply with readibility: the article indicates that breaks in the layout is one reason for people to stop reading immediately. There is also the valid, I think, point made by a person above that Wikipedia is for information, not a style guide. To me, three examples of concise replacement are enough for the reader to say 'aha! I get it', but with fourteen examples they may feel they are being lectured to, and turn to something else. I'm not one for arguments: but I'd like to know what you think of what I have said. TonyClarke (talk) 05:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Macrologia
Just a note: Macrologia currently redirects to verbosity but isn't mentioned there at all. An used to say: ‘From Greek, macrologia means long-speaking or long-winded with the connotation of tedious conversation. Considered in rhetoric as a stylistic vice, distinct from the methods of amplification or the goal and practice of copia.’ Apparantly this was merged first into prolixity and then into the verbosity article and was then removed some time later. So perhaps the redirect should be deleted now. — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 14:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The same apparently holds for Perissologia and Loquaciousness. — Tobias Bergemann (talk) 14:22, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Simple English?
This could really do with a simple english page... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.1.150.112 (talk) 22:38, 12 September 2012 (UTC)