We envy people with many interesting ideas, but resent those ideas when they are verbally enumerated to us in spitfire fashion. Our minds feel assaulted, violated. Our brains are not wired for the high level of short-term memory required for such information overload.
The mind can tolerate more written words than spoken ones within the same timeframe, but they can be as bad a curse to read when (1) they use too many unrelated or irrelevant details, (2) they cram too many ideas in complex constructions, or (3) they don’t show clear relationships between the ideas being presented.
Use of unrelated or irrelevant details. Look at this statement that’s heavily padded with useless, roundabout expressions: “
What I believe to be the case is that the delivery was not made on time, and
that because of the fact that the courier company made a mistake,
it really goes without saying that we must demand a full refund plus damages.” Clear and decisive when all that padding is thrown out: “I think the delivery was not made on time and the courier company made a mistake. We must demand a full refund plus damages.”
More often the overload is caused by too many irrelevant details: “Beauteous Angela Fuentes,
who has traveled all over the world so many times as a flight stewardess, and
who no doubt will make an excellent bride for the groom, is tying the knot to debonair dental practitioner Romeo Santos,
who passed the dental board in 1995, in a grand wedding ceremony at the Manila Cathedral tomorrow.” More pleasant to read when all that unsightly flab pruned out: “Popular international flight stewardess Angela Fuentes is getting married to prominent dentist Romeo Santos in a grand wedding at the Manila Cathedral tomorrow. The globe-trotting beauty will doubtless make an excellent bride for the debonair groom.”
Cramming too many ideas in complex constructions. In the writer’s desire to be concise, too many ideas can get crammed in complex sentence constructions. The result is overweight prose that confounds rather than enlightens: “There is no point in creating an artificial national language where there are already 169 regional languages even if such a national language has been constitutionally mandated in principle, considering that there is already a language that for years had bridged the regional language gaps effectively which now makes possible our wide participation and acceptance in the global labor market, which of course is English.”
Here’s a rewrite that doesn’t cram them: “Even if it is constitutionally mandated, there is no point in creating an artificial national language where there are already 169 regional languages. We already have a language that for years had bridged the regional language gaps effectively, a language that makes possible our wide participation and acceptance in the global labor market. That language, of course, is English.”
Unclear relationships among ideas. A written statement can befuddle the reader when it has strung together too many ideas higgledy-piggledy, resulting in a statement where no single idea stands out and whose the logic is so tough to fathom: “For many years,
we have seriously considered computerizing the election process at the precinct level to speed up voting and counting and minimize cheating,
and the appropriate legislation and budgets were drawn,
and public biddings for the computer equipment were held,
and now we find ourselves back on square one,
which is manual voting.”
Such run-on statements can be made clearer and more coherent by using conjunctions that clearly show the relationships between ideas, and by chopping the statement into more manageable chunks: “To speed up voting and counting and to minimize cheating, we have for many years seriously considered computerizing the election process at the precinct level. We drew up appropriate legislation and budgets. We even held public biddings for the computer equipment. Still, we are back to square one, which is manual voting.”
Clarifying them exorcises the curse of overloaded sentences.
Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in
The Manila Times:
The curse of overloaded sentences(Next:
An English language conundrum) August 24, 2023
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
