| 词组 | wordiness |
| 释义 | wordiness You might tend to think or opine that wordiness would refer to the use and/or utilization of many more extra words, terms, phrases, and locutions than are absolutely required, needed, or necessary for writing, saying, or otherwise expressing your ideas, thoughts, theses, or opinions. In theory it is. In practice, it is not. Usage writers are nearly unanimous in condemning as wordy the ordinary, short, idiomatic phrases of spoken discourse, such as climb up, as to, consensus of opinion, for free, have got to, meet up with, refer back, what for, able to, would like to, who is, advance planning, ask a question, at about, continue on, but that, but what, the field of, where... at, first began, off of, and inside of, to name a few. Many commentators are also pretty severe on the old formal phrases of business correspondence and on long formulas like in view of the fact that, somewhere in the neighborhood of, and the question as to whether, which are sometimes used to rescue a writer from a desperate construction. Nearly all of the commentators would heartily subscribe to Professor Strunk's Rule 13 (see Strunk & White 1959): "Omit needless words." In actual practice, of course, writers—even usage writers—do not omit all needless words (unless perhaps, they are composing a telegram). Examples of needless words are easy to find in usage books: • ... remember that due to the fact that is a wordy way of saying the short and simple word since —Shaw 1970 What does "the short and simple word" add to the statement? • Certain other in phrases are nothing but padding and can be omitted entirely —Little, Brown 1986 Couldn't this be boiled down to "Other in phrases may simply be omitted"? And here is Bernstein 1965 on climb up: But here we have tautology aggravated by wastefulness. The writer who values terseness will usually omit the up. The writer who really values terseness could omit everything but the last three words. But this is too easy a game to be helpful. What we see in these examples are writers who have warmed to their subject and who are trying to make their point, heedless of their own prescriptions. No good writer writes to rule. James Sledd has demonstrated persuasively (in Greenbaum 1985) that E. B. White contravened his own rules of composition in the very act of composing Strunk & White 1959. The fact is that what seem to be needless words to one writer may not seem so needless to another. We can illustrate this by taking a look at the chapter on jargon in Sir Arthur Quiller Couch's On the Art of Writing, a book published in 1916. Sir Arthur's treatment of the subject is not quite what a modern commentator's would be—in fact much of his comment deals with many of the expressions that modern critics consider wordy. In the course of his discussion, Sir Arthur addresses the question of the value of the concrete term versus the abstract term. He produces these two examples for comparison: • In large bodies the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt and Arabia and Curdistan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has in Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigour of his authority in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders —Edmund Burke, On Conciliation with America • In all the despotisms of the East, it has been observed that the further any part of the empire is removed from the capital, the more do its inhabitants enjoy some sort of rights and privileges: the more inefficacious is the power of the monarch; and the more feeble and easily decayed is the organisation of the government —Lord Brougham, Inquiry into the Policy of the European Powers As Sir Arthur observes, Lord Brougham "has transferred Burke's thought to his own page." Sir Arthur much prefers Burke's version for its concreteness; "will you not also perceive," he says, "how pitiably, by dissolving Burke's vivid particulars into smooth generalities, he has enervated its hold on the mind?" But the current group of critics and commentators concerned with wordiness would have to differ if they were true to their principle—Lord Brougham says it more concisely. He uses one sentence while Burke needs five. Why isn't Brougham better? Simply, briefer is not always better. There are reasons for the different ways in which Burke and Brougham handled the subject. Burke was writing a speech for listeners. Brougham was writing a book for readers. Sir Arthur thought the version intended for listeners more effective, despite its lack of brevity. To make his point effectively, Burke used some repetition, some redundancy, and perhaps one or two of those little particles that the handbooks so often call wordy but that occur so naturally in speech. Conciseness is a virtue in writing, but it is not the only virtue. If you use the forms that are natural to speech, you will often get your point across better—or at least more easily. The conscious avoidance of the natural expressions of speech can sometimes lead you to stray into jargon (see jargon). See also redundancy. |
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