- Success --- Almost all professional people know that success in business partly depends on good communication skills, on writing and speaking clearly and persuasively. Businesspeople who cannot express well are often at a disadvantage in the corporate world.
- Companionship --- Few of us enjoy being with someone who speaks incessantly or incoherently...We lose interest in what a person says and, ultimately, in who a person is.
- Self-knowledge --- A superfluity of words conceals more than it reveals. We need time to be silent and still, time to reflect on the past and think about the future; without it, no one is knowable.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Why we need to weed out wordiness?
Wordiness, Robert Hartwell Fiske argues, is not only an obstacle to effective communication. It also impedes:
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I think this issue was explained best by Ernest Hemingway:
ReplyDelete"I use the oldest words in the English language. People think I'm an ignorant bastard who doesn't know the ten-dollar words. I know the ten-dollar words. There are older and better words which if you arrange them in the proper combination you make it stick. Remember, anybody who pulls his erudition or education on you hasn't any."