This is an obsession of mine, but I think it matters. From to time we are all guilty of over-long sentences, unnecessarily long, unusual, technical or abstract words, or just writing too much. But surely some of the citizens of UD are the worst offenders. I was moved to write this by the most recent post from KF which runs to 3000 words – quite short by his standards but rather longer than the word limit for most university essays. I don’t often have time to wade through posts of this length but for once I tried and I think it can be summarised as:
Materialism means there is no ultimate foundation for ethics and no human free will and this leads to all sorts of evil behaviour.
(I may have missed other important points amongst the deluge)
I am picking on KF because he just posted and he is a serial offender, but many of us do it on both sides of the debate. Does it matter if posts and comments are too long and difficult to read? After all isn’t it the content that matters not the presentation? I don’t think so.
- Your critics are unlikely to take the time to read it. So you have subtly cut off discussion and debate.
- It often covers sloppy thinking. It is so easy to hide fallacies and lack of evidence under a blizzard of abstractions and quotes.
On a more personal level it is egocentric. It is saying that I and my idea are so important you should all be prepared to spend the next 30 minutes wading through my post. My time is too important to be spent extracting the essential points and anyway I want to show how clever I am.
Now I am must stop before I go on too long 
Dr. Liddle,
Thank you very much, and thank you for your hard work in maintaining this website.
hotshoe,
As you can see, I was one of the few UD authors that made a rare criticism of Kairos Focus. I’m verbose, obtuse myself, but better than I was in the past. I don’t read KF’s posts, I don’t understand them, I don’t try.
PS
your handle, hotshoe suggests you play blackjack, are you part of the blackjack community like AdvantagePlayers or GreenChip? I post under my real name in public, but under an alias in those communities.
This highlights one reason KF wants a 6000 word essay defending all of evolution and origin of life.
It dilutes the discussion of technical issues and enables drift into social and philosophical rants.
Sal, feel free to crosspost any of your UD posts here, if you would like a critique from a different quarter 🙂 Concision is good, but not required (if it were, I wouldn’t post here….)
Okay then, you should fit in just fine here. Well, you’ve posted here before, so you already know that. 😎
Sorry, no, not the right guess. The guesses I get more often aren’t correct either.
I assumed photographer. Or a very fast dancer.
Mark,
I tried to take your advice. You can compare and contrast what I wrote before and what I wrote after:
Will it be ‘Darwin beats puppies, a reprise’, Sal? That would be concise and also show your true essense. Both good goals, I’m sure you’ll agree.
12:38 And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, (12:38-40)
“Beware of the scribes, which … make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.”
12:39 And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts:
12:40 Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.
I see I sounded terribly miffed. Not so, my turn to be embarrassed
I confess I sometimes find TSZ content so philosophically high-falutin’ that I post just to pretend to myself that I’m keeping up!