Concise Communication

By Roger Colins

___________________________________________________________ Our time on this planet is so short that none of us want to waste time, even when we have nothing to do, are sat on our backside watching a game show. We could be tired and are just grabbing some rest, recharging so we can do something worthwhile once we've gotten a bit of energy back. Language happens to be by default, a time saving tool, so long as we don't find ourselves on a rant. Take a long sentence and we remove any unnecessary words to save time. Doing this also lessens the chance for confusion, saving time once more because the audience is less likely to have a follow up question. We do not however have the luxury to economise on clarity as our sentence has to make perfect sense, or we have destroyed the purpose. The ancient Greeks used long sentences and hundreds of follow up questions. Philosophers still want perfect definitions and I can only suppose the Greeks really had to sort these things out as they had nothing better to work with as they were the first to address subjects requiring precise meaning. German has long words but in those long strings of syllables is, a whole sentence of clarification. The Germans are known for many things but the one that leaps to the top is, efficient. The same can be said about poetry which is not, an implication that shortening your speech loses any artistic aesthetic. It improves it. Politicians have to both, use long sentences and pack them with time saving, carefully chosen words. They use long, drawn out, complicated sentences to achieve a plethora of results which in some cases, even include deliberate confusion but in said instance, they're still after a speicific kind of confusion. The idea is simple, short and concise - Keep it simple, stupid. Overcomplicating anything is either an accident, a mistake or going off on a tangent. If something can be said in ten words, it can be said better in five.

language linguistics time-saving