Against the Sesquipedilian

I wrote up minutes for a big meeting recently. The boss – not the everyday boss, the bigwig boss, whom I’ve only met once -- says: “you certainly don’t have a very business-y style, Erin.”

I could hardly deny it, having called a critical incident resulting in fatality a death. "No," I said, “But I could re-optimize my word selection to that paradigm, if you’d like.”

He – fortunately – laughed. (Really should learn not to say these things out loud.)

I like simple words in simple sentences. I like verbs and nouns. I like the senses. I like the Saxon. I wish more people, in more settings, would bother to write that way. (And it is a bother -- making is harder than the assembly of the prefabricated.)

Of course, there are exceptions. There are times when only a precise techical phrase will do. High-energy physicists, for example, can use the word "multiplicity," which everyone else should avoid. And there are reasons of play or style. I enjoy the occasional use of a word like “oleaginous” to describe, say, Dick Cheney. But there is a difference between obscure but needle-sharp words like “canard” (Dick Cheney's on the brain), and a phrase like “unstructured milieu,” which is so soft it won’t hold a meaning.

Impatience with soft polysyllables is one good reason to avoid graduate school, tempting as it is. To Robert Fulfurd’s snappy job popping polysyllables with his pen – hear, hear.