Gobbledygook Writing & Effective Writing
How do I avoid gobbledygook writing? What are some examples of famous philosophers with gobbledygook writing? I would like to know because my writing tends to come across that way.
Another point of discussion is: what is the most effective way to write possible?
Another point of discussion is: what is the most effective way to write possible?
Comments (59)
Try to keep things as simple as you can while still expressing what you need to express.
Keep in mind that readers don't necessarily have the same background as you, the same views as you, and they might not define terms the same way that you do. So provide context, and provide definitions when useful.
Keep your writing logical and focused. Progress from a set of premises or a thesis to a conclusion via some logical progression. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the vein of a formal argument, but there should be at least an informal flow to it. Remove tangents that aren't necessary for the central argument. If your thesis incorporates even a handful of different issues, especially if there is controversy about some of them, consider breaking things up into separate papers/threads/comments.
Hegel. But he did it like a pro. Derrida has been accused of same.
Read lots of good clear writing. You'll likely end up absorbing a lot of the positives of the style.
Make logical structure?
Remove tangents?
And create smaller essays of a large controversy to break down ideas?
link
Heidegger on the other hand...
No, don't lower your standards of reading so you can write better! The trick is to write about these very tough philosophers and what they say in a way that's clear and comprehensible: that's when you know you understand them - when you can 'translate' their terms into ones you have mastery over. Read the hard philosophers - make them easy(ier).
I would think it is any language one does not understand. In which case the paradigm speaker of Gobbledygook is the parrot. And all that is required to avoid parroting is rigorous honesty. Speak whereof you know and understand, and no gooks will gobble.
Others have given a lot of good ideas.
Wait, not so fast. Gobbledygook becomes logical once you realize how limited the medium really is, because to do otherwise is to transform the nexus of inescapable paradigms in to socially conscious vectors of imaginative spectral patterns consisting of the glorious random patterns of which nature has been constructed for billions of years during the period in which the nothing became the something while still retaining it's nothingness throughout.
Smile, nod and agree with whatever the reader wants to hear, while pretending to be a revolutionary revealing mysterious secrets.
avoid sentence structures with more than one predicate, especially if some of them mean nonsense, such as "what is the most effective way to write possible?"
Russell's language rustles like freshly washed, starched and ironed ladies' summer dresses.
Heidegger's language holds high the dagger upon which your and my heads are spaked.
Take English classes. And avoid taking classes on goblin language.
Famous masters of the arts of gobbledygook include Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, and Kant.
What is the most effective way to write possible? Well, you start by finding the letter 'p' on your keyboard...
My advice is to eschew philosophical jargon. I would even avoid somewhat sophisticated words (like "eschew". So, better would be: "I try to avoid philosophical jargon."). I try to write so a 10-year-old would understand everything I'm trying to get across, even the most sophisticated or nuanced ideas, which usually makes me rather verbose, but that's better than unclear. And, almost always, good writing requires editing after you've stepped away from what you've written for a day or two. You'd be surprised how quickly you'll dislike the way you've phrased things after you come back to it 24 hours later.
To answer your question seriously: I agree with @Tim Wood and with @Fiveredapples.
I would only add one more idea: put your feet in your reader's shoes. You must always reflect, even during the writing process itself, on how informative your writing is. You must make sure that when you're leading the reader with your text, you don't make him take baby-steps if he is an adult, and you don't make her jump over huge gaps in your logic if she is not Albert Einstein. In other words, your writing must have a tempo of ideas introduced and connected, and made clear what the ideas and connections comprise.
In a way it is like having a continuity supervisor in the movie industry when they shoot footage (i.e. in your writing process) and later in the editors/ cutters room (when you re-read your text with the intention of correcting mistakes in it.)
In short: try to imagine you are your reader, and determine if your text makes proper sense or not.
Welcome to the forum.
Kant is a terrible writer. Hume and Descartes are good writers. Bertrand Russell is a good writer.
Derrida has some good ideas, but his writing and explication can be tedious.
I've seen writing manual mention that. Tell the reader where the argument is and where it is going.
Kant writes paragraph long sentences. At the end you can't remember what the point was.
There was a famous novelist who wrote this way in the 1960s I think. Can't recall is name.
In addition to the good advice by the other participants:
Know your audience!
Using termini technici can shorten and thus clarify a discussion among your peers who know those terms. It also can make your writing unreadable to a general audience.
Repeat yourself!
Don't fear repetition. Humans are not computers who remember a definition perfectly, once given. They have to familiarize with new ideas. The natural form of learning is by association with multiple examples. The pattern seeking function of our brains is forming the concept, not the definition. E.g.: how did you learn what a chair is? Have you been given a definition by which you compare objects and decide whether they fall into the "chair" category?
Employ test readers!
This is a bit of methodology. You don't know whether your writing is effective until you have tested it. Give it to some typical members of your target audience and listen to their critique. And not only that, test them. Have some questions prepared to test if they understood what you were saying.
:up: :clap: I'm currently reading a children's book on philosophy. The writing is incredibly clear and to the point. From what I can gather, it ain't easy.
While others have given valuable tips on how to wield a pen like a pro, I'm more interested in what some here identify as incoherent speech/writing which in your book is gobbledygook. That's the psychologist in me I guess - such speech/text are considered a hallmark of insanity.
Have you heard of the infinite monkey theorem? Maybe the entire human race is an experiment along those lines. If so, some of us are, by that very fact, going to spew out utter bullshit.
Try writing nonsense, it's not as easy as it looks which is telling as far as I'm concerned.
There's more that can be said but chew on that for the moment.
Agent Smith will be back with more (hopefully) interesting thoughts...
"As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself."
Martin Heidegger
Muchas gracias for a sample of Heidegger. One needs to be extra cautious when diagnosing incoherence in translations though - much is lost in translation. Comic relief for you [math]\downarrow[/math]. The World's Worst Translator.
Martin Heidegger probably wrote for a select audience; perhaps he was taking the first few steps into uncharted territory: hic sunt dracones.
Arguments are fucking boring! Who likes to argue? Instead, the reader likes juicy real-life examples and weird abstractions, presented in page-turning format. You gotta lure the reader into temptation and wonder, instead of making him yawn because if knowing where the story goes already after the first 10 pages (which would be a great bedtime story! It has it merit!).
I can assure you that he makes as much sense in German.
Not everyone agrees on that...
Then 'tis time to study/analyze the German mind! Are Germans cuckoo? :chin: They seem to churn out one Nobel Laureate after another, confounding factors notwithstanding. Don't forget the Nobel Prize was established only in 1901.
[quote=Oscar Levant]There's a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.[/quote]
Not all of them (though from my point of view, most people are normal). We have our share but by far not as many as the US has. We make up for the numbers with quality. Every now and then we have someone so crazy it exceeds all bounds.
What's the name of the book?
Philosophy A Visual Encyclopedia
Went on Libby library app, borrowed book, looked interesting, put it on list of gifts for next Christmas. What a world we live in now.
Thanks.
My pleasure.
This is a good start. You're accepting responsibility for communication, and not blaming your reader for not understanding you. :)
Post a few excerpts please. Looks interesting. :chin:
I can't. I'm using my cell phone; the book's on my laptop. I'll post some snippets from it when I next use my laptop.
Is it about Sophie?
What's your monkey business about?
:chin:
No offense AS! I read that, according to you, we might be young chimps and now that we might be monkeys. So, monkey business.
:ok: