Killing Me Verbosely

Three times I have read that Facebook status and still cannot understand what he is trying to say; considering there is use of multiple adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, synonyms of everything, synonyms of synonyms, ... I feel muddle-headed. Of one thing I am certain: there is an easier way of expression, in the same language.

It would be horrid of me to link pages here but I'm sure you know people who just kill you with abstruse abuse of lexemes...! The Free Dictionary defines verbosity as "Using or containing a great and usually an excessive number of words" De-verbosing: Too many unnecessary words.

The aim of verbosity seems to be to impress the reader with the variety and width of language use; the indirect goal is to make the reader feel dumb...eh, dumbfounded by the wordy 'intellect'. The more popular aim of writing i.e. to be read and understood is lost between all the words. I often find friends who are impressed with verbose writing, mostly for the reason that it takes them two or three attempts to understand the piece, erroneously assuming the deficiency is theirs and not the writer's. This has nothing to do with the content. It is also worth pondering that the more well-read a person, the more she is likely to diagnose verbosity correctly. 

Verbosity cannot make its way into popular published writing for multiple reasons: a) it is ineffective, b) does not make a good read, and c) the editor successfully shoots down any attempt at it by the writer. It is, however, as popular as the word 'cool' in informal writing (see Facebook or Twitter). If I had App-writing skills, I would create a Verbosity Striker app and make gabimillions off it. 

Make no mistake, I was an ardent verboser myself. Thank God for a writing teacher I had at university who calmly and effectively, with subtle put-downs, forced me to declutter my writing. The problem is not always length - sometimes you just need to use many words. The efforts should be directed not at Concise, but Precise... Or more precisely, Eloquence. The only point one really needs to take home: write to be read and understood easily by others.