you’re dealing with complicated ideas
With many specific components or processes that must be differentiated between each other, and often the difference is negligible, abstract or hazy to the untrained eye.
Comment on Aspirations
Ragdoll_X@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Sometimes you have to use complicated terms because you’re dealing with complicated ideas…
Other times it’s clear that authors are just trying to pad the length of a paper and sound more pompous.
In Brazil we call this “enchendo linguiça”, which literally translates to “filling sausage”.
niktemadur@lemmy.world 4 months ago
MonkderDritte@feddit.de 4 months ago
You draw a schema or diagram then.
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 4 months ago
Portugal é encher chouriços
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Yeah, I get shit occasionally in random places for using bigger words when they actually would take multiple sentences to replace.
But there are a fucking lot of people who use big (or obscure) words purely as a kind of signaling that they’re smart, rather than for communication. And it’s usually really obvious to people who have better vocabularies (or better understanding of the jargon in a specific field) that they don’t know what they’re doing.
If after looking up a word, the rationale for the word choice doesn’t become understandable on at least some level, it’s probably nonsense.
Rolando@lemmy.world 4 months ago
“Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.” - Mark Twain (attributed?)
audiomodder@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Look at you, communicating with a purpose. I’m just trying to make my essay 1500 words
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
I was absolutely terrible at that. I had really bad homework grades and completion rates exactly because of shit like that.
“You gave me a 500 word question. I can’t make 1500 words out of it. If I’m going to fail anyways fuck turning it in.” (No, no part of that approach was intelligent, but I just couldn’t fill space with obvious trash. My brain would shut down.)
starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
On the flip side of this, it makes me sad that using fancy words usually just makes you seem pretentious in normal conversations, which has made a lot of cool/interesting words unusable for me. Even words that used to be pretty common, like insipid, will have most people look at you like 🤨
HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
I’ve seen a cool chart somewhere that pointed at specific words for varying intensities of specific adjectives. The objectif was to avoid writing very+adjective, which sounds boring, and use the proper word instead.