Red lines, red lines

Red lines, red lines

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10 August 05.

But repetition bothers me. This is no doubt derived from my geekdom, which presumes that if something is said, you're done. Saying it twice adds no value at all, because the theory says that the reader's brain ain't any different the second time around.

I've been all political lately, and politics is all about repetition these days. Democrats need an echo chamber, many have (repeatedly) said. 'Stay on message' means that different people all say the same darn thing. You get sick of it, especially when the point being repeated rings false. There were no WMDs, and repeating it over and over again doesn't make them appear.

Something in me takes repetition from an author to mean that he/she/it is out of things to say.

But repeat I did. I'd be too embarrassed to give links, but there are two articles out there which appeared over the course of a week, and one more which will be out any day now, and they're all from very similar templates. Given that they're about software patents, one is to the general law community, one to the engineering world, and one to the policy audience. But anybody who's interested in the topic is probably involved in all three of these worlds, if not a couple on the side. I guess I just feel guilty for recycling sentences.

I got horrible reviews from my game theory students. They thought I was unclear and blah blah blah. To digest and interpret their arguments: I didn't repeat myself enough. Ms MV of South Park, WA, explained to me that repetition is the key to learning, because no two students learn in exactly the same manner. You first present it in a manner perfect for the visual learner, and then in a manner perfect for the kinetic learner, all the while in a manner that the aural learner will follow, and soon they all have it down. Compare with the mathematician's presumption, that if you present the information one way or another, and then the listener can work it out for his/her/its own self.

Getting back to me, I guess I always knew that the mathematician's belief is false on a base level, because some math books are so frigging hard to read. Before learning econometrics, I spent days of my life staring at Goldberger's 'metrics textbook, wondering what was wrong with me, since every symbol is indeed defined and every concept derived. But now that I'm reasonably confident with the subject, I look back on that book and am still totally lost, because every symbol is defined and every concept derived exactly once.

Oh, I could give you more examples, but you get the picture, eh. I got back the edits on my little bookie-poo, and the editor inserted a great deal of sentences that begin `As already noted'. I'm trying to learn here, and to not just cut them all with a note saying `this is redundant'.

multiple audiences:

I'm comfortable with them---perhaps _too_ comfortable. It's related to the multiple meanings of words, like trivial. To the mathematician, copying a phone book is trivial; to the layloser, it's a step beyond. To an economist, if the Sultan of Brunei buys a sandwich from a beggar for ten bucks, then the resulting allocation (beggar has ten bucks and nowhere to sleep; Sultan is still a billionaire and has had lunch) is Pareto efficient, while the rest of us think that the allocation is probably still at the least a few tens of thousands off from anything they'd call efficient.

My readership, both of this dumb little website and any policy writing I do, is going to be both people who may be smart but who aren't in my specializations, and people who may or may not be smart but are indeed economists or computer geeks or whatever. So what to do with the multitude of words which have a double meaning?

Or let's say that you're in the literary set, and want to describe your camping trip in the context of Tennyson's Ulysses: to strive, to seek, and not to apply bandages until we get home. Those readers who know Tennyson will pick it up no problem and maybe, maybe even chuckle; the other readers will think it's kind of weird.

My own test is that if all my intended audiences will be able to read the sentence based on their understanding and get something out of it, then it's a good sentence. Yes, different readers will read it differently, and some will take me to be very eccentric. The more sensitive ones who are not in the know will realize that something is up---ay, there's the rub [vaguely a Hamlet reference]---and this is why my editor redlined any sentence which is not simultaneously legible on all dimensions to all possible audiences. No use of trivial that would be potentially read as awkward to a congressman; no asides to the economists; no references to textbook legal cases unless I've spent a page giving the histories of the litigants.

For the primary law of the essay---be it academic paper, policy brief, or even book---is that it must make the reader feel smarter. If there's a section headed `don't worry about this part if you're not an economist', then those readers who aren't economists will feel left out.

Oh, what a detriment this law is to the essay that is good by so many other measures. The essay which the reader can interact and argue with, the essay which the reader can really study and learn from, the essay which points the reader to future reading, or more generally, the essay as a work of art. They dragged you to the art museum when you were ten, and you got _something_ out of the paintings, and now that you're older and took some art history classes, you get other things out of it, perhaps closer to what the artist had intended. No point belaboring the definition of art, but as a social norm, visual arts are generally free to be ambiguous and multilayered, while nonfiction text is expected to be clear to the lowest common denominator.

I'm trying to repeat myself more than my incorrect gut wants me to, but this `all essays must speak to only one narrowly-defined audience' thing is not working for me. There are just too many people out there with different brains. Just as we repeat the point with imagery and with abstractions so the visual learners and the engineers alike will learn from the essay, the essay should have content which is pleasing to the artist and the mathematician alike, even if the other party is reminded that there are other people out there who know things that the reader doesn't.

PS:

my bathroom reading of late has been Moby Dick, by Mr. HM of NY, NY. Why didn't anybody tell me this book is so darn _funny_?

It has a chapter on cetology (the study of whales). Have been wondering of late whether this would fly in the modern world. I mean, it's a novel, about life on the high seas, about people, about obsession, and then the guy goes off for pages on types of blow spout and the anatomy of porpoises.

So I wonder how the book would fare under the marker of a modern editor. If the book were written today, would the cetology chapter see the light of the bookstore? Am I being too cynical to presume that all modern editors would just put a big red X through such a lengthy and irrelevant digression?

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on Wednesday, August 10th, zoe said

In other words, art by committee sucks. I hear ya, my friend...