Concision vs. Clarity

I am a bad English student. I say this in the respect that when I find myself confused with behemoths of confusing sentence structure, I stop my train of thought and simplify it. Rather than find a way to make such complex sentence structures work, I do what Barbara has said that over-critiqued young writers do: I shrivel up. At least, this is my perception of my writing process. Often, this comes when I find my sentence structure to be a maze of commas, or in many cases, a ridiculously long sentence, regardless of its actual legitimacy as a sentence.

If I look at my academic writing, particularly my theses for literary or historical analysis… they are BEEFY. When I read them, part of me says, “wow, those are some sentences,” and the other part of me wonders why I didn’t simplify them so that they were less rediculong. It comes down to the fact that I embrace concision, and a major part of that is avoiding complex, compound thoughts all represented in one sentence.

But what do I lose in the process of concise writing? I think I ignore opportunities to use more semicolons, hyphens, parentheses (which I use often in general writing but rarely in academic writing), dashes, ellipses and all of those gems of grammar. Aside from general hesitance of these things, I might also attribute their absence simply to preference; concise, accurate grammar and a clear message are valued goals that I shoot for in writing. Miles Davis lived by the concept that “less is more,” and I believe there is something to be said for clear, concise use of grammar as it applies to sentence structure. It certainly beats reading a sentence and having the sensation that you are running through a corn maze of grammar and syntax.

Question: I branched out of my shell in this blog! I used one of those ugly little semicolons, not because I wanted it to be an example, but because it actually made sense to me to use one as opposed to a period. Does this look like an appropriate use of the little bugger?