tuscl

Is Brevity a virtue?

Tuesday, August 1, 2023 12:01 AM
If Papi is taking a break I feel like I can bring with up this up without offending him (although to me his stuff is an exception to the rule) but is it important just to be short and to the point? I'm open minded to people's different styles but I've seen a few threads recently where it's just a gigantic wall of text and I just say screw it I'm not fucking reading all that. Some of these bullit point reviews you see from time to time I'm actually a fan of. Do we need to understand TL;DR? Should we treat every unnecessary word as if it's offending the reader? Trust me I'm guilty of all of this shit too even right now, just wondering aloud. (I'll stop here as to not be a hypocrite)

15 comments

  • gammanu95
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    10 months ago
    Brevity is the soul of wit. It is not the soul of a comprehensive review. The purpose of the review is to tell us about the club. We want to know about the club to choose if we want to go to the club. If you can do that in five lines, great. If you need 5,000 characters with a table of contents and bibliography, fine. If you're tossing off some shit review because you think you're [view link] some free VIP, fuck off. Put some effort into it and be of value. So, brevity is not necessarily a virtue, but it is not without virtue, either.
  • shailynn
    •
    10 months ago
    Muddy you already lost because that was a big paragraph!
  • Muddy
    •
    10 months ago
    Fuck, your right
  • drewcareypnw
    •
    10 months ago
    Got to agree with Gamma on the soul of wit and the comprehensive review bit too. That said, I am guilty AF of writing a novel about whores grabbing my dick for $40 a dance, and enjoy trying be funny about it. Usually a few people get a kick out of it, so I persist. I also try to go ultra concrete with the descriptions and costs, along with long stories and jokes, so hopefully there's something for everyone.
  • shadowcat
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    10 months ago
    I usually only read reviews that are of interest to me but a catchy title will sometimes draw me in. If the review is too long I'll just speed read over the parts that don't interest me or sometime I won't even bother to read any of it.
  • grand1511
    •
    10 months ago
    No
  • docsavage
    •
    10 months ago
    You can't make everyone happy. I outscored 95% of test takers on the verbal part of the SAT, have a college journalism degree, and worked on the college newspaper but I've had people here label my reviews "incoherent". Most reviewers don't want to spend time writing a review and have it not published because all the adjudicators rejected it. Fortunately, the hyper-critical types are in a minority, and it isn't hard to get a review accepted. If your reviews are way too long or way to short then they won't be, but it isn't hard to find a middle ground.
  • One123456
    •
    10 months ago
    Curious haven’t seen desert scrub in awhile? Where’s he been?
  • shailynn
    •
    10 months ago
    ^ he’s been busy all summer power washing decks a mind driveways.
  • EastCoaster
    •
    10 months ago
    Muddy said, "I've seen a few threads recently where it's just a gigantic wall of text and I just say screw it I'm not fucking reading all that." I won't do that either, even though I might miss out on an otherwise well-written and informative review. I think the biggest problem is that some of our contributors don't understand how much formatting affects the readability of anything posted online -- especially if someone is trying to read it on a small screen like a phone. Adjudicators often mention the need to use paragraphs, but it's also important to put *spaces* between the paragraphs. To me it's like snorkeling. If you dive below the surface of the water to get a closer look at something, you can hold your breath for maybe a minute, but you've got to come up for air now and then or you'll drown.
  • mark94
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    10 months ago
    Hemingway 👍
  • SquareCastle
    •
    10 months ago
    Some of these guys need to take a remedial writing class (won’t name names) as their level of education definitely shows in their posts. I don’t expect them to be James Joyce, but at least write an intelligible paragraph that’s easy to read and gets your point across. Truncate your reviews - and don’t ramble! Who’s desert scrub?
  • misterorange
    •
    10 months ago
    @SquareC - I don't think it's a lack of education. Anyone with a 5th grade education knows how to form proper sentences and paragraphs. The thing is the younger generation, and even some old farts, have become so accustomed to "text message style" writing, they just don't see the importance of using correct grammar or spelling. On a website like this, I don't expect perfection. But I draw the line when something is so poorly written and lacking any grammar at all that I have to back up and re-read a line or two. If I can't tell where one sentence ends and the next begins I won't bother reading it.
  • Dolfan
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    10 months ago
    "brevity is not necessarily a virtue, but it is not without virtue, either." <-- Yes. Brevity can be a problem too. If critical details are left out in pursuit of brevity, in the end brevity is not achieved since it leads to questions and explanations at best.
  • gSteph
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    10 months ago
    Adjudicators often mention the need to use paragraphs, but it's also important to put *spaces* between the paragraphs. ^^ this
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