Cliff Davidson wrote
> << As an editor I have been unhappy for years about the use of jargon >>
and Tad Atkinson replied
>And as a
>future academic/teacher, I've been trying to keep the jargon from creeping into my
>language in the first place. [ ... ] and I want absolutely *clear*
>communication with my students. This may bar me from getting published in many
>journals, but I'm in this game to teach.
They're both absolutely right, of course, and Tad hits the nail on the head with his
insistence on clarity: both jargon and poor structure make for unclear
communication.
One of the problems with students' writing is that they present ideas sequentially
(plus qualifications), so that sentences become too long and fail to show the
relationships between ideas. I have a three-line rule that I insist on with my
students (and myself): if a sentence is more than three lines long one should look
at it again with a view to unpicking the ideas in it. Some pruning of verbiage may
help, but the chances are that such a sentence will be improved if it can be divided
into two sentences. At the least -- and even if the sentence remains more than three
lines long -- the student will have reviewed it critically.
Richard Rastall
***************
Dr G.R. Rastall
Department of Music,
University of Leeds,
Leeds LS2 9JT
UK
