The story itself, or the lady it was about, was interesting, but for fucks sake
> In a way, the happy turn of events in the past few months had left her even more discombobulated.
> The work was impenetrably abstruse.
> … but neither did they go in for gooey panegyrics to the likes of Newt Gingrich…
When did it become a thing amongst American journalists that knowing how to use thesaurus on your word processor makes you both a really amazing writer as well as super-duper cool smart person?! For fucks sake, Orwell and Hemingway wrote the way 11-year-old could understand every word, they were still masterful in the depth of their stories. I hate this jargony thesaurus-wanking in today’s journalism and I don’t think I am only one.
I guess it depends on your background. For me, those words are part of my vocabulary, and I would not think twice when seeing them in an article. The author might not have been thesaurus-hunting if they had already internalized those words, right?
However, I agree that some authors go too hard on the thesaurus for seemingly no good reason. The New Yorker and certain other "high brow" publications are well known for this. "Obstreperous", "prelapsarian", and "fuliginous" are not, I would argue, part of anyone's vocabulary.
My point is not about whether this or that word is part of someone’s (active) vocabulary, ie. whether they can explain the meaning of the word if asked without checking external sources. The reason why I evoke modernist masters is that each of those words have a plain English equivalent that more or less matches the meaning of the more abstruse one. This is usually a dead giveaway that the author felt the level of their prose would be greatly heightened by searching for a synonym of the more hipsterist variety - I know, since I have done it myself often enough, before maturing somewhat. Even if the words actually were something they use every day, I’d still argue more plain prose would be better every and which way. Obscure language a good writer does not make. Hoe often you need dictionary when reading The Sun Also Rises? Or Homage to Catalonia? Or The Bell Jar?
In short, having have to read extremely jargony and difficult to understand academic or professional text more or less daily - text that by nature sorta have to be difficult and abstract, since the subject it - the benchmark for journalistic writing should be that it can be understood by a 11-year-old. Interestingly, Borsook herself seems to recognise this, the author of this article less so.
delis-thumbs-7e · · focus · HN ↗
> In a way, the happy turn of events in the past few months had left her even more discombobulated.
> The work was impenetrably abstruse.
> … but neither did they go in for gooey panegyrics to the likes of Newt Gingrich…
When did it become a thing amongst American journalists that knowing how to use thesaurus on your word processor makes you both a really amazing writer as well as super-duper cool smart person?! For fucks sake, Orwell and Hemingway wrote the way 11-year-old could understand every word, they were still masterful in the depth of their stories. I hate this jargony thesaurus-wanking in today’s journalism and I don’t think I am only one.
Please stop.
atombender · · focus · HN ↗
However, I agree that some authors go too hard on the thesaurus for seemingly no good reason. The New Yorker and certain other "high brow" publications are well known for this. "Obstreperous", "prelapsarian", and "fuliginous" are not, I would argue, part of anyone's vocabulary.
delis-thumbs-7e · · focus · HN ↗
In short, having have to read extremely jargony and difficult to understand academic or professional text more or less daily - text that by nature sorta have to be difficult and abstract, since the subject it - the benchmark for journalistic writing should be that it can be understood by a 11-year-old. Interestingly, Borsook herself seems to recognise this, the author of this article less so.
atombender · · focus · HN ↗