May 5, 2008
Perfect clarity is unattainable: Brevity is inadequate, but more ink won’t necessarily help.
Admission: Twenty-two words isn’t enough to be completely clear.
Defense: No matter how much an author writes, there will still be misunderstanding.
It sounds like you define perfect clarity as communication that is completely understood regardless of the audience. If this is so, what author would seek “perfect clarity”? What is the point of attempting to communicate at an impossible level? What writer attempts to communicate so clearly that rocks understand?
I think perfect clarity is both attainable and necessary when defined as communication expressed in such a manner that the intended audience understands completely.
-r
What exactly do you mean?
j/k
not sure i agree with your defense.
great writing, like great art, is often open to wildly disparate interpretation.
^I’m not exactly clear as what your last sentence means, Elizabeth. How does that contradict the fact that a creator’s work will always be misinterpreted because there will always be an audience dead set on its own interpretation?
Not sure I misunderstand you, but I do often find myself wanting to know the back-story.
There’s a role for both 22 words and 20,000 words. For example, friends have read a book or listened to a sermon about Christian hedonism and hated it. Yet I’ve explained it in a sentence and they’ve got it.
Equally I’ve explained it someone hasn’t got it read a book and been convinced.
God wrote proverbs’ one-liners and he wrote Psalm 119. Jesus preached “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” and the Sermon on the Mount. There’s a role for both.
Keep going with the 22 words. You’re the only person in the world doing it. If every Christian blogger was doing it I’d be the first to complain.
The fact of the matter is most are still using 20,000…
You make a good point, Tim.
If you’d be the first one to complain if every blog started being extra brief, then I’d be the second.
Sam: an obvious example of my position is the Mona Lisa. Is she smiling or frowning? Is she happy or sad? The answers are as different as each individual viewer. This is what makes the painting both enigmatic and magnetic.
I think literature can be the same way. that was it. ;-)
Abraham: I agree with your post, and the comments prove your point!
Twenty two words is plenty of room to be clear and concise.
Just maybe not for some subjects.
In which case, if you ever decide to tackle some larger concept I suggest you break the subject into smaller, twenty two word, individual points of a larger whole. ;)
[...] 5, 2008 in General Articles Tags: Blogging, Brevity, Christian Blogging Abraham Piper has been criticised for his 22-word posts. I’ve a less ambitious word limit of 250 and desire to justify briefer forms of [...]
Quarter to twelve, thanks.
…are you in the doghouse with someone?
if you were perfectly understood then there wouldn’t be much warrant for comments and interaction with your writing would there? :)
I think a bait and switch approach is great to get people thinking and those of differing opinions (interpretations) get the chance to discuss etc.
cheers
Albert.
I don’t have a set limit for the number of words. My rule, which I violate all the time, is this….If I cannot write a post on my lunch hour, it is not worth writing.
Anything you say is subject to interpretation.
“great writing is like great
art…”
I disagree. Art does contain a subjective element. Great writing means to set forth definite ideas. I doubt great authors are honored when people read their work and say, “what I got out of it…”, especially when what they got may be contradictory to what was meant. Great writing may stimulate other ideas that the author had not considered, but that’s different from a subjective interpretation of the authors text.
Exactly! The Apostle Paul, for example, had no clue that he was an egalitarian at the time he was writing.
Luckily, we’ve finally figured it out for him.
Proverbs 10:19 would tend to indicate that brevity might be preferable…
[...] 4. Put up disclaimers. [...]