Let Us Speak Plainly...

"...for I would lay rest the grace in my tongue and speak plainly. Days like these are far too rare to cheapen with heavy handed words."

I love this quote from A Knight's Tale. I know that "heavy handed words" are good sometimes, but far too often, people use them to make themselves look better, smarter, more of an expert. Sometimes they use "heavy handed words" to make you look less intelligent or to confuse you. And sometimes they use them to divert attention from the fact that what they are saying just makes no common sense.

I'm intelligent, yet somehow, at times, slow. That's when I have absolutely no patience for heavy handed words. I feel a full mix of reactions from the above list. I get frustrated because I feel less intelligent for not being able to follow what the other person is saying. Then I get put off when I think the person is trying to make themselves sound more intelligent than perhaps they are. And sometimes I realize that the person is using all this "fancy speak" to divert attention from the fact that what they are saying really doesn't make sense.

I ran the gambit recently, when trying to read Peggy Noonan's recent book, Patriotic Grace. I only got about a third of the way through this rather smallish book before I put it down. I was about to throw it across the room. I may pick it up again in the future, but I doubt it...and I will almost assuredly never crack another Peggy Noonan book again.

The final straw, for me, was a five-line, single-sentence paragraph with more commas in the sentence than "you knows" in a Caroline Kennedy interview.

I know that I never was much of a reader in my life, until recently. So I shouldn't expect to be able to pick up a book and speed read through complicated theories without missing a beat, but come on. Give a guy a break. I'm intelligent to grasp complicated issues...just speak plainly and use common sense.

I know I'm not perfect when I write. I have a vast tendency to overuse the "...". But I at least try to have my audience in mind when I write, and I try not to write the way I speak.

This is something Peggy Noonan clearly doesn't do in the book. She writes this book as I assume she speaks...you know, with qualifier thoughts, as though to add detail, unnecessary detail at that, in the middle of the broader context of the conversation she would be having, with say a colleague, of the political persuasion, at a fancy dinner.

That's the kicker, I think. When it's merely heavy handed words thrown in sentences, I can handle it. But when it additionally becomes excruciatingly detailed, or plagued with unnecessary descriptions, that's when I lose it.

If I can take your five line sentence and boil the exact same message down to two sentence, using your exact same words but merely taking out all the junk, that's when you're clearly overdoing it. You've automatically putting up a barrier to those whom you wish to receive your message.

This is a time of fear, toil, and perceived urgency. Beware those with heavy handed words and claims that things are much more complicated than they seem. They may very well be deceivers, and they mean to do no good.