{"id":37950,"date":"2019-03-11T01:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37950"},"modified":"2019-02-11T22:07:03","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T03:07:03","slug":"qotd-the-purpose-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/03\/11\/qotd-the-purpose-of-language\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The purpose of language"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>But back to the mystics in general. I refuse to be swallowed up by their bullshit, nor do I allow myself to feel in any way inferior to their apparent greater knowledge. I once listened to some consultant describe a proposed change, and the description was filled with consultant-jargon \u2014 oh yes, they too have to impress clients with their insider language \u2014 and when he was done, I said, as succinctly as I could: \u201cI didn\u2019t understand a single thing you just said. Could you restate it, but in plain English this time?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh,\u201d he stammered, \u201cI simply meant that we need to streamline the process to shorten our product\u2019s time-to-market.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYou mean, the time between the thing\u2019s production and its appearance on the retailer\u2019s shelf?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYes.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThen why didn\u2019t you just say  that, instead of having me waste both our time by getting you to explain it to me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Roger Moore put it best, I think: \u201cThe point of language is to communicate your thoughts in the shortest possible time and in the clearest possible way.\u201d My corollary to that excellent sentiment is, \u201cAnd if somebody is not doing that, he\u2019s pursuing a different agenda or has something he wishes to disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And finally, I should point out that Moore\u2019s \u201cclarity\u201d does not equal \u201csimplistic\u201d (I nearly wrote <em>simplisme<\/em>, but you guys would have chased me from the room, and justifiably so).<\/p>\n<p><em>Semper claritas<\/em> should be your guiding principle.<\/p>\n<p>Kim du Toit, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kimdutoit.com\/2017\/03\/28\/mystics\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Mystics&#8221;, <em>Splendid Isolation<\/em><\/a>, 2017-03-28.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But back to the mystics in general. I refuse to be swallowed up by their bullshit, nor do I allow myself to feel in any way inferior to their apparent greater knowledge. I once listened to some consultant describe a proposed change, and the description was filled with consultant-jargon \u2014 oh yes, they too have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,41],"tags":[400],"class_list":["post-37950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-quotations","tag-language"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9S6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37951,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37950\/revisions\/37951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}