a randy oliver snip> followed by my comment...

Again, you're not following logic--your comment was an example of the
fallacy called "special pleading"--you moved the goalposts from Gene's
claim that no one other than one's advisor would read writing that follows
strict logic, to a new goalpost that it had to be entertaining.   I get the
feeling that I'm wasting my time in this thread : )

>Well I am going to kick this dead horse one more time and then I am done.

>If you read clearly and without some preconceived bias Randy that is not what I said and is light years away from what I suggested.  What I did suggest is: if you ENSLAVE yourself to a formal style of writing with no embellishment of the language and no feeling then the number of folks who would read your writing will be small and the content of your writing dry and boring.  The extreme case is of course (and to what I was referring) is master thesis and dissertation where this work quite likely reduces down to being read by you the writer and your graduate advisor.

>Anyone who does wish to write for the various bee journals should recognize.... the total audience of all beekeepers is small but quite diverse so any one style of writing will never work for all and no matter how polished is your writing the audience will invariable be small.

>Technical writing class typically advise against using large or complex words when a simply word will do.  This is a simple rule which really means you don't want to loose the audience in the language itself.  Quite typically you may witness this more in verbal presentation where the education level of the audience will vary greatly < it is the first point of advise I give to new graduate students here when they do presentation at bee clubs.... that is shy away from large technical words and jargon. 

>Personally I find nothing really wrong with Randy's writing in the ABJ (not that I have credentials to critic his work) and to a large degree I appreciate his use of bullet point to direct all to possible application (which to my way of thinking where the rubber meets the highway in terms of generating potential value).  At suggestion from others when giving oral presentation it is generally a good idea not to make some statement and then 5 minutes later totally contradict one self.

>I think it was Ben Johnson who said.... anything worth saying can be said succinctly.

Gene in central Texas   

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html