[coldtea]

You should use those alarms on PG's writings:

https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

As for the particular author, he was born in another culture (not all cultures appreciate the matter-of-factness as-you-talk anglo-saxon style of writing, many prominent European writers have called it "barbaric" and "only good for business"). He was also born in a whole other era.

[pthomas551]

Yep, it's extremely mistaken (but very American) to assume that American preferences on writing style prevail in all other languages and regions. To take one example, in written German the passive voice is often considered better style, whereas in contemporary English it's the exact opposite.

[dpark]

> many prominent European writers have called it "barbaric" and "only good for business"

Snobs in general tend to look down on people who don’t place value on pomposity for its own sake.

[foldr]

Writing style is a matter of taste. The blunt "as spoken" style is just as much an affect as some of its more flowery alternatives.

[dpark]

I'm assuming you're using "an affect" in the sense of "an affectation" or "affected" here, in which case, no. Plainness, simplicity, straightforwardness are words that would describe "as spoken" writing. They are also literally antonyms of "affect" in this context, which would mean pretentiousness, artificiality, pomposity.

[foldr]

I just mean that there's nothing inherently sincere about plainness and simplicity. Some people adopt a plain and simple style disingenuously, and others write in a more flowery style out of a genuine aesthetic motive. In French, 100 years ago, the kind of style you're advocating would have been the "marked" case. That is, readers would probably have attributed disingenuous motives to someone who chose to write a history book in the style of spoken conversation.

[dpark]

> * That is, readers would probably have attributed disingenuous motives to someone who chose to write a history book in the style of spoken conversation.*

Okay, but they'd also probably be able to understand it. So, tradeoffs.

[foldr]

I want my clothes to be practical. Some people want this and want everyone else to know it, so they buy really ugly clothes just to prove that they don’t care about aesthetics.

You seem to think that it’s impossible for prose to be aesthetically pleasing and comprehensible at the same time. But in fact, the quoted text is both. If it had been written in a plainer style, I probably wouldn't have bothered reading all of it. So no trade off in this instance.

[coldtea]

>Plainness, simplicity, straightforwardness are words that would describe "as spoken" writing. They are also literally antonyms of "affect" in this context, which would mean pretentiousness, artificiality, pomposity.

"Spoken writing" can be just as artificial and pretentious -- e.g. upper class writers writing as if they grew up in da hood. Or people dumbing down their language to sell more.

How we speak with a friend, and how we write, doesn't have to share the same language or tone or expressions or vocabulary even. Spoken is a stream of consciousness that we express in real time. Written is forever, so we have time to refine what we write, go deeper, be more artistic, add flourishes, and so on. This is not the same as "being obscure for being obscure's sake".

To make an analogy, what you ask for, in photography terms would be "all photography should be real life documentary-style scenes".

In fact, even "spoken" changes form all the time: you don't talk to your bong buddy the same as you talk to your parents, or spouse, or the same way you give a lecture as when you casual chat over coffee, or when you teach students. Tone changes, expression changes, vocabulary changes, level of difficulty changes, etc.

[colechristensen]

>Snobs in general tend to look down on people who …

That in itself is snobbery. It's just fashion bouncing back and forth between hating on the poor and hating on the rich. One is fashionable until everyone does it then the opposite is in vogue.

Are the cool kids today wearing factory-ripped jeans these days or are they hating on people who do?

It is just stupid to say "this style is the only acceptable style and anyone doing anything different is an asshole". Surface quality is boring, substance is important.

[dpark]

> It is just stupid to say "this style is the only acceptable style and anyone doing anything different is an asshole".

It isn't stupid. It's snobbery. If you denigrate straightforward writing as "barbaric", you're a snob, plain and simple.

> Surface quality is boring, substance is important.

My problem with overly-flowery writing is specifically that it's about style and not substance. If your goal is to educate or to entertain, put that first. If your goal is to impress the reader with your loquacious conveyance of verbiage, fine, but you're sacrificing substance for style. And I personally think this sort of writing shows a disrespect toward the reader, because it's literally about the author showing off and trying to impress the reader.

You know how sometimes you'll go to a website and it hijacks your scrollbar to show some unnecessary visualization or a gratuitous rotating 3D view of a product? And you look at it and you can appreciate the artistry that went into creating the visualization, the skill that went into rendering everything perfectly and syncing it with the scrollbar. But mostly it's fucking obnoxious because you just want to scroll down to read the article or click the "buy" link and instead you're wasting your time fighting with the site that broke your scrollbar because some product manager was sure you'd be impressed. This is the website version of dense, flowery, self-important prose.

[coldtea]

>If you denigrate straightforward writing as "barbaric", you're a snob, plain and simple.

It's "straightforward" for you and your era and culture. For others it's merely a plain and crude version of what could be better writing.

[colechristensen]

>My problem with overly-flowery writing is specifically that it's about style and not substance.

There is the snobbery. Bad writing is everywhere. Some people have large vocabularies and use them well, some people don't. Becoming a good writer also requires a lot of bad writing. Complex writing more so. If you say everything complex is just about style and showing off, it reflects poorly on your ability to determine quality of complex, or any writing.

There is nothing wrong with not understanding something or having no interest in something, but doing this virtue signaling to put yourself above anything you don't understand is anti-intellectual bullshit and you might as well be protesting against vaccines. It's the same as black kids shaming each other for "talking white" or people yelling about how "we speak English in this country".

[dpark]

"You have a different opinion from me. Therefore you are a snob." Boo. You brought up style and substance, and when I answered you called me a snob. This is not what snobbery means. It is not snobbery to hold an opinion. Nor is is snobbery to think something is bad if you have reasons.

If you don't like to listen to bubblegum pop, that doesn't make you a snob. If you argue that the lyrics are simple and the repetitive beats basic chord progressions are unoriginal or pandering to the crowd, that still doesn't make you a snob. But if you say that anyone who makes or listens to bubblegum pop is an idiot, now you're a snob. Snobbery isn't disliking something. It's looking down on something (or more practically on people who like that something.)

I don't think people who write flowery, dense prose are all snobs, nor did I say that they were. I said the ones who do this and then call straightforward writing "barbaric" are snobs, because "barbaric" is not a meaningful criticism, any more than "idiotic" is.

I gave you specific reasons I do not like the flowery style of writing, and why I find it counterproductive. I think writing in this way is very self-important and I think it puts the reader secondary to the author's ego. I think flowery writing has poor fit for purpose, if the purpose is to educate or even entertain. If the purpose is to demonstrate artistry in sentence composition, then sure, flowery writing seems great for that purpose, but I personally have zero interest in that purpose, and I think most people probably have zero interest in that. Slogging through three times as much text and reading every paragraph twice to make sure I understood the point is not a rewarding experience for me.

[coldtea]

And cruder people in general tend to consider pomposity what's just eloquence or refined prose.

Besides, for many people there's nothing wrong with what some call "snobbery" but they call elitism or quality or high brow, etc.

They're not "snobs" caring who has this or that ancestry, who has expensive clothes, etc., but particular about language, expression, etc. Which is par for the course of being a writer, artist, or intellectual in general.