[imajes]

without sounding pretentious - one of the biggest things I've found is that today's authors suffer from a lack of eloquence. Communicating well is not something that's simple to master, and few are truly good at it - in the same way that computer science is a discipline, there are myriad courses in university devoted to communication.

But we're trying to glean insight and information from blog posts and articles often produced by time starved writers, first time bloggers or similar. The art of communication is being lost in search for the sound bite, the skim reader- the 20 second attention.

Perhaps we should all commit to reading a book a week- or how about writing a short story: surely the better we are at communicating then the more enriched we will be as a society?

[randallsquared]

It seems to me that eloquent writing actually makes it harder to skim and decide that it's worth reading. I used to read things because I liked how they were written, but now that it's become clear to me that there's more than I could ever hope to get to in years, I just want to get to the point and on to the next thing; I find myself skimming even novels I'm reading while on public transit, looking for the conclusion.

My point is just that great writing takes more attention and time, and so will simply have a smaller audience. I wish writers would worry less about putting together just the right turn of phrase and simply say what they want to say.

[Confusion]

I find myself skimming even novels I'm reading while on public transit

Well, I think this is all very personal and our experiences cannot be generalized into a trend. In direct opposition to your experience, I've recently started to actually read books, instead of just skimming them for the story. The balance was tipped by the first book of the Gormenghast trilogy "Titus Groan" by Mervyn Peake... really wonderful prose.