Paolo Redaelli«Top Cryptocurrencies Rated by White Paper Complexity» is an interesting read. It subtitle recites:
Studying the correlation between the readability of white papers and the money raised.
It seems that when you write in English the dumber the better.
While I must admit that often English allow to express yourself in a briefer yet more effective way, I want to signal the danger of excessive simplification of the language.
Of course, being simple is not being simplicistic, as in this quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein:
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
I like this saying because it compactly articulates the principle of Occam’s razor.
The aim to express one idea in its purest form, which is also the simplest is admirable but there is always the danger to overdo it, oversimplifying it. And when you make your language simplistic, truncating its expressiveness, you are hampering your ability to think as the language itself sets the limit of what you are able to think.
This phenomenon has been stigmatized by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four and its infamous Newspeak.
the ruling Party created Newspeak, a controlled language of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, meant to limit the freedom of thought — personal identity, self-expression, free will — that threatens the ideology of the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who have criminalized such concepts into thoughtcrime, as contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy
It’s way too easy to slowly shift into something resembling Newspeak when you use tools like HemingwayApp “to improve readability“.
Being Italian and having attended a liceo high-school I have been studying Latin for five years and Latin literature for three. I must admit that when I was studying it I plainly hated that dead language. Yet, today I must admit that my parents and my teachers were right when they stated that “Latin opens the mind”. Yes, it’s true. Latin opens the mind.
When it comes to what a language can allow to express I like to use the example of the Latin word agenda that literally means “the things that ought to be done”. It is a grammatical structure that it’s not present in English – and that I must admit that is atrophied in Italian; it is future passive participle (gerundive) of the verb agō (“I do, act, make”).
Latin often used passive verbs.
Latin not only used pronouns widely.
Latin often used long tenses.
The most famous Latin orator, Cicero, often used tenses so rich in relatives that one of his tenses often translates in an entire page on the “simplified English” that people advoc ating services like HemingwayApp that keeps lowering the bar. In fact they state:
Writing that scores at a 15th grade level is not better than writing at an 8th grade level. In fact, a high grade level often means it is confusing and tedious for any reader. Worse, it’s likely filled with jargon. After all, unless you’re writing a textbook (and even then) you don’t want it to sound like a textbook.
I disagree so much that I felt the urge to write this piece.
They shun the use of adverbs. While it’s true that a fit choice of verbs is better that naively using adverbs, a wise usage of adverbs allow to fine tune the meaning of a verb. And no, “walking slowly” has not the same meaning “tip-toeing”. In fact you can also “tip-toeing slowly”! And neither “lightly walking” is “tip-toeing”.
Simplified Technical English requires to:
Restrict the length of noun clusters to no more than 3 words
Restrict sentence length to no more than 20 words (procedural sentences) or 25 words (descriptive sentences)
Restrict paragraphs to no more than 6 sentences (in descriptive text)
Avoid slang and jargon while allowing for specific terminology
Make instructions as specific as possible
Use articles such as “a/an” and “the” wherever possible
Use simple verb tenses (past, present, and future)
Use active voice
Not use present participles or gerunds (unless part of a Technical Name)
Write sequential steps as separate sentences
Cicero in his works broke every one of those rules. All of them. Well, with the exception of those regarding articles that does not exist in Latin as it didn’t needed them!
Let me comment an extract of Wikipedia’s entry on Latin:
Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders, up to seven noun cases, five declensions, four verb conjugations, three tenses, three persons, three moods, two voices, two or three aspects and two numbers.
Every single link in the text cited above is an aspect of Latin that English has lost, entirely or almost, severely hampering its expressiveness, thus requiring the usage of all those mind-dumbing “readability” techniques.
Simple thoughts are effectively expressed with a simple language.
More difficult thoughts require a more expressive language. Trying to force the usage of a simplistic language change the meaning of what you’re expressing, turning it into something else which is most often false.
Expressing a “difficult” idea using simple words actually requires a deep understanding of the matter. It’s like a Columbus’ egg, like the postulates of special relativity as exposed by Einstein.
Trying to attain this level of synthesis every time one is writing a concept is sheer pride. In English, at least 🙂