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Re: Alamosaurus as biggest North American sauropod



I find that the time i spend reading an email (and my 
general level of interest in it) tends to be inversely 
proportional to the length of the message. One or two 
small paragraphs practically compel me to read it, 
whereas screenfuls of text kind of do the opposite. 


--- On Fri, 12/9/11, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

> From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
> Subject: Re: Alamosaurus as biggest North American sauropod
> To: "DML" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Date: Friday, December 9, 2011, 7:17 AM
> 
> >  Durnit. Caught me. I think I rushed the sentence, and my proofing on
> >  it tried to catch the spelling instead of keeping the clauses
> >  legible. Care to point out the rest of the "gobbledegook"?
> > 
> >  Cheers,
> > 
> >  Jaime A. Headden
> 
> You -- need -- an -- editor.
> 
> In every post of yours (at least over the last, say, 5
> years) that isn't trivially short, there are sentences or
> entire passages which you must have written "in real time",
> at the speed at which you _think_ (not even speak, but
> think). Some aren't even grammatical -- and that, sometimes,
> in ways that I can't tell where the mistake lies, so I
> cannot understand the sentence.
> 
> Very often you express yourself in ways that are three
> times as convoluted as necessary. To pick a trivial,
> entirely understandable example, your previous post had "was
> demonstrative of" where I'd have written "showed" or
> "illustrated". Given the speed at which you evidently write,
> however, these convolutions sometimes break off, topple
> over, roll down the hill like a comic-book avalanche, and
> make sentences or passages impossible to understand.
> 
> Usually, when this happens ( = when I have to give up
> trying to make sense of what you wrote -- and I don't give
> up easily), I simply ignore the sentences in question and
> think they can't have been that important, or I end up
> ignoring the entire topic. That seems to be a widespread
> reaction to your non-style of writing. Over the years,
> however, this
some people more and more
> dismissive of you or even angry at you -- till Denver
> exploded.
> 
> Please take the time to read through your messages to find
> out if someone unfamiliar with you can understand them in
> detail. If necessary, rewrite them radically. I spent
> several times as much time editing this e-mail as writing
> it.
> 
> I send this to the list instead of privately to underscore
> the size of the problem and so I can get feedback from
> fourth parties.
>