Bullfighter diagnosis on post (was Re: Writing Corrective Actionsfor customers?)

[Leonard C. Porrello]

Really, Mike, you don't like, "Where one gets off dumping on people..."?
I think it has a perfectly clear objective-correlative. Although I may
not share his sentiments and some of what he said may indeed qualify as
"blather" (albeit for reasons other than those you might think), I think
Ned's ("dumping") usage was perfectly clear and apropos. It was
certainly clearer (at least to me) than anything Eliot ever wrote. Of
course, I get Eliot. But I have to work at it.

I think you forget that conversational email (which, by the way, is what
Techwr-l is) is informal even if its matter is professional. While I
wouldn't brook a mixed metaphor, I couldn't care less about typos, and I
appreciate any attempt to delight. Ned's invocation of "dumping" was
delightful. Correspondents to a technical writing forum by no means have
to write as if they are writing technical documents. I certainly don't!
The forum isn't a technical document or a resume. To the contrary, it's
precisely the place where we, collegial and convivial professionals that
we are, should be able to let our hair down, to write with a bit of
"bling", to write with something other than the transparent (albeit
hopefully poetic) blandness of the technical prose to which we are
constrained for most of our anonymous and relatively entombed
professional lives.

Perhaps "pissing-contest", as a metaphor, has a clearer
objective-correlative for you?

Leonard C. Porrello
 

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+leonard.porrello=soleratec.com at lists.techwr-l.com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+leonard.porrello=soleratec.com at lists.techwr-l.c
om] On Behalf Of Michael West
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 6:31 PM
To: Tim Mantyla
Cc: doc at edwordsmith.com; richard.combs at Polycom.com;
techwr-l at lists.techwr-l.com
Subject: Re: Bullfighter diagnosis on post (was Re: Writing Corrective
Actionsfor customers?)

Tim Mantyla wrote on 23/04/2008 06:01:09 AM:
 
> FWIW, the Bullfighter gives Ned a composite score of 8.8 out of 10 
> for this composition, and 63 out of 100 on the Flesch reading index,
> as convoluted as it sounds. 

I don't need the help of software to know blather when I read it. 

I can handle convolution. What I can't handle is the absence of an 
objective correlative for the metaphor--if that's what it is. 

"Where one gets off dumping on people" is not a meaningful expression in

any species of English that concerns me -- especially not in a technical

communications forum. Without a citation relating the expression to 
something in the real word (as we laughingly refer to it), it is 
indecipherable.

-- 
Mike West
Melbourne, Australia