0165B: Bad Writing Can Seem Good From Afar

Given my continued labor of love that is The Geeky Guide to Nearly Everything, I take reviews fairly seriously. And while you can argue that it's just one person's opinion and it won't really matter in the long run, the reviewer is still responsible for writing a piece that can serve to be of some help to reader in terms of deciding whether to engage the subject being reviewed. My writing philosophy has always been about making sure that my writing accesses are wider range of readers - perhaps the core irony of my geeky blog. As much as the blog is written by a geek, the language is meant to be as plain and accessible as possible. It serves no purpose to write my reviews in a manner that makes it unintelligible for other readers.

So when I read reviews like this, I can't help but feel more than just annoyed while I laugh my head off. The use of rather long words (yes, these would be superfluous or polysyllabic terms) in a written piece is the sort of trick that high school and college essayists would try in order to somehow make their paper seem more impressive than it actually is. In the end, it just makes you look like an idiot when either (1) your misuse the terms given they actually have highly nuanced meanings that you missed or (2) the sheer number of such terms tells me that you're trying way too hard.

I don't understand why people still do this. Using "bigger words" or highly obscure terms for no truly valid reason just feels silly. More often than not it results in a painful reading experience - either because the reader does not understand what the author has to say or because the reader is like me - amused at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. And that's just bad for everyone.

Don't be a douche writer. Stop abusing your thesaurus. Review the meaning of communication.