18.223 prolixity or informativeness?

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 223.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
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         Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 08:00:14 +0100
         From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
         Subject: prolixity strikes again

Once upon a time the chief form of prolixity in e-mail -- "lengthiness of
spoken or written matter; length of discourse; copiousness and minuteness
of detail; esp. tedious or tiresome lengthiness" (OED) -- was fullsome --
"characterized by abundance, possessing or affording copious supply;
abundant, plentiful, full.... Of the body, etc.: Full and plump, fat,
well-grown; in a bad sense, over-grown" -- indentification of the author by
institution(s), address(es) and sometimes beliefs and/or disclaimers,
sometimes accompanied by ASCII art. Sometimes these would in fact be longer
than the body of the message itself, but since they were added
automatically, the authors would presumably not be as keenly aware of their
bulk as the recipients. Or perhaps said authors were thus aware. Now
prolixity seems to have afflicted the subject-line, which can these days
run to 2 or sometimes more lines. I'd recommend brevity. But fearing to be
thought out-of-touch with the current fashions, I'll make this an enquiry.
What is your sense of the matter?

Yours,
WM

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Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
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Received on Fri Sep 17 2004 - 03:18:38 EDT