Cluttered Writing

Who can understand the workings of an intelligent mind? When I read a paragraph written by a scholar; I am to understand the sentence and then feel enlightened and at ease with the new idea. However this was not the case when reading philosophy. It was like lawyer speak, I thought, “I must be so dumb, that I have to read this diatribe six times to understand a word of it”. I secretly thought. There are too many words; there are too many big words when a small word would have sufficed wonderfully. I felt sorry for the editor that had to wade through the muck of ideas. Oh man! If you could have read some of that stuff, I would love to quote, because you simply cannot imagine. Our professor likened philosophy to the roots of a tree, these roots spread out far and wide. Very wide.
Here is Dr. Schoedinger’s definition of “An essential characteristic”: Schoedinger, Andrew. "philosophy 101."
“An essential characteristic, a characteristic without which a thing would not be the type of thing that it is.”
I am not kidding he wrote that run on sentence.
Nevertheless, now that I have your shocked attention, let me get on with the point of this writing.
A writing teacher, named William Zinsser talks about how writers clutter up the page with unnecessary words, it was great text and I was overwhelmed with tears of joy that another old fart could actually complain about how writers resort to pompous frills and meaningless jargon. AMEN the people said.
William Zinnsser is no stranger to life or a newcomer, he is 84 years old, and about how old I estimate our revered philosophy professor is. Not that it matters, old people can be open minded and full of fresh ideas’ as any 20 year old, it depends on the thinker, not the thinking.
I highlighted most of what Mr. Zinsser wrote. It was wonderful, and I plan to use his ideas to help improve my writing, his ideas may have changed my life, now if I can only apply them.
Mr. Zinsser also said that if the reader is lost trying to read clutter, then it is not the fault of the reader but the fault of the writer, and what he said made a lot of sense to me. Keep in mind who your audience is, remember to simplify and make it interesting, not an easy task, but I am up for it.