{"id":362,"date":"2011-11-22T08:53:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-21T19:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=362"},"modified":"2011-11-22T08:53:41","modified_gmt":"2011-11-21T19:53:41","slug":"impressed-or-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=362","title":{"rendered":"Impressed or what?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?attachment_id=361\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-361\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-361\" title=\"Verbose\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Verbose-300x176.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Verbose-300x176.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Verbose.jpg 324w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Some of life\u2019s more useful writing lessons are surprisingly simple.<\/p>\n<p>Many years ago, one of my classmates discovered the joys of the thesaurus.\u00a0 Overnight his essays became models of the sequipedalianist\u2019s art.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t just replace commonplace words with less-common synonyms.\u00a0 He replaced them with the longest less-common synonyms he could find. And he flanked each polysyllabic noun or verb with an honour guard of equally long and obscure adjectives and adverbs.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the reaction of our teacher was not the one that Smithy had hoped to elicit.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Too many words.\u00a0 Too many syllables.\u00a0 Not enough communication.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Smithy was deeply disappointed.\u00a0 \u2018I thought you\u2019d be impressed by my vocabulary, sir.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Sir thought for a moment or two.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Impressed?\u2019 he said.\u00a0 \u2018I\u2019m afraid not, Mr Smith.\u00a0 First I want to be informed.\u00a0 And, if possible, I would like to be entertained.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018If you can do those two things, then, yes, I will be impressed.\u00a0 But right now, your new-found verbosity is just making my head ache.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some of life\u2019s more useful writing lessons are surprisingly simple. Many years ago, one of my classmates discovered the joys of the thesaurus.\u00a0 Overnight his essays became models of the sequipedalianist\u2019s art.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t just replace commonplace words with less-common &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=362\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":364,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}