Style Clarity And Grace Analysis

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After reading lesson one of Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, one quotation that particularly resonated with me was from Michael Crichton in regards to the language of medicine. He stated, “It now appears that obligatory obfuscation is a firm tradition with the medical profession….[Medical writing] is a high skilled, calculated attempt to confuse the reader….A doctor feels he might get passed over for an assistant professorship because he wrote his paper too clearly--because he made his ideas seem too simple.” I found his quotation interesting due to the fact that the main role of a physician is to maintain and restore the health of his patients instead of using turgid language to confuse his readers. Furthermore, a physician should be able to clearly and concisely express his idea even if the idea is complicated. …show more content…
When we read that kind of writing in government regulations, we call it bureaucratese…” Last week at work I was discussing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a co-worker. We were both interested it in its policies and implications since it might become history. As we searched scoured the Internet, we finally found a PDF of the document. To our surprise, it was over nine hundred pages. The shortest summary that we found of the ACA was approximately eleven pages. When a document is as long as Moby Dick, it is no wonder that the average American will not a have a thorough understanding of its content. This has definitely proven, at least to me, that clear and concise writing is necessary both for government officials and the general public if ideas are going to be shared