Being Clear

When you write clearly, your reader understands what you wrote and doesn’t have to take a lot of effort to do so.

However. It’s possible to write things consisting of known words that sound profound, but on reflection, you’re not sure what the writer meant. This type of writing is commonly called BS, or any of a multitude of synonyms, including “obfuscation,” which is an example of itself unless you happen to know what the word means. I ran into an example the other day:

Attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation.

Sounds profound, doesn’t it? This is an actual tweet composed by Deepak Chopra, as quoted by University of Waterloo psychologist Gordon Pennycook and his colleagues in a paper published in the November 2015 issue of Judgment and Decision Making.

I have to add that the statement isn’t even true. Attention and intention are what you do when you make a decision to do something. Manifestation is when something actually happens. I can refute this little pseudo-profundity with a quiz I saw once:

Four frogs are sitting on a log. Three decide to jump off. How many are left?

The answer is “four frogs,” because deciding to do something isn’t the same as doing it.

To give credit where it’s due, I found the Chopra quote in an article about BS. I encourage you to be suspicious of anyone who is needlessly profound-sounding.