Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
Re-quoting myself "One writes to communicate with their audience, not to confuse them."
Whenever you write something for public consumption, you are writing to an audience. To write well and effectively, you have to identify who that audience is, and write in a manner that communicates to them-- else you either will not get your intended message across or you will turn your audience away. That is Writing 101. An example coincidentally showed up on the front page of CNN.com this morning (after I had made the comments) where someone is claiming that President Obama's recent speech-- said to be at a grade level of 9.8-- was too difficult for much of the target audience (which says very sad things about the American public, but is doubtlessly trure.) |
That is journalistic writing 101 and in this case it does not apply. Individual words take on meaning because we assign them meaning through usage, whether that usage is formally agreed or not. A simplistic sentence structure can remain just as simplistic (targeted to the widest possible level of comprehension) with the use of a single 'foreign' word within that structure.
The President is an illustrious philanderer with a penchant for reading upon his Liseuse.
The President is a well-known cheat who likes reading on his Liseuse.
Liseuse is not the problem word when it comes to comprehension, as long as usage assigns the word Liseuse as a description for the device. Liseuse could become as common as Hoover in descriptive terms. It is those words that can be simplified which you may change or omit to widen comprehension and to target audiences.
The word Liseuse is not the problem in terms of comprehension. Whether it becomes widely used is up to whether it catches on and is used. For or against (and I love it as a word) there's no way to foresee the outcome. And if I have to, in any way, slant what I write towards a theoretical mean of comprehension, then there is no point in writing anything at all. There is no way to grow within a language if you have to restrict yourself to being understood by all. That to me seems the most unnatural way to communicate. If we stop using words they cease to exist and be understood, but that shouldn't be forced because of weak literacy rates and terrible education systems.