Variations in Style

If my writing is characterized by anything, it is most definitely convolution and excessive verbosity. It used to be worse, but although I have made every attempt to remedy this malady, it is still an overwhelming trait. Over the past two years or so, I have strived to streamline this bloat by using fewer words, but words with far more precision. In general, it has been fairly successful. So, I was spending some time thinking and considering the field of writing, and I came to a realization. There are two very distinct and incompatible styles of writing each espoused by excellent and competent writers. There is the style of writing with the utmost simplicity and comprehensibility. In this style of writing, one should use the simplest sentence structure and vocabulary possible without seeming repetitive or immature. One might say that it's simple without being simplistic. The other style still tends to shun verbosity, but it strives to achieve the maximum precision of meaning regardless of whether it creates a more complex syntax. I have come to this conclusion after spending a lot of time writing papers for various classes in different styles. The streamlined style has been labelled both "clear and effective" and "clinical", while the precise style has been called "excellent writing" and "a bit pompous and pedantic". Where does one draw the line! I think there may really be no agreement on the proper style of writing. I will make one final and important observation however. English teachers tend to favor the precise and wordier style with great regularity over the clear and concise one, while most other people are the opposite. As for me, call me pompous and arrogant, but I enjoy reading words with the utmost precision of meaning, no matter how arcane they may be. I never read anything without a dictionary these days. At the same time there is a usually certain elegance to the most effecient arrangement of words in a sentence that is desirable. I'm hardly anything close to an authority, but have some opinions on the matter.

In other news, I took the SAT IIs in US History, Math II, and Physics. Since I haven't taken US History since last year, I had a little bit of trouble on it, but Math went well, and I breezed through the Physics without a semblance of a hitch. I'm a little worried about my accuracy on the math exam because I worked pretty fast. Considering the curve that is put on the Physics exam (65 out of 75 raw is usually the bottom boundary for an 800), and considering that I missed 3 out of 75 on a practice test, there's reasonable chance that I may get 800. As for the others, I have a hard time knowing because of the varying curves.