A frequent theme of information responsibility: Good writing must honor what we know about how the reading/listening mind functions. Any writing whose syntax imposes an unwarranted cognitive burden on the reader/listener must be considered bad. Distancing a pronoun from its antecedent is one example.
“The problem is not vocabulary, though critics will point out words like ‘consubstantial,’ ” Father Ruff said in an interview. “The problem is syntax and word order. The sentences are too complicated, the pronouns are so far away from their antecedent you can’t even tell what the pronoun refers to.”
Two paragraphs later in the same article, we have evidence of what is perhaps failure of information responsibility (although we cannot whether it is a failure to write clearly or to read carefully):
The missal has already had a test run in South Africa, where the bishops said they mistook the instructions and introduced it a year too early.
For New Mass, Closer to Latin, Critics Voice a Plain Objection - NYTimes.com
No comments:
Post a Comment