Re: Convince vs. Persuade (WAS: Displays versus Appears )

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Berk/Devlin wrote:

> 
> No one reacted in any way to the punning; it was clear they did not get
> it.  I only got a few, it was like machine-gun fire and I couldn't process
> all of them.  I must have been like 9 or 10.  I asked, "Why do you keep on
> doing this?  No one notices."  He said "I notice."

I find this a little depressing. Obviously, I wouldn't write if I
didn't enjoy it. In fact, I enjoy it more than almost anything else.
But if I thought that I was the only one I ever wrote for, I'd have
to question what I was doing. 

Writing implies an audience. Otherwise, it's like playing tennis
without a net: you can do it, but what's the point? 

I suppose that writing something only you can understand can make
you feel superior to everyone else, just as your cousin's puns
appear to make him feel superior to those around him. However, I
wouldn't want to operate from that motive, either. For me, it would
be a perversion of something I enjoy for its own sake.

 
> Bruce, there is no way for us to know whether or not we are the only ones
> making a particular distinction.  However, there's no harm in making the
> distinctions in case it does make something clearer for some discerning reader.

As I said in an earlier post, some writers do give readers an added
pleasure by the exact way that they use words. And I admit to
nothing except awe when I remember a now dead friend who could write
poetry in Old Welsh, Old Norse and Iroquois; I don't know if his
poetry in these languages was good or indifferent, but the mere fact
that he could write it was impressive. However, in order to
communicate, writers need to use the language of their day. You
might give some added pleasure to a limited number of your audience,
but, if your entire meaning was dependent on an exact but outdated
meaning, you would no longer be communicating. You'd only be showing
off.


-- 
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
604.421.7189 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"When Laertes heard his Dad has been stabbed in the arras,
He came racing back to Elsinore tout suite, hotfoot from Paris,
And Ophelia, with her Dad killed by the man she wished to marry,
After saying it with flowers, committed hari-kari."
- Adam McNaughton, "Our Hamlet" ("The Three Minute Hamlet")

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