Today’s Poorly Written Prose

I truly hate those fools who converge several words into a moronic sentence and assume that everyone else believes it to be sophisticated.

Today’s example of poorly written prose is a rather special one because of its high irony factor: the author, while denouncing pretentious writers, succeeds in exemplifying the essential fault of all pretentious writing — using words that are rare and meant to sound intellectual without fulling knowing the meaning or standard usage of those very words. Here the author of this sentence seems not to know that “converge” is an intransitive verb and is not meant to be used transitively. The word the author was looking for was “juxtapose”.

That said, of all the faults of writers, being pretentious seems to me the among the most excusable — as misusing rare words is an inevitable step in becoming better spoken.

2 responses to “Today’s Poorly Written Prose”

  1. seth thomas

    jux·ta·pose ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jkst-pz)
    tr.v. jux·ta·posed, jux·ta·pos·ing, jux·ta·pos·es
    To place side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.

    perhaps you wanted

    ar·range ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-rnj)
    v. ar·ranged, ar·rang·ing, ar·rang·es
    v. tr.
    To put into a specific order or relation.

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