C.S. Lewis once made a similar point - that jargon is perfectly legitimate shorthand. But he also felt that no one should be granted a Ph.D. who could not take a paragraph of jargon-laden prose and translate it into the common tongue. This, he said, would probably end up being about three times as long as the original. But if the candidate could not do it, we had no way of knowing for sure that he understood it.
Hee hee. I just cut down a 2800 word piece to 400 words. All in a day's work ;-) (I should say, an hour's work, in truth.)
ReplyDeleteWow, and people used to praise me for my trimming skills! I once cut more than 100 lines out of a story in about 45 minutes, cutting it by a third. I was always pleased when a writer told me they couldn't tell what had been cut. I suspect your author will notice.
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