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Welcome! Saturday, 10 Nov 2012

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(U) The SIGINT Philosopher: When Brevity Is Just the Soul of ''Huh?''
FROM: (U//FOUO)
SERIES:
The SIGINT
Run Date: 07/16/2012
Philosopher
(U) We've all written academic papers at some point, where
1. The SIGINT
your style is dictated by a need to sound smart. And many of
Philosopher Is
Back -- with a
us went through a needed -- albeit painful -- reprogramming
New Face!
when we came here to what, for lack of a better term, we'll
2. The SIGINT
call the "real world." We had to learn to take out our
Philosopher:
parenthetical thoughts, our rhetorically brilliant dependent
Descartes Would
clauses, our florid and flashy flourishes. People are busy, we
Have Been a
were told. Just state the BLUF.*
Lousy SIGINT
Reporter
3. The SIGINT
(U) Eventually, I was able to adapt to the new Spartan
Philosopher:
paradigm of writing. I remembered Norman Maclean's
When Brevity Is
memoir "A River Runs Through It" where he described his
Just the Soul of
father teaching him to get to the point in writing. Maclean
''Huh?''
would be assigned an essay, which he would take to his
4. The SIGINT
father. His father would then tell him to make it half as long.
Philosopher: In
Maclean would shorten it, show it to his father again, then be
Praise of Not
told once more to make it half as long. Once he achieved an
Knowing
essay that was now one-fourth its original length, his father
5. The SIGINT
would tell him to throw it in the trash and Maclean was at

 would tell him to throw it in the trash, and Maclean was at
last let loose to go fishing.
(U) However, I have noted that at times some carry this
verbal frugality too far. One supervisor I had -- one who
chided me often for being too verbose when I wrote e-mails
-- used to write e-mails to our team that always ended with us
looking puzzled at one another. It wasn't that he couldn't
make sense. It was that he left too much information out.
Inevitably, one of us would have to send back a response
asking for clarification. The response to that request would
then typically lead to more questions. Eventually, this
supervisor would give up, come speak to the team personally,
and then we would work through everything. By then, the
whole cycle had taken much longer than one slightly more
complete e-mail would have taken to begin with.

6.

Philosopher:
Unlike All My
Terrible
Teammates, I Am
a Wonderful
Teammate
The SIGINT
Philosopher:
Lessons for Civil
Servants from the
American Civil
War (That Don't
Concern Killing
Vampires)

(U) I am perhaps treading into waters ruled by Zelda or
Grammar Geek, but as our writing impacts our ability to
understand our discourse with one another, I'll claim just a
small piece of this zone as the realm of philosophy. And I
entreat you all, as sub-warden of this zone: Be brief, but also
be complete. People are too busy NOT to give them all the
information they need to understand what you are saying the
FIRST time you send it.
(U) And now, I will conclude with a paragraph that my editor
will no doubt delete. It is a self-indulgent digression, replete
with Baroque sentence constructions. Part of it has to do with
King Sejong's creation of the Korean alphabet, and there is a
breathtaking description of Henri Saint Cyr's 1952 equestrian
gold medal performance. It's a pity you're too busy to read it,
really.
[paragraph deleted]
* (U) BLUF does not mean, as I thought, to pretend you
know something, which is too bad, because I'm really good at
that. It's one of those annoying acronyms that pop up. It
means "bottom line up front."
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Last Modified: 11/10/2012  /  Last Reviewed: 11/10/2012

 

 

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