More fucking around with education

[Razgovory]

I do bemoan the loss of classical allusions etc. in everyday works of educated writing, but I don't see why the prose in Otto's example should be something we should aspire to. Paragraph-long sentences?  Yeah, no thanks.

I agree, and would point out that Otto is missing the fact that people who wrote magazine articles back then tended to get paid by the word.

I suspect that magazines and newspapers were the reason for the brevity.  People bought more newspapers that got to the goddamn point.  People don't care that the writer can read Homer in the original Greek, and aren't interested in how many classical allusions he can squeeze into an article.  They just want to know who won the race for county commissioner, what the verdict on that local murder trial is, if that Balkan crisis has been resolved yet, if the Cardinals won last nights game.