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Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by ecb_penguin on Thursday July 10, 2025 @06:25PM (#44526372)
It doesn't, though. It's pretentious and educated people will see through it. If the goal is to inform, then you should do the opposite.
Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by beerandt on Thursday July 10, 2025 @06:53PM (#44526605)
Only if you're using technical writing in a situation where you shouldn't be.

Problem is the state of most English education doesn't even teach enough for people to recognize proper unambiguous technical writing, let alone appreciate it or attempt to compose it.

Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by GuinansEyebrows on Thursday July 10, 2025 @06:33PM (#44526440)
i imagine the language may change that though. With Polish having nominally 300k-400k words compared to English's >1m, i'd guess that it's a lot easier to misdirect and fluff up your writing in English.
Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by codedokode on Thursday July 10, 2025 @09:00PM (#44527406)
English has over 1 million words? No way. Except for pronunciation, it is relatively simple language.
Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by 0rzech on Friday July 11, 2025 @04:03AM (#44529502)
It can if you count all the different forms of each word and proper nouns. But this way Polish may have even more words, given multitude of different forms. I've never checked that, though.

There's also the tendency in English to make new words out of existing ones to create new meanings, while in Polish we often use multiple separate existing words to create new meanings.

Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by ahartmetz on Friday July 11, 2025 @04:03AM (#44529504)
It has words of both Germanic and Latin origin, that's why it has so many. The fancy words are usually the Latin ones.
Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by 0rzech on Friday July 11, 2025 @03:54AM (#44529441)
It's not pretentious and there's nothing to see through here. This is just the preferred style in Poland and it's widely used. And just because the sentences aren't simple, doesn't mean they're not informative.

Also, we were taught to prefer compound and complex sentences over simple ones where applicable, not at all costs.

Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by tuukkah on Friday July 11, 2025 @01:36PM (#44534956)
"a complex writing style preferred by educated people" - how is that not pretentious?

You started by saying complex sentences should always be preferred, but now you ended by saying "only where applicable" and the sentence under discussion was "too long".

Re:Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exi... by 0rzech on Friday July 11, 2025 @08:48PM (#44538302)
> "a complex writing style preferred by educated people"

This is not a quote of me. Nor is it an honest summary of what I wrote. It also completely ignores the context: the "educated people" were supposed to "see through" - the same people who predominantly prefer the same style. I have also never claimed the style is not used by other people. Quite the opposite. Not to mention, that education until 18 years of age is mandatory in Poland anyway.

> how is that not pretentious?

The straw man you made up definitely is.

> You started by saying complex sentences should always be preferred

I wrote that we were always taught to prefer one over another (there were multiple teachers along the way), not that we were taught to always prefer one over another.

> but now you ended by saying "only where applicable"

There is no "but now".

> and the sentence under discussion was "too long".

I believe it is indeed.