Verbosity

Verbosity or verboseness is speech or writing which uses more words than needed. A common example is "Despite the fact that" as a common replacement for "Although". Antonyms of verbosity include succinctness, concision, laconism, and plain language. Some teachers, including the author of The Elements of Style, warn writers not to be verbose. Similarly, some authors, including Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, are known for their succinct styles and avoidance of verbosity.

Synonyms for verbosity, of varying flavors of the meaning, include wordiness, verbiage, prolixity, grandiloquence, garrulousness, expatiation, logorrhea, and sesquipedalianism. Corresponding adjectival forms are verbose, wordy, prolix, grandiloquent, garrulous, and logorrheic. Slang terms such as verbal diarrhea also refer to the practice.

Examples of verbosity are common in political speech, academic prose, and other genres.

The word logorrhoea is often used pejoratively to describe prose which is highly abstract, and, consequently, contains little concrete language. Since abstract writing is hard to visualize, it often seems as though it makes no sense, and that all the words are excessive. Writers in academic fields which concern themselves mostly with the abstract, such as philosophy, especially postmodernism, often fail to include extensive concrete examples of their ideas.

In an attempt to prove this lack of academic rigor, physics professor Alan Sokal wrote a nonsensical essay, and had it published in a respected journal (Social Text) as a practical joke. The journal kept defending it as a genuine article even after its own author rebuked the editors publicly in a subsequent article in another academic journal. The episode has come to be known as the Sokal Affair.

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