Hey Alex, Thanks a lot for the clarifications, I agree with your reasoning.
On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 8:30 PM Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpa...@gmail.com> wrote: > What is ventilated in the context of prose? Not too clear to me just by > reading dict(1). Regarding "Ventilated Prose", it's more of an endearing figure of speech than a technical categorization. Think of a hot stuffy room, and the transformation that occurs when you open the window and let in a cool breeze -- the room becomes well ventilated. So too with a stuffy paragraph. Here's a relevant passage about the origin of the phrase from https://vanemden.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/ventilated-prose, > In the 1930s Buckminster Fuller (he of the domes, but also of many other > things) was doing research for the Phelps Dodge Corporation. His boss could > not read Fuller’s reports, but found them perfectly intelligible when read > aloud by the author. > > For Fuller's own account, see below. > > [...] > > Though the [...] presentation had been developed under the close observation > of > the corporation’s Director of Research, my final written presentation of it > was declared by the Director to be incomprehensible. Disgruntled, I re-read > it carefully and returned to the Director saying, "Please listen to this," > and proceeded to read in spontaneously metered "doses" from my manuscript. > As I read I also watched for expressions of comprehension on the Director’s > face. The Director pondered each verbal dose, and when his face signalled > "that is clear" I would intuitively measure out the next portion. Finally, > the Director said, "Why don’t you write it that way?" I said, "I am > reading directly and without skipping from my original text"; so the > Director said, "It just doesn’t read that way." The explanation was that > the intuitive doses did not correspond to conventional syntax. > > When the re-written report was submitted, the Director said, "This is lucid, > but it is poetry, and I cannot possibly hand it to the President of the > Corporation for submission to the Board of Directors." I insisted that it > was obviously not poetry, since both he and I knew how I had chopped up a > conventional prose report. The Director said, "I am having two poets for > dinner tonight and I will take this to them and see what they say." He > returned the next day and said, "It’s too bad — it’s poetry." Sorry to drone on about it, I just think it's very amusing :). Josh
