I make a living turning ESL-written copy into reports that not only adhere to proper grammar, syntax and semantics, but are also internally consistent and fact-checked.
Ah, so you take text and translate it for people who have even less comfort with and control of English as a form of expression. Doesn't really apply here, but good on you.
Moreover, we get opinion pieces where the challenge is to figure out what the guy means so we can state his case clearly without bulldozing stuff that might speak to his unique perspective. Your stuff reads much like a couple of those guys: They write in English and think they're experts in it, when really they should be sticking to "magazine level."
I get your inability to separate your personal issues from your critique, such as it is, but it's not really accomplishing much. I'm not particularly prescriptive when it comes to writing in an informal setting, unless the person is being unintentionally ironic with it, but I appreciate it in formal writing and the necessity of it in technical work, where the particulars are essential and clarity in that regard is at a premium.
Nope, I know what I'm talking about. Your writing is impenetrable at times, even for an expert.
It really isn't. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find much that couldn't be unpacked by a reader of modest skill who paid attention to the illustrations and had a decent dictionary on hand. I dial down most of what I write that goes beyond a sentence/barb meant to require the reader to unpack it for the larger humor. I doubt people like AMR, and there are a few of those here, have any problem at all with it.
As for my background, since we're doing that...I've published as a poet and essayist and had my work critiqued in both and praised by people with better credentials than either of us, including one poet laureate. I had a very successful run as a lawyer specializing in appeals, where my job was to essentially relate complex legal issues and holdings to the facts of a case while arguing against a trier of fact's interpretation (especially in administrative law judgements regarding social security matters).
The problem with people like you, who try that approach in lieu of counter and as a means of waving hand and passing a point by, is that you never really note what it is that confuses you, what seems "impenetrable" in a given, because you're driven by two competing urges. The first is to declare the thing impenetrable and the second, incompatible urge is to appear superior while doing it. And since I can unpack it and it isn't really difficult, to ask me to do that would be to reveal that one or both of those urges is problematic.
When that happens, or rather fails to, I understand what is and isn't at the heart of their complaint.
And notice that you spent exactly no time addressing the inconsistency in your responses.
I addressed, and have more than once now, your attempt to manufacture what isn't, in point of fact, that very thing.
lain: