Wednesday, November 16, 2005

begins to add, uh, clarity

As you may know, I work for a trade publisher, and one of our lines is a series of manuals for professional electricians. The guy who writes the text is a professional electrician, but he isn't much of a writer. The classic example of his style, which I have kept all these years, I give you now:
Simply reading these words about an emergency power system that we have not seen or worked with does not sufficiently describe the importance of this type of system; but putting oneself in the position of being in the emergency room of a hospital having a severed artery sewn closed when a tornado destroys the electrical utility overhead pole-type distribution system and the room turns to blackness begins to add clarity.

Indeed it does, friend. Indeed it does.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Remember the SF book that had a chapter written from the point of view of a missle? (Sorry, I can't remember the name of the book, but you showed it to me.) Also, the missle took about three pages to find its target. Pretty slow missle.

AJM said...

... and the room turns to blackness begins to add clarity.

(Holds sides...)

That's really quite beautiful, in its way. There's a certain photocopied poetry chap book quality about it... Work at it, long enough, and it does make sense...

Course, by the time you've got that far, the patient has bled out.

Holly said...

Shara: yes, yes I do. In fact I thought about that as I was writing this, but I figure I've beaten up David Weber enough over the years.

... by the time you've got that far, the patient has bled out

Yeah, that was our reaction, too. :-)