Faith as the Dialectic Expression of Love

There's a difference between using complicated wording because it's necessary and using complicated wording for the sake of doing so.

The following is a list of things that anyone online should know before writing a post or comment anywhere:

1) Using a thesaurus to switch out simple words for more complex ones is a pretty terrible idea if you yourself don't know the exact meaning of those complex words. Just because one word is synonymous with another does not mean that those words mean exactly the same thing. Oftentimes the more complex word is only appropriate in a specific context or a different context.

2) "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." ~Albert Einstein

Even if we assume that you didn't just use a thesaurus to get rid of words with too few syllables, it still doesn't come across looking so great. An inability to describe a concept using simple language very often indicates a lack of understanding of that concept. If you truly want someone to understand and respond to your post, then it should be written as simply as possible so that more people get what you're trying to say.

3) It is incredibly, almost indescribably, obvious when someone is using a thesaurus to bolster their language. It might not seem like that's the case to the person making the comment, but that's probably because they don't see how ridiculous the wording looks in the given context. It often reads like someone was given a dictionary and told that all synonyms mean exactly the same thing. It comes across as alien at best, and embarrassingly nonsensical at worst.

If one does not know all of the words they're using, they might think that their post comes across as sounding very smart and/or impressive. It does not. Comments that use a thesaurus in such a fashion tend to come across as word salad.


I bring this up because, despite the impressive effort you put into your post, it doesn't read very well. If one doesn't know what many of those words mean, then they wouldn't understand the post, but they might be impressed by it. Unfortunately, if one does know what many of those words mean, then they still wouldn't understand it, but they also wouldn't be impressed.

I'm not trying to be demeaning or rude; everything I've written is valuable information and anyone that sees this comment can and should utilize it. However, it's important to understand that you're unlikely to get many responses related to the actual content of your post because it's just not clear enough for someone to be able to formulate a meaningful response.

/r/DebateReligion Thread