THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 17

When Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story of just six words, what was his response?

Subject: Economy of Language - Six-Word Memoirs

Event:  American author, editor, and publisher Larry Smith is born, 1968.

Brevity is the soul of wit. -William Shakespeare

Could you tell a story in just six words?  One day, according to legend,  someone threw this challenge to the novelist Ernest Hemingway.  He wrote:  "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

American author and editor Larry Smith, who was born on this day in 1968, has adapted the six-word story into a new genre that he calls the “Six-Word Memoir.”  His challenge for anyone is to describe their life in EXACTLY six words.

Image by quentincompson49 from Pixabay

In 2008, Smith published a book of Six-Word Memoirs called Not Quite What I Was Planning.  The book is probably the most “crowdsourced” book in history and contains the mini-memoirs of 950 contributors.  Here are six samples:

Oldest of five. Four degrees. Broke. -Kaitline Walsh

Bad breaks discovered at high speed. -Paul Schultz

Happiness is a warm salami sandwich. -Stanley Bing

On her birthday, my life began.  -Lisa Parrack

Veni, vidi, but haven’t vici yet. -Neenakshi Nadini

Nerdy, wordy, learned to shut up.  -Caren Lissner (1)

In 2015, Smith published another book that slightly tweaked the six-word memoir.  Instead of asking writers to describe their lives in six words, he asked writers for their best piece of advice in just six words.  This book was called The Best Advice in Six Words, and it contains hundreds of golden nuggets of wisdom in the imperative form, such as this one written by Brandi Vaisely Marsey:

Dreams don’t work unless you do. (2)

Economy of language has long been a prized quality of philosophy, of science, and of writing.   In philosophy there is a long tradition of packaging wisdom in aphorisms, concise statements of truth, which are crafted to be memorable, such as Plato’s classic sound bite:  Necessity is the mother of invention.  In science, concision is highly prized in the law of parsimony known as Ockham’s razor.  It says that the simplest, most concise, explanation of a phenomenon is the best one.  In writing and rhetoric, brevity is a key principle.  William Struck, in his classic Elements of Style, proclaims that “Vigorous writing is concise.”  F.D.R. said, “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”

In his classic essay on language and thought, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell identifies unnecessary wordiness as one of the chief reasons that writers fail to think clearly enough to get their ideas across to their readers.  In addition, Orwell presents other rules for making writing more clear and cogent.  The rules are paraphrased below, each one stated in just six words:

I. Eliminate all stale figures of speech. 

II. Use short, rather than long, words.

III. If possible, cut out unnecessary words.

IV. Use active, rather than passive, voice.

V. Use everyday English instead of jargon.

VI. Above all else, say it clearly.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:   What are two of Orwell’s rules for clear writing, and how do the rules both contribute to effective writing?

Challenge -Your Commencement Address In Six Words:  Try your hand at crafting some good advice in exactly six words.  What wise advice can you give? Make every word count, and make sure to count every word:  no more or fewer than six.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

September 17, 1787:  On this day the U.S. Constitution was signed by the Founding Fathers.  Each year it is commemorated as Citizenship Day and Constitution Day.

September Seventeenth:  A univocalic is a piece of writing where the writer uses only a single vowel. Because September Seventeenth contains only the vowel 'e,' it's the perfect day to celebrate this rare but interesting writing form.  As Richard Lederer points out in his book The Word Circus, some of the longest common univocalic words use the vowel 'e':  strengthlessness, senselessness, and defenselessness.  Lederer also cites a univocalic translation of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" by Paul Hellweg from Word Ways magazine:

 

Meg kept the wee sheep,

The sheep's fleece resembled sleet;

Then wherever Meg went

The sheep went there next;

 

He went where she needed her texts,

The precedent he neglected;

The pre-teen felt deep cheer

When the sheep entered there. (4).

Sources:

1-Fershleiser, Rachel and Larry Smith (Editors).  Not Quite What I Was Planning:  Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure.  New York:  Harper Perennial, 2008.

2-Smith, Larry (Ed.). The Best Advice in Six Words.  New York:  St. Martin’s Griffin, 2015.

3-Orwell, George.  “Politics and the English Language.” The Orwell Foundation.  1946.

4-Lederer, Richard. The Word Circus. Springfield, Massachusetts, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 1998.