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Edited on Fri Jun-04-04 04:15 PM by markses
at a major research university (in another, grad-schoolish life), I can assure everybody that both "myriad" and "plethora" are typically used by a very special class of writer. The characteristics of the class are as follows:
a) These writers were told (falsely, it is important to note) that they were "good writers" by their high school English teachers; they therefore deserve an "A" at the outset of the class, since their inflated estimation of their writing abilities at a lower level of instruction indicates the final grade that they should inherit as a birthright at the more advanced level, if you follow the logic of this move....(Be aware that 1) you'll be informed of this logic during office hours after each of their first three papers are returned with grades of B- or less and 2) as these conferences progress, the class of those who have told the writer that he or she is a "good writer" will expand from the high school English teacher to the universal "everybody," including the student's current roommate, an apparent authority on the subject).
b) These writers are victims of high school English teachers who - from all appearances - consider the quantity of thesaurus references the sole criterion for judging writing; their writing is therefore good if, instead of stating "I ate a power bar before I went to the gym," it states, rather, "I hungrily consumed a oblong food source designed for the repletion and invigoration of my every cell just prior to my thrice-weekly visit to the place of bodily exercise." (We will subsequently, of course, learn that they've "accomplished" a "plethora of repetitious liftings of weight through the strenuous usage of the pectoral muscles"...).
c) These writers have a great deal of promise, and can even become great writers when they stop trying to sound smart and start thinking in terms of their purpose, their audience, their subject matter, and the situation that calls on them to write. They must first be disabused of the laughable notion that using "myriad" or "plethora" in a sentence makes you sound smart, rather than severely hampering the effectiveness of your prose and your credibility as a writer in most situations.
This class of writers is as old as training in writing itself, as we learn from the derision Hermagoras, Cicero, Quinitilian and countless others heap upon what they call the "frigid" style (using a grand style for a less-than-grand subject matter and occasion). I'll also assure you that anyone using either "myriad" or "plethora" in any paper in any of my classes was required to write me a five-hundred word explanation for why it is the most appropriate word to use in that particular situation. Grease one. ;-)
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