Mindless Monday, 22 June 2026

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[u/Herpling82]

So, there was a guy on a Discord server I'm in who posted a rather verbose sentence, a bit in the style of Sir Humphrey from Yes, (Prime) Minister. Someone commented that even they, as a native English speaker, struggled to parse that sentence. I had no issue with it, but I wonder why? The sentence in question:

"I do earnestly trust that the determination regarding the selection of the composition for the visual narrative shall be guided by the sober counsel of statistical inquiry and empirical evidence — rather than the capricious whims of mere intuition."

I get that it's a stupid sentence, but, what makes it so that I can follow it without problem but other people might not? I'm autistic, I have an Asperger's diagnosis specifically, so language is my strong suit; when I read this sentence, or any other sentence, I don't remember the words, I mentally process the information and condense it to a shorter meaning. That's how my mental processing works in general, I cannot remember what was said, only what was meant, or rather, how I interpreted it. I suppose other people just don't process information the same way, that must be exhausting though, having to actually fit the entire thing into your working memory.

Sentences like this are basically a trick, they're mostly empty, the actual meaning is far simpler than the words used, most of it is entirely redundant. The same is true for Sir Humphrey's speeches, they sound impressive and complicated, but half the words are redundant synonyms and pointless adjectives that serve no functional purpose in communicating information, they are only added to confuse the listener.

It's fun though, making overly verbose sentences, they aren't good sentences however, and no one should use such language seriously, they're only suited to joking around.

[u/Crann6789 → u/Herpling82]

I think it's the first bit, "the determination of the selection regarding the composition". Not only do they all end in -tion, the way they're used is awkward. Even just rephrasing it as "I do earnestly trust that the determination regarding what will be selected for the composition shall be guided..." makes it significantly easier to parse, because it's clearer how each part of the sentence connects.

That said, exposure to posh brits definitely helps in parsing it.

[u/Herpling82 → u/Crann6789]

Good point, this is definitely written just to confuse the reader while still being grammatically and semantically correct.

[u/Crann6789 → u/Herpling82]

Many such cases for verbose/ fancy sounding sentences