Hard Sentences
Hard sentences are good because
they cause our intuition to falter.
Daniel Kahnemann divides our mental
processing into ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’; System 1 is that intuitive aspect of
our thinking that allows you to read the phrase ‘nut sack’ and instantaneously
conjure up a whole series of images, associated words and emotional responses.
System 2 is the more rational, conscious part of you that stops you from blurting
it out at the planetarium, or all the time.
Easy sentences don’t tax System 2 –
we experience ‘cognitive ease’ and System 1 un-reflexively assimilates the
data. If a menu is written in a clear font, we’re more likely to make a more
intuitive judgement than if we experience even a slightly jarring discomfort
upon reading. In the latter case, the cognitive ease is disrupted and System 2
steps in to sort it out. Rational factors like price and calorie content will
hold more sway. Meaning, like a font, can also be clear or obscure.
A hard sentence is one that is
dense. A sentence with difficult words in it is not difficult to someone who
knows the words but downright unintelligible to someone who doesn’t. A dense sentence, on the other hand, is
always hard to read. A quick scan doesn’t deliver anything. Stop, read it
again, slower.
We are forced to unpack the
sentence, engage in a little dialectical effort, break it down and build it
back up. When we do build it back up, we consciously reconstruct the process of
sentence-forming that the writer engaged in when she wrote it. We replicate
their effort. The sentence not only communicates information, it communicates
understanding.
Painters have often talked about
slowing the eye down; they want us to look at the painting for as long as they
looked at it while making it. Hard sentences slow the mind down and make us
think about it for as long as the author took to write it.
