ecology

Another point of style suggesting the discourse of a closed community is the trend toward extreme condensation of expression -- the proliferating acronyms in the BLM's EISs, for example. The problem with amassing acronyms is that not only do they cause the reader unused to government jargon the inconvenience of constant page turning to locate original references or lists of abbreviations, but they also increase the density of information that must be absorbed in a short space. Largely because of this density, most EISs intimidate the average reader. The authors of the "Standards of Style and Usage" section of the Editorial Management Handbook, perhaps unwittingly, encourage such style. Term paper writing is not easy, but our Term paper is your solution to writing concerns! "The economical use of words is stressed in the new CEQ Regulations," the manual reads, without indicating in the immediate context what the CEQ is, "and every review looks for ways to shorten the text without sacrificing clarity and meaning". This passage, very typically, gives advice without examples or methods by which to achieve the goals it sets. Though it does not give examples, however, it certainly sets them in its own use of acronyms. In addition to risking saturation of the reader's capacity for absorbing information by using great numbers of acronyms, the authors also favor high-density graphics like long, multicolumned tables with nested categories and multiple footnotes, elaborate technical mapping, and detailed photographs. High-density graphics are powerful summarizing tools, highly efficient in their ability to display large amounts of comparative data in very little space. They are, for these reasons, potentially valuable instruments for decision making. But several commentators on graphics warn that such graphics, like the acronyms, can lead quickly to information overload. The systems of management by which EISs are produced seem to prefer high-density efficiency or stylistic "economy" to rhetorical effectiveness. This preference is quite explicit in the "Standards" section of the manual: "Every word and every revision in an EIS, in effect, costs money, and this should be the prime consideration in EIS writing. The EISs therefore compile information economically without communicating it effectively. An ordinary reader is quickly saturated and easily frustrated by the resulting prose.