Why You Bore Me

You don't get to the point.

See that? I handed you the punchline. Whereas you, you meandering peasant, open with wandering prolegomena and half-baked musings without semblance of cogent thought.

Take this moment to apply the following exercise to the last thing you've written so that we may quantify how much you bore me.

Activity of the day: Calculate your Lead-in Logorrhea Index (LLI)

Identify the clause that contains the punchline and count the words in that clause. Call this x. Now, count every word (including parentheticals and numerical statistics) leading up to that clause. Call this y.

If x is less than 10, the LLI is:

y / (10 - x)

If x is 10 or greater, the LLI is:

(y + 10) * (x - 8)

Punchlines greater than ten words incur a hefty penalty.

If you cannot identify the punchline, your score is ∞.
A perfect score is zero-- which is precisely how much you should publish.

Stop Blogging.