Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

I’ve adopted this limit on how long of messages I will read, and it is not
that limited. I just counted the number of lines of type on a ‘screen’ and
it came to 34 lines at an average of about 10 words a line, or in the old
typewriter days, three screens come to about the same of two single spaced
typewritten pages using 12 point courier, about 1000 words. That’s more than
enough to ask most questions with background to say why for the question. In
fact, it is rare that a message on this list goes beyond a screen and a
half, about one typewritten page.

If you think you are wordy, try typing your message in a word processing
program, 12 point courier, single spaced, and see how often you go beyond
one page. Almost never, right?

Excessive wordiness does not improve the probability of getting it right,
but it is inconsiderate to other members of the list, right?

Karl W. Randolph.

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 6:59 PM, Kelwin Wylie <hebrew AT wylie.ca> wrote:

> Karl,
>
> "two or three screens" is very imprecise.  Could you please be more
> specific about what you mean by "screen"?  How many lines are in your
> "screen"?  At the moment I am reading my messages in a window in my mail
> program which is 23 lines high.  So your 3 screen limit would be 69
> lines.  But I could open up the message to the full height allowed with
> my current resolution which would be 56 lines for a 3 screen length of 168.
>
> There is a huge difference between a 69 line message and a 168 line
> message.
>
> So, could you please specify your size limit in a more precise and
> meaningful manner?  I would suggest a limit specified in number of lines.
>
> And to be more precise, we should also know the width of the window in
> your mail program.  Since many mail programs (possibily including yours)
> automatically wrap long lines, if we send you a message with lines
> longer than your mailer is configured for and if your mailer wraps
> lines, we could inadvertantly send you a message which is longer than
> your chosen line limit and thus risk having you not read a message that
> we spent a significant amount of time writing.
>
> Kelwin Wylie
>
>