Ten Word Answers

Sept. 2022

This month we asked our writers to reflect upon the tend today
of short answers to complex questions

33 characters

Joseph Carlson
MSMU Class of 2025

As of 2018, the average tweet was 33 characters long. The primary problem with the 30-character message is that it is very difficult to say anything worth saying in 30 characters. For reference, the first sentence of this article is 53 characters in total.

Communication can be long or short, so long as one’s audience understands what they are meant to. The question becomes, "Who is the audience for in most tweets"? It is different every time, but very seldom is a tweet intended to convince someone with whom one disagrees. Short messages are best suited for practical use, but on a platform that is meant to connect us to everyone else in authentic discourse, there is nothing more hindering than short messages.

If the goal of Twitter is communication, then Twitter is pretty lousy at its job. There is a pattern to every convincing argument, each requiring more than 33 characters, where premises lead to conclusions. Each sentence serves a purpose, not only relaying information but stringing it all together so that one conclusion leads logically to the next. This is how one communicates to a world that cannot read his or her mind. We’ve grown accustomed to reading each other's minds, because in order for one to send a tweet with 33 characters and relay any kind of information at all, we rely on social conventions to fill in the gaps for the audience. Slogans, glittering generalizations, signaling, innuendo; these are how we understand each other. There is no room for nuance. Rather, one person says something that signals to one group of people that he or she agrees with them, and the other group understands that they are unwelcome. Those caught in the middle are battered with judgments from whichever side is louder, and there is not a single means of garnering a deeper understanding for anyone else. Every now and then someone can say something meaningful within a character limit, but without context, and with the previously mentioned pattern of thinking, it is very hard to get converts. After all, it is pretty likely that the person reading your message only wants to convert you too. When we are regularly filling in the gaps of how we ought to think of someone based on their 33 characters, it becomes difficult to stop judging.

It is pretty easy to tell that Twitter sows division and is not very good at its job of "fostering open discourse." The habit of perpetually trying to most effectively signal to one’s followers that he is virtuous, rather than simply trying to reveal the truth, makes us gradually forget how to think. The written page is a mirror for your mind. As when you alter your picture in a mirror you alter your true appearance, how we write will change how we think. In this way, writing is not simply intended for an audience, but rather for self-maintenance and growth.

Writing one’s thoughts down makes them a lot clearer, or can expose the holes in reasoning which are allowed to persist when they are simply rattling around in our heads. If you are ever left with a moral dilemma, a question of prudence, or a difficult experience you seek to cope with, write down your thought process. Immorality can only persist with the aid of our own selfish rationalizations, and if the keyboard warriors really wanted virtuous change, they would enact it in the only place they could be certain that they can affect—namely, themselves.

One of the most effective methods in discerning questions of prudence is imagining that one is speaking with someone else who happens to have the exact issue he has. Writing down one’s reasoning for both sides of the choice will help to keep one’s emotions in check, which would more easily mobilize against reason otherwise. When we undergo trauma, one of the first steps we take is to disassociate ourselves from it. While this is helpful and sometimes necessary in the moment, you end up with a part of yourself left in that memory and the rest of you moving on without him. Begin to slowly cease disassociating yourself from the traumatic memory. No one can live with two minds. Writing down the event, how it feels, and what you were thinking will work to reunify the part of your soul which was harmed.

These are some of the things which writing is actually useful for: clarifying your thoughts, and effectively communicating to others. You can say something well in an essay that you cannot say impromptu. Twitter often jumbles our thoughts and is a poor means of communicating. This, in one way or another, applies to most social media.

As with many parts of life, I am sure there is a way to use Twitter and not have these negative effects. We must, however, acknowledge that social media is designed to chemically suck you in and give you a hit of dopamine, the hormone responsible for making you feel like you’ve accomplished something, for every swipe. In many ways, therefore, it is more like alcohol than writing anything constructive. Just like how your liver can handle a drink an hour, you can handle social media in moderation. Very quickly, however, does this turn into abuse for a generation with an addictive personality. Every sip (or gulp) is slowly rewiring how you think so that you are on the lookout for anything indicative of something you should disapprove of. It eventually teaches you to think, and therefore speak, like you're saying something on a social media post. In fact, for those who try and remain functioning in the real world after routine social media abuse, we essentially end up dissociating ourselves from the experience because such is at enmity with constructive discourse. The only way to function on social media is to let truth and the real world form our posts, and to, for the most part, not let social media form our worldview.

Read other articles by Joseph Carlson

The economy of words

Claire Doll
MSMU Class of 2024

I love words.

I love novels, I love stories, I love letters and notes and the mere beauty of the written word. I have journals dating back to my freshman year of high school, filled cover-to-cover with detailed entries of my days, emotions, dreams, and wishes. As an English education major, I am constantly reading something, and sometimes I feel that I will never read enough. That there are so many words out there, jumbled together to create different meanings. That no amount of words will truly convey how a human can feel, no matter how complex and articulate we make them out to be.

Of course, I am wrong.

In fact, I am way, way off.

In high school, I took advanced creative writing all four years, and I instantly fell in love with storytelling and plots and imagery. I never realized how much you could do with words, and this amazed me. Yet, I also never realized how much you could do with so few words. How you could write just a handful on a page, yet evoke unreachable and unexpected emotions. How this type of writing—which I like to refer to as poetry—is powerful and beautiful, allowing a writer to transcend beyond the standards of the English language to define the abstract in a unique and meaningful way.

My high school creative writing teacher once told me: "Poetry is the economy of words." That is, for one to write poetry, the poet must consider each word closely. What image, if any, does the word help depict? Does the word contribute to the poem’s rhythm and musical value? Could the poem survive without this word—would it still hold the same meaning?

This is because poetry, unlike prose, delivers an emotional experience through the artistic, individual choices one makes regarding language. A novelist might take 80,000 words to develop a plot and characters, but a poet takes only a handful to both paint an image and evoke an emotional experience. So, poetry works like an economy. Writers must determine what they would like to get out of the poem, therefore carefully managing their resources—in this case, words—to achieve their meaning.

In fact, poetry does something even greater, in my opinion. Imagine any poem: lines and stanzas, broken apart by rhythm and structure. On paper, a poem is also meant to be visually appealing to the reader. That is, the poet must use the blank, white space surrounding the words to his or her advantage. The poet must balance words with emptiness to show the readers just how important and carefully chosen his or her words are.

Because of its beauty and its inevitable effect on humans, poetry has been here for centuries. Poems have been written to elicit emotional reactions, to cater to a certain audience, and to even comment on historical events and social issues.

Does this sound familiar?

Perhaps not. After all, what other form of communication delivers a message to a targeted audience by using an economy of words and language?

While social media is not poetry, the two have many similarities. How many times have you struggled to write a tweet or an Instagram caption, knowing you had a limited number of characters? Did you have to rethink which words to use, keeping in mind your audience and overall message? If so—which plenty of us have—you may have been thinking like a poet.

I have never heard someone bash poetry for being incapable of "discussing complex things at length," but I have certainly heard this said for social media. And again, although the two forms of communication are in no way identical, they both require an economy of words. They require someone to understand the deep meaning a single word can evoke, and they demand that writers use limited language to convey so much.

This kind of writing has grown in popularity. While poetry is originally defined as "the economy of words," this logic is especially significant in an age where instantaneous communication is necessary. Where ideas and thoughts can be voiced in seconds, for thousands of people to read—and no sane person wants to read a 1,000-word Instagram caption.

Meaning is not lost when we set a word count. If anything, meaning is prioritized. It is unrealistic to think that writing surrenders its beauty when given a limit. Beauty is found in the writer’s ability to take just even ten words and arrange them in such a way that it impacts an entire population of people. Something that takes thirty seconds to read may have taken hours to write; this truth is apparent in both poetry and social media, among other forms of communication. And although 1,000 words might allow a writer to dive into the deep complexities of their topic, 75 words on the same topic forces the writer to consider the effect of their carefully chosen language, which ultimately hits harder. After all, less is more, and words have done so much for us. It is only fair that we take the time to isolate them and consider their meanings, their impacts, and their full potentials.

I love words. I love writing, and I certainly feel thankful and overjoyed to write 1,000-word articles for the Emmitsburg News-Journal each month; this allows me to write and explain more, and if you know me, I love doing those things. But I also love poetry, and I love writing Instagram captions, and I love how words can mean so much by using so little. I love how there are other things to consider besides the number of words, such as the surrounding empty space, the rhythm of language, and the images painted by words, and I love how writing then becomes a mosaic, using different pieces and elements to create art.

After all, words strive to make us feel something. So as long as words can make me cry, laugh, or even just smile, then I don’t care how many of them I read.

Read other articles by Claire Doll

A thousand-word bridge

McKenna Snow
MSMU Class of 2023

As I write this, the first week of classes has gone underway. I am the RA for the Honors Freshmen girls, and I have introduced myself probably more than seventy times in the last week. I have been going to the start-of-the-semester events, such as ones hosted by Campus Ministry and Residence Life in an effort to meet new students and see old friends. I have thoroughly enjoyed these events, and even just the short conversations I’ve had with the residents on my hall. I am striving to get to know them, and they seem (mostly) enthusiastic about getting to know me.

Of all the things I reflect on after speaking with someone I’ve never met, something particular in light of our prompt this month sticks out to me. In my conversations with the many wonderful freshmen and parents I have met, it is not enough to ask, "What is your name?" and then to say, "Welcome to the Mount!" and then to move on to the next new person.

What really matters to people in conversation, whether they are new to an environment or very familiar, is when others invest time in them. Short, small-talk style conversations are good and polite, but genuine interest in the other person goes much farther than many people think.

I have started to get to know the personalities of the girls on my hall. I am learning about where they are from, and what they are interested in studying, and more.

I could not do this if all I ever said was hello, and, "have a great day." Wishing someone well is always kind, but it is not quite the same as stopping what you are doing to stand and chat with them. It goes a long way.

But, words can be quite tiring. Speaking takes a lot of effort. Holding eye contact, following the words the other person speaks aloud and even silently—these things take skill. Just as authors must practice writing well so it is easy to read, follow, and understand, so too should all people practice speaking with one another in extended conversation, so we can understand each other better. If reading and writing take practice to do it well and to get the full experience and understanding out of it, so must conversation. It is a different form of expression from reading and writing, however, because much more immediately is it a two-way street. You speak words, and the other person hears them and responds. Or, if you’ve ever said something to someone and they were not listening, and their response reflects that, you immediately can tell. And it can be hurtful. There is something on that bridge you both were crossing linguistically that went wrong—you are all of a sudden not on the same page. How can you get to know the other person, or how could the other person get to know you, if you hardly listen to each other?

If all you know of the other person is their name, and that their day is going "well," and then you both move on with your day, very little has been accomplished. You at least acknowledge each other’s presence—even that is a lost art in and of itself because we are often too busy looking down at screens while we walk various places—so that is a start. But you really just stay at the starting line if you never go any further.

You might think, so what? I don’t want to hear the life story of my coworker as I just try to get my morning coffee. That is fair enough. You don’t have to know everyone’s stories. But I argue that you should at least make the effort to engage in the art of extended conversation a good amount of the time. Otherwise, you are missing out. Carry on with this sad tradition of mediocre politeness and you don’t get very far. You hardly know your coworkers. You know very little about the person who works at the register every time you go grocery shopping. You do not know your neighbor, mailman, or the parent who also took her child to the local playground. For a number of reasons, we are too worried about making it weird if we try to talk to one another longer than a hello and a goodbye and an awkward smile to show that we see the other person.

I say, embrace the awkward. Go for the long conversation. Engage in earnest and intentional conversation with the other. You will learn much more about the many neighbors God has put on earth around you, and broaden your friendships, networks, and capacity for love. That is what words are all about, correct? Words function to convey things about ourselves, to bridge the individual islands of ourselves across to the other, and to form relationships—and not just human relationships, but relationships between varying ideas, opposing viewpoints, hopes, dreams, and even shared disappointments. Realizing that you are not the only one in the world who has experienced what you have can be tremendously encouraging.

All this is to say that I am a big fan of more words, rather than fewer words. Reading a tweet is not enough to know everything you need to about the person who tweeted it. A news headline is hardly enough to understand a whole political side, current issue, or piece of history. You must engage in the conversation about difficult topics that is only found in the pages of library books, robust and wordy articles, and ongoing dialect from each side. Short captions are not enough for us to know or truly understand one another. If we only read and publish news headlines and tweets to communicate with one another, we have hardly left the starting line. We hardly know where we stand on current issues, and on our understandings of ourselves, when a few slogans, buzzwords and one-liners is all we communicate with. We must reclaim the lost art of extended conversation with one another, to truly be able to discuss with great care the topics that matter most: you, me, and all the possible bridges between us, that lots of words can help us build.

Read other articles by McKenna Snow

Limitations

Emmy Jansen
MSMU Class of 2022

Humans do not do well with limitations. This is an observation hard-spun over twenty-one years of life, but one I think you’d corroborate. We don’t like to be told what we should or shouldn’t, can or can’t do. When a middle school teacher assigns a three to five page paper, one student will struggle to cut it down to six while the person next to them won’t have enough words to fill two. This is not a habit we grow out of either. My freshman roommate always wrote way beyond the supposed maximum, while I’d wrack my brain for filler just to meet the minimum.

The thing that stands out to me the most from that memory is that we would both receive an A, even though we wrote and thought completely differently. Because it wasn’t about how much or how little either of us said, it was about the content. Why use 100 words when I can use 10? Why use 10 words when I can use 100? You can view the issue from both directions, but at the heart of it is the idea that we should place any sort of limit on words at all. I don’t think we should.

Communication itself is what is central to this. In both written and verbal formats, the fact that we have something to say in the first place takes precedence. The human ability to communicate—to both talk and to listen—is our most important, and misused, skill.

This fact has only become more relevant to me lately. I just started a new job, and as most recent graduates are finding, we’re constantly being asked, "Where did you go? What did you major in?" Readers know that I’m an English student at heart, but I also majored in Conflict, Peace, and Social Justice, which is a very broad, hard-to-explain course of study. But every time I share this with a new coworker, I am greeted with the same response: "Oh, we could really use your help!" While I’m beyond glad to mediate conflict and help find resolutions, I struggle to understand how these industry experts, people who have worked the same job longer than I have been alive, have not put the pieces together themselves: communication breeds conflict. And conflict breeds more miscommunication.

And communication is more than just talking. The first, and most important step, is to listen. Too often we let people talk but spend their minutes of speech thinking about what our response will be. I believe this translates over to reading, especially opinionated pieces. How many of you are reading these articles only thinking about how you would have answered instead? While we should spend more time talking with each other, we should also spend more time listening. So, to answer the question of if we’re better off with social media or not, I would counter that regardless of what we have, we need to bring community and communication back to the center. Which platform creates the most fruitful conversations? What mode causes you to listen better and think more deeply?

And yet, it is more than just content. With each individual, there comes a certain style. Readers may not know that many Four Years at the Mount writers are also secret creative writing enthusiasts who scribble poems and novel ideas in between our class notes. But that doesn’t make us the same. Claire and I have taken many creative writing classes together and while we enjoy the same topics and formats, our writing styles vary greatly. She has a true talent for weaving together beautiful sentences that are chock full of imagery and description, planting you in the exact scene she pictures in her head. While her sentences are often longer, there is not a single word you can remove during the editing process. Each syllable is crucial to the effect of the entire phrase and to cut anything would be to change the identity of what Claire has written. I do not have that same knack for bountiful description. My sentences leave less to the imagination and are often much choppier and more blunt than Claire’s. It’s not to say that either one of us is a better writer, but we write about different things and therefore say them in different ways. While Claire’s exposition would require picturesque details in paragraph form, I would donate a sentence or two. Accordingly, word count, whether a goal to reach or a limit to stay under, should discriminate for the content and style. Claire needs fifty words where maybe I need twenty, and I think that’s exactly how it should be. Because they aren’t just fifty words: Claire has put something of herself in them, and that’s what makes them worth reading in the first place.

If these articles were just a thousand words on a page, you wouldn’t want to pick up the paper. But it’s because you have a desire to know the inner mind of young adults today, to hear perspectives about issues you may have barely considered, that you wait for this publication every month. You want to listen. It’s the same reason why my loquacious roommate and I would get the same score on papers that seem alien to each other. While less is more for me, to put that boundary onto Claire would be to put my words into her mouth. They would become only words at the end of the day.

I have loved my time at the Emmitsburg News-Journal for giving me the space to share my words on issues both close to my heart and those that have never once crossed my mind. Some months, I think I’ve written garbage that is barely publishable just to fill enough space on the page. Other months, I know I could’ve written a whole book. So even as I try to tell you I tend to write less, that’s not always the case. Because humans don’t do well with limitations. This is why Hemingway is famous for his novels and his six-word stories. This time I chose 100 words, next time I think I’ll choose 10. The important thing is to talk—and listen—when things really matter.

Read other articles by Emmy Jansen

Read Past Editions of Four Years at the Mount