Metaphoria Digitalus

It is time to eliminate these words, ‘former’ and ‘latter’ from academic writing. From all writing, in fact. The cognitive load of trying to figure out the referents for these words is overwhelming. One must:

1. Remember what they mean. Latter refers to the second phrase in a conjunction, the inner loop of the recursive sequence. Former refers to the first phrase in a conjunction, the outer loop of the recursive sequence. Or did I get that reversed? I don’t know!
2. Connect the ‘former’ and ‘latter’ words to the phrases and store the associations in short term memory.
3. Read the sentence again, inserting the referents into the sentence where ‘former’ and ‘latter’ appear.

Here’s the simple solution. Just use the phrases again! Refer to the referents directly with the words that describe them. ‘Former’ and ‘latter’ are pretentious and confusing. Be concise! Be clear!

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From: Jesse
To: The world

Stop making me sign up for your rink-a-dink service with another user name and password just so I can leave a comment on someone’s post. I’m not going to participate if I need to give you my mother’s maiden name and my zip code!

Enough is enough with the obligatory accounts!

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