Luminiferous Æther

Recently the Catholic Church declared that the seven deadly sins needed updating. The old sins (for those of us who have not seen se7en) are:

• Lust
• Gluttony
• Avarice
• Sloth
• Wrath
• Envy
• Pride

The church’s new seven deadly sins are:

• Environmental pollution
• Genetic manipulation
• Accumulating excessive wealth
• Inflicting poverty
• Drug trafficking and consumption
• Morally debatable experiments
• Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

Much has already been written about the necessity of new sins — I will not discuss that here. I want to look at a different issue the new sins raise: poor writing.

The old sins form a punchy, catchy and easy-to-remember list. The new list is limp and ineffective. Why is that?

The book most universally renowned as a guide for good writing is The Elements of Style by Strunk & White. Lets look at some of the basic rules these men suggest and see how they apply to the seven deadly sins.

‘Omit Needless Words’

Strunk & White suggest omitting all words that are not absolutely necessary. From the book:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Each of the original seven deadly sins is a single word in length — you can’t get shorter than that. In contrast, the shortest of the new sins is two words, and the longest is seven. A single new sin is as long as the original list.

While ‘Morally debatable experiments’ might be hard to express in a more concise way, ‘Accumulating excessive wealth’ already has a single word meaning exactly that: avarice.

‘Use short anglo-saxon words’

The punch of the old sins comes from their brevity. A preacher can hammer his fist on the pulpit as he declairs each one. More than half of the old sins are a single syllable in length, with only three, Envy, Avarice and Gluttony longer.

The new list is cumbersome. The shortest sin is eight syllables to say and the longest is fifteen. If it takes fifteen syllables to explain a religious sin, you aren’t going to convert the masses any time soon.

‘Use definite, specific, concrete language’ and ‘Be clear’

The old sins are easy to visualize. Say lust, and it’s impossible not to think of your sexual weakness. This concreteness combined with the above mentioned brevity allows the old seven deadly sins to work their way into the popular culture.

The new sins are vague. Drug consumption? Which drugs — cocaine or coffee? Violating fundamental human rights? What are those? Is it OK to violate non-fundamental rights? What about animal rights? Rather than quickly conveying an idea, two of the new sins require the consultation of further lists for clarification.

In short, the new sins are a floppy, weak expression of what could have been a good idea. I suggest the pope put some style guides on the reading list of his underlings before trying something like this again.

Improve your own writing, [click here to buy ‘The Elements of Style’ by William Strunk and E. B. White]

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The new seven deadly sins brought to my attention via Boing Boing

Header photograph by frenkieb