a writing exercise
I wrote
what makes a good shower?what makes a good shower?
The standard bathtub-shower design seems like a good idea. Two in one. But the compromise at the heart of its design prevents it from being a good shower. The cost of the compromise is hidden in plain sight, difficult to notice due to its ubiquity. Allow me to shed some light on the ways that the tub compromises the shower.
We begin with the uncomfortable task of having to climb in, over a literal barrier, without any clothes to soften accidental contact. Clearing this hurdle is not merely a matter of stepping high and long because on the other side one must balance onefooted on a skinny, slippery ramp with sloping edges. It’s shockingly inhospitable ground considering its primary aim is to allow a bipedal, softskinned animal to stand barefooted in showering water and contort while applying lubricants that ooze dangerously downwards onto an already slick surface. But we’re used to this design, so we don’t notice its baffling unfriendliness.
If freed from the responsibility of doubling as a tub, a shower can focus on being a good shower. It can be easy to enter and to exit. Its standing ground, unobliged to accommodate the bare backside, can be tiled or otherwise surfaced with material that gives traction to the bare foot, even when covered in soapy water. The dimensions can be square and wide enough to allow a person to turn and easily rinse different parts of their body without having to watch their step or feel unreasonably constricted.
Good design, as they say, is invisible. A good shower demands no effort or conscious attention from its user. It lets them get clean while
their mind wanders. To achieve this, it must make it extremely easy to do all the basic things: get in, stand, wash, rinse, and get out. The tubshower hybrid most of us have at home fails this basic test.
a couple months ago and I saved four versions of the same paragraph to analyze side by side. I am reading them for the first time in a few weeks and here are my thoughts.
We begin with is a fun way to start the paragraph. It stirs my attention more than To begin.
The word showerer is too awkward to say, even mentally.
I admit that the phrase is not merely a matter of is
wordy… but not necessarily in a bad wayhow to use words
Is wordiness inherently bad? It’s bad if you want to say something in the fewest possible words to avoid wasting a reader’s time, or to avoid losing their trust, or to avoid annoying them. It’s bad if it trips up or confuses them. Avoiding wordiness can also be an aesthetic choice, like when you want to heighten the mental sensation of each individual word. In general, wordiness is bad if it causes a defect or undermines an effect you’re trying to produce.
But is wordiness itself a sin? Or is it useful sometimes? What about the rhythm that the “extra” words create? More generally, what about the sounds they create in a reader’s head?
Words are more than written symbols, they are things with their own unique shape and feel. From the memorable cover letter Robert Pirosh submitted for a copywriting job:
I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory…I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty.
But words don’t exist alone. They are forever enmeshed with other words. They appear in context of one another, borrowing and lending meaning. Parallelism for example is a technique where words accumulate to create an effect together that their individual meanings cannot. From Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech:
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
Who would accuse MLK of wordiness? Imagine pulling him aside before he stepped up to the podium to suggest he drop the eight “extra” repetitions of let freedom ring.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, the mighty mountains of New York, the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado, the curvaceous slopes of California, Stone Mountain of Georgia, Lookout Mountain of Tennessee, every hill and molehill of Mississippi, and from every mountainside.
Great, we’ve cut out the “redundancy” and the poetry along with it.
. It emphasizes that there are multiple problems at hand and it slows down the pace of the passage in a way that indicates to the reader that we are going to be looking at things in detail. Also, the phrase itself has a nice rhythm.
option 1
We begin with the uncomfortable task of having to climb in, over a literal barrier, without any clothes to soften accidental contact. And yet, clearing this hurdle is not merely a matter of stepping high and long. Because on the other side of the barrier one must balance onefooted on standing surface mutated by the tub into a skinny and smooth ramp with sloping edges. It’s shockingly inhospitable ground considering its primary aim is to allow a bipedal, softskinned animal to stand barefoot while being showered in water and to contort while applying lubricants that ooze dangerously downwards onto an already slick slope. But we’re used to it, so we don’t notice its unfriendly design.
option 2a
To begin, the showerer must step over a barrier and balance onefooted on a slippery slant. Immediately, the tub has warped the ideal shower in three ways. Firstly, it introduced a literal, physical obstacle for getting into the shower. Not a promising start. To compound on the perils of this first corruption, the tub then mutated the ideal flat ground into a skinny ramp with sloping edges. It then had the gall to forbid the use of tiles or any other higher friction material that might compensate for the hostility it has introduced to the terrain, whose primary aim, lest we forget, is to allow a bipedal, softskinned animal to stand barefoot while being showered in water and contort while applying lubricants that ooze downwards onto the standing ground. Suddenly, the tubshower is looking less like clever design and more like an ambush.
option 2b
The tub warps the ideal shower in three major ways. Firstly, it introduces a literal, physical obstacle that forces the showerer to climb, rather walk, in. Not a promising start. To compound on the inconvenience of this first corruption, the tub then mutates the ideal flat ground into a skinny ramp with sloping edges. It then has the gall to forbid the use of tiles or any other higher friction material that might compensate for the hostility it has introduced to the terrain, whose primary aim, lest we forget, is to allow a bipedal, softskinned animal to stand barefoot while being showered in water and contort while applying lubricants that ooze downwards onto the standing ground. From this perspective, the tubshower looks less like clever design and more like an ambush.
option 2c
The tub warps the ideal shower in three major ways. Firstly, it introduces a literal, physical obstacle that forces the showerer to climb in. Not a promising start. Compounding on this first inconvenience, the tub then mutates the ideal flat ground into a skinny ramp with sloping edges. But it doesn’t stop there. It then has the gall to forbid the use of tiles or any other grippy material that would at least allow the showerer to get some traction with the sole of their foot when stepping into this unexpectedly hostile terrain, whose primary aim, lest we forget, is to allow a bipedal, softskinned animal to stand barefoot while being showered in water and contort while applying lubricants that ooze downwards onto the standing ground. From this perspective, the tubshower looks less like clever design and more like an ambush.