KISS - Keep It Short and Simple?

Abstract

“An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech - not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary - six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam - that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens with pens; finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it - after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about” [1].