[quote=dogzapper Any writer, indeed any editor, who hides behind words that the common man does not know, or even pronounce, disqualifies himself from our adulation.
Indeed, there are those on every sporting web site, the 24HCF, who are posers. Big words, long words, do not proved education and learning, they simply show that some hide behind words.
Yeah, wasn't it great to read a few words of Allen Day's? I truly miss Allen.
God Bless You Allen DAy,
Steve
I agree where DZ's comment about writers is concerned, I consider Elmer Keith to be THE American gun writer, due to his immense practical knowledge of guns and game, based on a lifetime as an active outdoorsman and Elmer certainly did not use arcane or polysyllabic words to try to impress his readers.
While Elmer did not kill the ...truckloads... of animals that so many current scribes boast of in their repetitive articles, he actually hunted on his own and on public land rather than in fenced enclosures in foreign lands. Elmer, was impressive enough to anyone with real bush experience and did not need to enhance his prestige with pretense.
I do not totally concur with my friend, Steve, concerning appropriate words as I tend to consider these a "learning experience", IF, the writer KNOWS correct usage and employs them in a manner which augments the material he is presenting.
Clay Harvey, who impressed me as an azzhole with the first article of his I read (and one of the last, as well), often used katachrestic syntax as a method of enhancing his mediocre journalistic abilities. This, is a sophomoric trick that most writers outgrow by age 25 or so and his continual self indulgence in such antics merely demonstrated how little real talent he possessed.
Poseurs are everywhere in life and why would gun forums be any different?
I also miss and was fond of Allen Day and he certainly was NOT one. I will read Keith, his protege, Bob Hagel, Phil Shoemaker, Finn Aagard, Brian Pearce, and that young fella, John Barsness and a few others and find most contemporary gun mags.-writing boring, imitative and repetitive.
Clay Harvey, was a dork and we are better off without his presence in the gun sports.
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