This may be true of arts, but it's not true of science.
That would be why I was talking about the arts.
"this" is contentless. It is chaff. Noise. Mental overhead. It adds nothing
It's easy to see that this isn't always true. The "This" in elliotcarlson's original comment - for which he was reamed out and even felt obliged to ream himself out - wasn't contentless at all. Suppose instead he had written: "Here is the portion of the article that I found particularly significant." Nobody would have complained. Yet that would have been 10x as wordy and less idiomatic to boot. I knew what he meant when I read that comment and so, I bet, did nearly everyone else.
(I hope this subthread isn't too contentless. It's certainly offtopic. But language is intrinsically interesting, so I don't feel too bad adding to it.)
That would be why I was talking about the arts.
"this" is contentless. It is chaff. Noise. Mental overhead. It adds nothing
It's easy to see that this isn't always true. The "This" in elliotcarlson's original comment - for which he was reamed out and even felt obliged to ream himself out - wasn't contentless at all. Suppose instead he had written: "Here is the portion of the article that I found particularly significant." Nobody would have complained. Yet that would have been 10x as wordy and less idiomatic to boot. I knew what he meant when I read that comment and so, I bet, did nearly everyone else.
(I hope this subthread isn't too contentless. It's certainly offtopic. But language is intrinsically interesting, so I don't feel too bad adding to it.)