Long-windedness is a quality that I do not restrict to my e-mail messages.
Rather, it receives the greatest expression in e-mail, because it is in this format that I can most readily overcome impediments presented by most other media. At least this is true of other means of communicating that occur in real time, and particularly in person, with other individuals within earshot.
In short, who wants to listen to a windbag? As I am always a windbag, I am often not listened to.
With e-mail, I can be equally verbose, but the victims, that is, the audience, is largely disobliged from paying very much more attention than they otherwise might if I were speaking to them around a dinner table.
Let me tell you what often happens in the latter instance. Conversation is lively, filled with bon mots, badinage, witticisms, and most of the rest of the time with matter of the same insanely banal, localized and usually of a provincial interest (even when occurring in the urban milieu), that is, it’s conversation of little quality when measured in terms of wit or wisdom. I will attempt from time to time to contribute my share of the information, opinions, and diatribes to be communicated. Often as not, even when answering a direct question, I find myself with a truncated sentence, the end of which dangles from my lips, in my mouth, and that the train of conversation has left for another station.
Boring also. Did I mention that?
by