There are many reasons my byline is not likely to ever grace a page in The New Yorker. But in the interest of word count, this post will focus on just one.

You see, I’ve been admonishing myself for publishing a 654-word post last week. “Too long!” says my inner critic. “No one has time for more than 450. Keep it simple.”

And then today, Mark O’Connell’s commentary in The New Yorker, It’s Comments All the Way Down, caught my eye. Now I wouldn’t have shared the link if it wasn’t a good read. If you have 20 minutes of full concentration to spare, I encourage you to check it out.

Know, however, that in addition to weighing in at a hefty 1,721 words, many of those are great big grownup words strung together in gigantic, uber-mature sentences. I pulled some excerpts below for you to pretend to read:

…his grandly narcissistic third-person narrative voice, describes how he overcame his initial heartsick uncertainty as to whether he had any statement to offer the world on the death of Ernest Hemingway…

…reading these sentences now, I find myself superimposing them onto the indistinct image of a hoard of commenters and thinking of how the culture has come to accommodate, if not to cherish, so many millions of miniature Mailers…

…there are various descriptions of specific instances of mass trolling—the Donglegate affair, for instance, and the perfect storm of nerd misogyny around Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” project—but not nearly as much analysis of what these new forms and failures of communication might mean on a cultural level. Reagle too often seems happy to wrap up his discussion of a given topic with a tepid valedictory pronouncement.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m quite partial to big words and long sentences. And I can whip them out when the time is right. I learned as early as seventh grade which teachers were suckers for that kind of writing, and still use it to my advantage when appropriate.

And I know that you, dear readers, are a smart bunch who can tackle complex copy when necessary. I‘m sure you breezed through American literature classes, and have successfully navigated the college financial aid process, or at least one document composed by an attorney.

The reason I spend so much time changing words, cutting sentences and shortening paragraphs has nothing to do with your intelligence. Rather, I’m trying to write for the way I like to read. Except when I’m reading The New Yorker. Which I do. Once in a while.

For me, The New Yorker is a posh restaurant with elegant fare. It’s a lovely treat on special occasions, and if you haven’t been there, I recommend it. I hope, though, that this blog is more like your favorite bar & grill, and that you’ll come by often for some down-home comfort food.

P.S. 499 words. (But only 358 if you subtract the Mark O’Connell excerpts.) Bon appetite!