Eschew obfuscation

by JLS
for the Grice

--- the charm of the pirots is that they complile self-contradictory maxims:

'be perspicuous'. Why not 'be clear'.
'avoid unnecessary prolixity'. Why not 'be brief'
'eschew obfuscation' -- avoid obscurity of expression.

In all three cases, Grice has 'sic'.

"Eschew obfuscation", also formulated as "eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation", is a humorous fumblerule used by English teachers and professors when lecturing about proper writing techniques.

Literally, the phrase means "avoid being unclear" or "avoid being unclear, support being clear". But surely enough, the use of relatively uncommon words causes confusion, making the phrase an example of irony, qua conversational implicature, and more precisely a heterological or hypocritical phrase (it does not embody its own advice).

The phrase has appeared in print at least as early as 1959, when it was used as a section heading in a NASA document (United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA Technical Memorandum (1959), p. 171).

An earlier similar phrase appears in Mark Twain's Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses (1895), where he lists rule fourteen of good writing as "eschew surplusage".

Grice uses the phrase in one of the maxims falling under the coonversational category of Modus or Manner.