Sir, - Your report (The Irish Times, June 19th) of the address by a German lawyer in which he exhorted his Irish colleagues to use plain English reminds me of a piece which I was obliged to learn (and recite) when I was at school many years ago. From memory it went something like this:
"In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and in articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications possess a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensiveness and a concatinated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent garrulity, jejune babblement and asinine affectation".
I have no idea who the author was. Perhaps it was a sesquipedalian lawyer. - Yours, etc., M. D. Kennedy,
Silchester Park, Glenageary, Co Dublin.