Talking in Symbols

Many a time symbolic language plays tremendous part in making people understand the things easily and clearly which otherwise does not seem to be that easy. The other day, while teaching, I was trying to make it clear to the students as to what a good paragraph was. Even after strenuous efforts, I was not convinced that the students had well taken my point. Suddenly I was reminded of a quotation which goes like this- A good paragraph should be like a lady's skirt: long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep it interesting. This was enough and the response from the students was that I was satisfied that the job had been done to the maximum. There was no need for further elaboration.