Overprecision

The motor coordinations are lost for a moment, all the ways of awkwardness, mannerisms, and semi-imperative acts manifest themselves as a result. This is again the age of the basal — e. g., hill-climbing muscles of leg and back and shoulder work, and of the yet more fundamental heart, lung, and chest muscles " (1: vol. i, p. 165). As during early childhood, now the danger is overemphasis upon the activities of accessory muscles and overprecision.

A-B-C of correct speech and the art of conversation (Harper's A-B-C ser. Harper 50c) by Mrs F. M. (Howe) Hall is a brief but suggestive discussion of the best usage in English, everyday mistakes in speaking, the use of slang, the voice, and overprecision in speech, with a few chapters on acquiring the art of conversation.

There is nothing whatever to be gained by reporting efficiency more closely than the nearest tenth of one per cent, or even the nearest half. Not only is such apparent precision as 1 in 1000 unwarranted by the exigencies of boiler testing; but engineering judgment is quite unable to make use of it. It is mentally impossible to differentiate between the relative values of 79.9 and 80.1 per cent efficiency and it seems only sensible to call it 80 per cent. Especially is such overprecision absurd, inasmuch as it is not certain that it was not really 79 or 81 per cent, or even a little further away.

At the end he asked her if she liked it? Grace studied the picture carefully. It was unexpectedly good. That idea of concentrating most of the light in the background in those blazing flowers, leaving the figure in shadow, was unusual and curious, but he had brought it off; in that dim filtered light the relaxation of the pose, the tones of dress and skin, took on a remarkable quality.There was no overprecision this time, either; though the painting was forcible and direct, there was an ease, an expansion about it—the warmth and light were there all right, but used with a stroke of ingenuity that was almost genius to emphasize the quiet meditative aspect of the portrait itself.

Dr. Elizabeth McDowell, from Columbia University, emphasized ease and precision as the prime objectives of speech. She warned against aiming at overprecision in teaching articulation since it spoils the quality of tone. Dr. McDowell believed that the practice of feeling throat vibrations, to gain more accurate consonants was responsible for developing hoarse voices. Melody, phrasing, and rhythm in speech patterns are too often sacrificed in order to get clear cut sounds which are less likely to give the speaker intelligibility. The serial order of emphasis in the phonetic processes of speech should be phrasing, timing, stress, melody, timbre, and accuracy, not the reverse (45).