Verbosity and IQ
 

What's the correlation between verbosity and IQ? Negative, positive, neither?

Not including this site, whose members are a little gray and smarter than average. Have you seen this in other sites?

My vote is neither. IMO, verbosity has less to do with IQ and more to do with other personality traits.

Yep, I agree.

I find there are members here (you know who you are) that feel they have a need to type and type and type. I doubt that means they have a high IQ. Maybe the opposite.

After careful consideration and thoughtful analysis of much of the psychological literature from 1930 to the present, excluding the years 1939 through 1945, because the war in Europe disallowed scientific discourse about the matter, I have concluded there definitely is a positive correlation.

This finding is not unsupported by friends, family, relatives or coworkers. So yes, there definitely is relationship between the number of words used by an individual and his/her/their measured (employing the usual and standard protocols) IQ.

The exact correlation can probably not be described as a ratio of words to points but does come close and can be a useful tool during the natural human discourse such as conversation between persons in person or electronically.

Eloquently said, my dear Sir.

Two correlations I can make:

- Talkative folks make it really easy to get a handle on how smart they are.

- The smartest people I've known are efficient with their words.

If there is such a correlation, then it begs the question: Is there a correlation between brevity and IQ?

_

But I will say it's hard to judge based on words alone: the number of words isn't the indicator, it's how they're used, packaged and acted upon. Which plays into another observation around actions being a better indicator than words alone.

Using a $3.00 word every once in awhile is a good thing in many ways.

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Brevity is the soul of wit

Is that three dollar word an expensive word, or a cheap one? We need your frame of reference here.

I think on the outset people think using a ton words with some facts makes them appear smart, however it takes more effort to distill that into a pithy statement packed full of meaning.

I'm presently in the negative correlation.

Less is more.

I find myself constantly in a word battle for active voice.

I think in passive voice and write as such, but upon edits I remember that active voice is much stronger. So my intention is remove all passive words from work emails, etc.

If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bull*****.

I've seen that work effectively. I've also seen in backfire horribly.

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LMAO! Classic example! I've met "him" a few times.