> Of course on the other end of the spectrum is the contrived
> verbosity of the over-educated anglophile (A few of my uncle's
> come to mind ;-)). Where my own rants fall I leave to you to
> evaluate...
Speaking as someone who is both bi-cultural and works in the field where we receive a lot of stuff written in English as a Second Language (ESL), I noticed that many non-English languages tend to be much more verbose and loquacious than English, especially the US English. ESL speakers usually try to render some of their native language verbosity in English, and the net effect is something that looks like poorly written English. This, however, reflects not as much as language skill (which in most cases is far superior to linguistic abilities of an average US-ser), but really different styles of thinking and expression.
Wojtek