a nonsensical way was published by physics professor Alan Sokal in a journal (Social Text) as a scholarly publishing sting. The episode became known as the Sokal Affair. The term is sometimes also applied to unnecessarily wordy speech in general; this is more usually referred to as prolixity. Some people defend the use of additional words as idiomatic, a matter of artistic preference, or helpful in explaining complex ideas or messages. Examples Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States, was notably verbose even in his era. A Democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo, described Harding's speeches as "an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea." The Michigan Law Review published a 229-page parody of postmodern writing titled "Pomobabble: Postmodern Newspeak and Constitutional 'Meaning' for the Uninitiated". The article consists of complicated and context-sensitive self-referencing narratives. The text is peppered with a number of parenthetical citations and asides, which is supposed to mock the cluttered style of postmodern writing. In The King's English, Fowler gives a passage from The Times as an example of verbosity: "The Emperor received yesterday and to-day General Baron von Beck.... It may therefore be assumed with some confidence that the terms of a feasible solution are maturing themselves in His Majesty's mind and may form the basis of further negotiations with Hungarian party leaders when the Monarch goes again to Budapest." Fowler objected to this passage because The Emperor, His Majesty, and the Monarch all refer to the same person: "the effect", he pointed out in Modern English Usage, " is to set readers wondering what the significance of the change is, only to conclude that there is none." Fowler would go on to call this phenomenon "Elegant variation" in his later style guides (see below). Style advice The ancient Greek philosopher Callimachus is quoted as saying "Big book, big evil" (μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν, mega biblion, mega kakon), rejecting the epic style of poetry in favor of his own. Many style guides advise against excessive verbosity. While it may be rhetorically useful verbose parts in communications are sometimes referred to as "fluff" or "fuzz". For instance, William Strunk, an American professor of English advised in 1918 to "Use the active voice: Put statements in positive form; Omit needless words." In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) Henry Watson Fowler says, "It is the second-rate writers, those