"A Picture Is Worth ..."

Did you finish this well-known phrase with the standard "A THOUSAND WORDS"?

Oh, Really?

Take the following sentence:
The dog sits.

[I said SITS, folks; not...]
Write a 1,000 word essay describing the image this calls to your mind's eye. I'll do so, too, and we'll compare our finished product.
How alike do you think our imagery will be? How alike our descriptions? How similar our writing styles?

Looking at a still-photo of the haunch-heeled canine, we see it all right there-- we see the same mutt. We needs not expend the verbiage to describe what we see; the image, forever a moment frozen in timeframe, 'says' it all. But... I'd wager a small third-world country's GDP worth of green frogskins that the words going through our grey matter as we view the snapshot would be only vaguely similar-- if at all.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that a picture "saves" a thousand words.

Another example, just to drive home the point: Let's say that I have a little "sex kitten", and I am wont to express my love to her. Do I show her a picture of that love? [!] Do I take it a step further and stream together a thousand photos of that love-- kind of a "sex kitty o' video"? NO!! That would just be animalistic...
No; I commence to thumbing the thesaurus and waxing from the cob-Webster's of my mind, trying to find a rhyme for that ineffably sublime emotional Prime we cull down and cram into that lone word, 'LOVE'.

Words are powerful things, indeed. A thousand words can paint a mental picture and instill it with life and animation no still-photo would ever be able to convey.

That said, I done saids enough, so I'll close for now-- i gotta go write my Sex Kitten... erm, I mean, an essay about a dog sitting...

Slainte, Folks!!!

Cygnus