Do you speak much and say nothing?

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One criticism I've noticed leveled at a lot of aspies is that they are using long, ball-busting sentences and over-formal words to either:
1. State the obvious
2. Say something that could easily be snipped down to at least two words, and at most a couple sentences.
3. Say practically nothing, or nothing of worth

Then on the other hand we also see aspies and autistic types who are very intelligent and have a lot to say, but aren't able to say it articulately at all.

Do you feel you fall into either of these categories? Has anyone ever made these remarks about anything you've said, or how you've said it?

People often say to me I dont speak much, which I know I dont cause I dont really know what to say half of the time. Unless it's about a particular subject that I understand well then I'm mostly ok

been told i was too formal, but also too 'curt'

Nothing is that simple.

Part One: In general, I say too little.
If it’s something simple and I’m ready and I can fit it in a sound bite, I’m ok.

But sometimes, understandings and/or feelings don’t emerge quickly enough or I can’t translate fast enough, so I lose the moment. I can’t come back on another day with the correct punch line. So I skip it.

Then there’s the big stuff. I know what I’m thinking and how to explain, but there’s no way to make some people sit still and listen and stretch their brains enough to understand. They don’t want to be spoon fed. So I skip it.

Then there’s the migraine stuff or whatever you want to call it when I can’t find the words. So I skip it.

Part Two: A lot of people really don’t understand standard English. You need to choreograph it with the right facial expressions, volume, body language, timing… just thinking about it makes me tired. If I don’t do the right song and dance, they can’t hear me or don’t understand me or believe that I’m lying or think it’s unimportant. They can only understand and take you seriously when you’re foaming at the mouth. But it needs just the right touch. Too much foaming and you’re a lunatic. Too little and you’re a rug.

By the way, the word you are looking for is "pedantic."

I used to talk non stop and when I was a kid I lectured people on horses but I had "story" lectures too where I made stuff up and talked about that. All I wanted to do was talk and I talked pretty much non stop. I was also an interrupter. I don't mean this in a bad way but I did have a bit of a mean streak but I think I got that from being around kids who were mean to me so I started mimmicking their mean ways some although nowadays I'm just quiet.

My extremely NT mother-in-law is the expert on talking forever about nothing. She'll go for a walk and meet five people along the way. She'll have 10 minutes of small talk with the first one, then she'll have 10 minutes of small talk with the next one PLUS repeat the conversation that she had with the first person. By the time she gets to the last person, it's like, "So I says to Mathilda, I says, 'the woman at the end of the street says they haven't had any blossoms on their magnolia tree since 2006," and her brother-in-law says he had a magnolia in the house he lived in before he joined the Navy and went to Singapore, or was it South Carolina? It must have been Singapore because they are Asians and there are a lot of Asians in Singapore. And colored people, aren't there? And so I says, "I was just telling Mavis about the marigolds that we had to put snail bate all around because the snails are as big as your fist, and she told me you can put little dishes of beer out in your garden and snails will climb right in and drown themselves, and I says I'd not heard of that, and she says, 'oh yes!" and I says 'really?' and she says, 'oh yes! and I says, "well, I never knew that!'"

And she stands really close to you when she says all this, and kind of has you cornered, so you can't move. And you really have to pee. And you can't get away. And you want to bang your head on something, even if that isn't your usual preference.

Sorry. I just had a two week visit from my in-laws, and had to get that out of my system.

It's one of the key skills for management....

Sometimes I find myself rambling, but I'm on the watch for it.

Constantly. This was one of the first signs that made me think I was on the spectrum. Empty speech, lots of fillers, always correcting what I said a breath ago. Lots of responses along the lines of "hmmmmmm actually I have no idea what you just said" (typically after an extensive monologue)

I don't even want to know how much longer than other people I take to express what seemed simple and obvious in my head, and came out all tangled and clumsy-sounding in words! I think I would be embarrassed if someone recorded me in the past and played it back to me!

I now solve the problem by closing my eyes and leaving a silence to let people know I'm thinking how to phrase it, instead of constantly using fillers or correcting myself over and over and over again within the same sentence to get my message across. I think even with the silences I take less time overall to say what I was trying to say (especially when you think of the other person having to pause and say "didn't get it," and then having to rephrase the whole thing again). Problem is it's probably awkward to watch someone close their eyes while in conversation, and with the random silence it probably makes me sound like I'm stuttering or something.

Ah well. Can't win them all.




edit: I ALSO do the rambly thing where I regale people with lots of information they are not interested in. I think that's the obsessiveness though. What I meant just now was more like .. organising my thoughts in a communicative way that others can understand I guess? Not very good at that (as evidenced by this long post)

Most of the time I just have nothing to say, I don't speak and waste my voice. My voice always seems to be tiring to use. So even when I have something to say, I don't feel like saying it. Partly because I get so caught up in it I lose focus of everyone, and usually my thoughts are jumbled and unstructured. Truth is I feel tired all the time on the outside, but I feel like my thoughts run like a waterfall. It just isn't very natural speaking to most people, I feel I have to constantly moderate my thoughts so others can understand them.

Probably one of the biggest reasons is my thoughts are so repetitive sometimes, and about things that would seem odd to talk about, such as my own personal hobbies.

But I have a friend who practically just lets his thoughts roll out so everyone can hear them, actually I know quite a few people like that.

When I speak apparentely I repeat stuff. I don't usually speak to people I'm unfamilar with or people I don't know well, but if I do speak to people I can sometimes say stuff that people may think is a stupid thing to talk about.

I'm often criticised for not saying anything and always standing in the corner looking strange.

I'm known as pretty quiet. I only talk to people that I've known well for a year plus. Most of the time I give closed answers.
However, I do(I think I've said this in other threads) have to correct someone if they say something wrong.
When I'm talking, I tend to ramble on into my own world once I notice they have no clue what I'm talking about. It's pretty frustrating.
Sometimes I say random statistics when I bored too...
Usually I just read in on the bench at breaks, limiting conversation.
EMZ=]