Clear writing needs a both concrete examples, to anchor meaning, and abstract discussion to indicate the size of the set in which the concrete example is a point.

It may well be true that attention to personal hygiene makes traveling more pleasant, but the point comes across much more clearly if it is illustrated with the example "The bus driver smiled at me after I started bathing regularly" (We should notice how the example introduces redundancy and this is a good thing because it works against misunderstanding. The abstract statement could be misunderstood as saying "attention to personal hygiene makes traveling more pleasant for the travelers companions". The example makes it clear that the author means more pleasant for the traveler himself. Notice too that this extra clarity is both easily written and easily read. Three cheers for examples)

Perhaps that should be two cheers for examples. Examples on their own are crap. They are like an obscure synecdoche. They give the illusion of meaning because they are specific and concrete, a yet the author actually had a more general point in mind and we do not know what it was because he did not say. Was it that traveling gets easier or that people treat him better and why bathing? Is the author penning a rant against showers?

I'm not trying to critise Vanviver, I'm just having a mini-rant about the importance of writing both scoped abstraction and anchoring examples.