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Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

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Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#31

Post by crooked-v »

ddxxdd wrote: post #10

>"This may be a particular peeve of mine and no one else’s, but I note it, because it’s my book: Name-dropping, for no better reason than to show off, under-appreciated novels, obscure foreign films, or cherished indie bands by having one’s characters irrelevantly reading or watching or listening to them is massively sore-thumbish. A novel is not a blog post about Your Favorite Things.[5] If you must do this sort of…

Even worse is the dissonance that comes when you consider that the author is treating this like a celebration of pop-culture that he loves, while in-universe this is the result of incredibly poor and culturally oppressed people desperately memorizing a dead guy's favorite stuff to try and get all the wealth he stumbled into and then hoarded until his death.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#32

Post by imhelpingu »

Animats wrote: post #12

From the article: Many writers rely more heavily on pronouns than I’d suggest is useful. For me this sort of thing comes under the heading Remember that Writing Is Not Speaking. When we talk, we can usually make ourselves understood even amid a flood of vague “he”s and “she”s. On the page, too many pronouns are apt to be confounding. I’d strongly suggest to the point of insistence that you avoid referring to two peop…

We do this here every time writing comes up. Engineers should not comment on writing.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#33

Post by SolaceQuantum »

coat wrote: post #29
Someone1234 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why? The phase allows you, after having made a point, to invert that point then suggest an alternative explanation or perspective. I read a few of the posts in the search results, and "That being said" felt natural in many cases to join sometimes contradictory positions or different degrees of the same position together into one fluid thought. Someone can cringe at anyone. Without offering critique, i…

I don't really have a good explanation other than we already have words like 'However' and 'But'. It also seems redundant, maybe just start typing your contradictory position without the need for a connecting phrase? That being said, it may just be me who is annoyed by the phrase. I think it just gets used a lot and I can't help but notice for some reason. I think I've associated the phrase with strawman arguments an…

”...maybe just start typing your contradictory position without the need for a connecting phrase?...”

Don’t do this. It’s a good way to make your writing appear incoherent.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#34

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ddxxdd wrote: post #13
apo wrote: post #2

My own pet peeve in non-fiction, particularly the kind that appears on blogs: the excruciating warmup before the author finally gets to the point of the post. I know why this happens. When you sit down to write, you don't know what exactly you're going to say. You may even be anxious about it. Then, an idea sparks your imagination and you start writing stuff. The warmup that comes out initially gets you on track. Not…

On many of my favorite Youtube videos, that "excrutiating" warm-up is part of the appeal. It feels more like a mysterious build-up towards an exciting payoff, when done right. That can be generalized towards writing or any other media.

If you do that, the payoff had better be there.

But even then, you probably should be very selective when you do it. If the point is to entertain, it may be OK. (The Avengers Endgame is just over three hours. I bet there's some buildup in that.)

But don't do it if the point is to communicate. I read somewhere that someone said (either about physics or CS): "There's 50 times as much going on as I can keep up with, and I only operate at 2% efficiency. So there's this factor of 2500 working against me, and every day I fall seven years further behind." In that kind of of environment, if I read your stuff, you'd better not waste my time.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#35

Post by CptFribble »

Animats wrote: post #12

From the article: Many writers rely more heavily on pronouns than I’d suggest is useful. For me this sort of thing comes under the heading Remember that Writing Is Not Speaking. When we talk, we can usually make ourselves understood even amid a flood of vague “he”s and “she”s. On the page, too many pronouns are apt to be confounding. I’d strongly suggest to the point of insistence that you avoid referring to two peop…

Why stop there?

- Pronoun overuse bad. Write don't speak. When talking, many pronouns understandable. Not on paper. Avoid same pronoun for multiple people (same-sex romance especially difficult).

Or how about another:

- Pronouns bad. Write don't speak. Can speak many pronouns, not write. Same pronouns, multiple people? No. (Same-sex romance especially)

Making something shorter or "tighter" isn't necessarily better. Word count isn't everything.

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but that implies there's still wit left. There's lots of writing effects that can be lost through overediting, or following the "rules" too closely.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#36

Post by vharuck »

An infrequent part of my job is writing and editing public reports about data. Not even guessing as to causal factors or future impacts, just stating the data in English.

I wish more people would accept that writing is not speaking. Beyond pronouns, when this is good advice:

- Don't use acronyms for short names or phrases. "Department of Motor Vehicles" is a mouthful, but not much more of an eyeful than "DMV" after seeing it twice. (Consider using the acronym if the amount of space filled with text looks daunting).

- It's okay to be repetitive. In fact, it's good to repetitively present data. The pinnacles of this is the table, but narrative text also works.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#37

Post by ACow_Adonis »

Animats wrote: post #12

From the article: Many writers rely more heavily on pronouns than I’d suggest is useful. For me this sort of thing comes under the heading Remember that Writing Is Not Speaking. When we talk, we can usually make ourselves understood even amid a flood of vague “he”s and “she”s. On the page, too many pronouns are apt to be confounding. I’d strongly suggest to the point of insistence that you avoid referring to two peop…

This is not intended to be a flame, but your example there, reads like a staccato-enamoured teenager mumbling into his bowl of fruit-loops in the morning, or alternatively, like you're reading back notes you copied off someone's powerpoint slide during a presentation.

Half of that is neither grammatically correct, nor complete sentences, and there is limited implicit or explicit relation or flow between your dot points.

Please never write like this.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#38

Post by tannerc »

apo wrote: post #2

My own pet peeve in non-fiction, particularly the kind that appears on blogs: the excruciating warmup before the author finally gets to the point of the post. I know why this happens. When you sit down to write, you don't know what exactly you're going to say. You may even be anxious about it. Then, an idea sparks your imagination and you start writing stuff. The warmup that comes out initially gets you on track. Not…

This can be a highly effective form of writing when done well.

A strong setup can certainly pull readers in. The problem is often most inexperienced writers use such a setup to clear away their "mind fog" and get to the point. And once the words are on the page it's hard to remove them (nobody wants wasted effort).

My guidance to new writers is always this: start with two bulleted items. First is a question or priming sentence. Second is the conclusion the reader will takeaway after reading what you've written.

Once you have those two bullet points you make them part of your first paragraph AND use them to structure the entirety of the piece (just add more bullet items between the first and second points).

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#39

Post by kazinator »

apo wrote: post #2

My own pet peeve in non-fiction, particularly the kind that appears on blogs: the excruciating warmup before the author finally gets to the point of the post. I know why this happens. When you sit down to write, you don't know what exactly you're going to say. You may even be anxious about it. Then, an idea sparks your imagination and you start writing stuff. The warmup that comes out initially gets you on track. Not…

> I know why this happens.

I don't think you've nailed it.

It's all calculated, just like that exquisite art piece someone crafted just for that article.

It's designed to string you along to keep you on that page, and to bloat the content so more ads can be inserted.

Also, don't forget that every word is also potentially a search-engine stuffer. Some verbiage is machine-generated for this purpose.

Re: Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

#40

Post by munificent »

jbattle wrote: post #11
nn3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is even worse in internet recipes. The authors tend to go on and on about their feelings, family and personal stories before finally getting to the point how to actually cook the dish. I usually have to skip several paragraphs.

I think that 'fluff' is actually interesting content to the bulk of people landing on that page. I know folks who read recipes for fun, I expect they genuinely enjoy reading the color commentary just like I might enjoy reading some 'extraneous' content in a movie/album review

I follow a lot of cooking subreddits. I think it was charming in the earlier days of food blogging, but today it seems every recipe reader is beyond tired of it.

Part of the problem is that almost every food blogger is emulating the exact same character. It's the same harried but still whipping something creative together, educated but conspicuously mentions liking a glass of wine, love-my-kids-but-man-do-they-get-on-my-nerves persona. It's the 2010's white sitcom parent writ large.

I'd read a lot more of the prose on these blogs if they didn't all sound the same.

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