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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…
It a my first time to see lithub.com. I was hoping it would be like Github for writers, but was disappointed. Does anyone know if such a thing exists?
There's https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/ and https://english.stackexchange.com/ I'm not entirely sure what would be on a literature GitHub.
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…
'But' is very generic and 'However' is longer than 'that said'.
> It also seems redundant, maybe just start typing your contradictory position without the need for a connecting phrase?
That makes it much more difficult to keep the topic flowing, and it can be very confusing if you jump to an almost-contradiction without warning the reader that it's time to do some contrasting and fine-tuning.
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…
"A single edit, eliminating unnecessary words, works wonders for any first draft."
It's a cheap shot (that I learned from Language Log) but if you're going to live by the sword...
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I always assumed that this is an SEO practice?
I'm not sure how a section of information that is often largely irrelevant to the recipe (despite mentioning a few key terms) is going to be a valuable SEO practise. I assume people are trying to be the next online cooking personality who gets to publish a book. I've seen a couple in shops with pictures of YouTube recipe demonstration people on the cover. Also, more text is more "content" to mix adverts into.
I just assume that they associate recipes and foods with times and places and people (generally happily) and it's akin to "do you remember that time mother cooked weasel?" kind of conversations you'd have with people, except on a blog.
There should be a version of this for hacker news comments and tech blog posts. Every time I see the phrase 'that said' or 'that being said' I involuntarily cringe. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...
Some others are "I've said it once and I'll say it again", "as I said/wrote/posted/blogged before". Those seem to suggest the author is assuming they are famous/popular enough that their previous content has been read. Of course you could look at it as they are just suggesting you go read their previous post but for whatever reason that specific way of saying it comes across less as info and more as "of course you read my previous post".
I'm aware this is a personal opinion with no basis in reality.
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…
Pet peeve of mine - If we could eliminate the "I appear to be talking about something happening today, but am actually talking about something that happened in 1840" article setup entirely, that would make me very happy. It was clever at first, but you can now usually see the setup coming a mile off.
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…
> A single edit with the goal of ruthlessly eliminating every unnecessary word works wonders for any first draft. "A single edit, eliminating unnecessary words, works wonders for any first draft." It's a cheap shot (that I learned from Language Log) but if you're going to live by the sword...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A single edit with the goal of ruthlessly eliminating every unnecessary word works wonders for any first draft. "A single edit, eliminating unnecessary words, works wonders for any first draft." It's a cheap shot (that I learned from Language Log) but if you're going to live by the sword...
Eliminating unnecessary words works wonders.