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How to Write Usefully

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Write Usefully

#161

Post by alexandercrohde »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #153

tl; dr: 1. Sets the topic of "What is a good essay?" 2. Asserts that correctness is necessary, but not sufficient condition for a good essay. 3. Illustrates 2 by pointing out that by increasing vagueness, complete correctness is always possible. Characterizes correctness/precision as opposing forces. 4. Adds two more criteria for a good essay - telling people something important, and that they don't know 5. Adds the…

Observations.

This is one of my longest tl; drs, particularly for a short essay. This to me signals high content ratio (low compressibility).

As somebody who tried for years to get people online to pay attention to my essays, I am not super confident that we have good content-discovery mechanisms for essays online [except video essays, which seem to thrive]. Thus I don't take this essay as personally relevant, as I am not personally convinced that a good essay written by an unfamous person, would warrant enough attention to justify the rigorous revision process.

I notice PG chooses to view the essay through an artistic/historic lens that puts him in the minority. It seems to me he strives very hard to stay above the primal desires that dominate the internet-attention-economy. A very tough challenge.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#162

Post by throwanem »

rmason wrote: post #5
xvector wrote: post #2

My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing. Over time I found this unwieldy and now I find myself re-reading my sentences to see what I can delete. It's satisfying, like deleting unused code in a messy codebase. I envy writers who manage to densely pack information in sentences that are beautiful to read.

I experienced the same thing with English teachers. But I had a friend point out that Hemingway (whom we both adored) wrote sentences that were 7 words shorter than normal. Writing short punchy sentences without a single spare word. Steinbeck wrote that way and so did Elmore Leonard. Leonard said he'd get down a first draft and then go back a second time taking words out that weren't necessary. https://www.litcharts.…

One can idolize Hemingway to a fault. Removing the unnecessary is largely what a second draft is for, no matter who's doing the work; concision is a virtue, but to pursue concision above all else risks erring into insufficiency and rendering oneself unable to write in one's own style and voice, rather than in an emulation of someone else's.

Voice elevates an informative essay from a dry recitation of facts, offering the reader little of genuine interest, into a conversation in which the reader is able and welcome to participate. Voice also offers interest of its own, which can help sustain a reader through what might otherwise prove intolerable complexities or difficulties in the subject matter of the work.

You may, of course, consider this, and consider the virtues of the Hemingwayesque ultimacy of concision, and decide that the latter outweigh the former. I don't agree, but we all ideally write in our own ways. I would, though, ask that you do consider those virtues - and their contrary vices - rather than partake of the blind veneration of Hemingway so common among the rather dim luminaries of modern literature.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#163

Post by friendlybus »

daxaxelrod wrote: post #95
throwawaylolx wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He just doesn't care to improve his work. Alternatively, you may overestimate how objective these rules are and how much they must correlate with some universal metric for good writing.

Agreed. In my opinion, great writing has to be within the context of the time. A lot of us speak in a manner similar to how PG writes. You wouldn't consider great writing from 1890 with the same set of rules as you would something written in 2020.

Roald Dahl's work is some of the most delightfully readable and engaging writing out there in my humble opinion and that was written nearly one hundred years ago in the 1930s and 1940s.

Good writing is timeless, I may suggest that adding hyperlinks under a new word you introduced inside your essay that requires clicking on and reading a wholly different story to understand the current story you are reading, is a terribly under-performant way of communicating information inside an essay to the reader.

When did using "+" instead of "&" become acceptable in proper English? I understand this is a tech blog and I have no problem with "+" used in a tech context, the use in a virtue signalling piece on the rules of writing a good essay seems misplaced.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#164

Post by philwelch »

brlewis wrote: post #62
philwelch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a difference between interpersonal social behavior and publishing written work, though.

Yes, that's why the paragraph after the one under discussion starts out, "Translated into essay writing...". So the paragraph discussed in this thread is about interpersonal social behavior.

Ah, yes, thank you. Though as far as I can tell, it’s brought up, not in the context of saying that it’s a successful strategy for having engaging dinner parties, but in the context of saying it’s a good strategy for writing essays.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#166

Post by Swizec »

injb wrote: post #125
osdiab wrote: post #12

While the internet is full of garbage writing, I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act. Like learning a language, if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn. And separately,…

" if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn" If you're afraid to say your idea because you know (or suspect) that it's wrong, then you have already learned the hardest part of the lesson. Of course, it still remains to find out what the right idea is, but voicing one that you know to be wrong is hardly going to help with that.

Best way to learn on the internet is to give the wrong answer and get corrected

Re: How to Write Usefully

#167

Post by TimPC »

caligarn wrote: post #152

Is Paul unfamiliar with what makes good academic writing? He starts by digging into academic writing, but I am not sure he knows how it functions and what it functions to do. Good and great academic writing pushes the envelope on theories and frameworks and tends to be the repository for new ideas that people like Paul use to make sense of the world. A case in point is Clayton Christensen. It's in the forges of his p…

I think this varies a lot by subject. Certain fields reward ambiguity and vagueness quite heavily. Good academic writing tends to be the exception rather than the rule. This may be true of essays as well as good writing is quite rare. I think the criticism is less about accessibility and more about the general trend towards uselessness of academic writing in a lot of fields of academia.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#169

Post by crimsonalucard »

Another type of writing that happens a lot especially on HN that is better than essay writing is dialogue. You get immediate feedback on what you failed to make clear and what points you missed because your intuition skipped over it, or if you're genuinely wrong.

Still even in dialogue, arguments become circular because a lot of dialogue is selectively interpreted and misinterpreted at a subcncious level.

I was recently introduced to a way of writing that makes all your points unequivocally clear. It may not lend to enjoyable reading but it makes your stance and point solid and clear. I post the dialogue below and while there's a lot going on (not relevant to this post, it's a debate about how function composition is a central feature to functional programming) in that dialogue the main point is that it evolves into a different format at the end to make things completely clear you can see the evolution just by scanning the conversation (especially near the end):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22290188

Re: How to Write Usefully

#170

Post by friendlybus »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #21
timavr wrote: post #6

Controversial point, but PGs writing is F-. It seems a lot of effort goes into sounding smart, rather then delivering information required. Who learned anything from above?

The model of precision and correctness being opposing forces that increase in strength the more you hone in on one is useful for me and something that I had never put into words before.

It simply isn't true though, they are rarely required together. His example of the location of a city could have been replaced with gps co-ordinates in the place of a descriptive phrase.

NASA deals with strength and precision together all the time, it's rare that they are both needed on the same task at the same level. The requirements for precision and strength to be shared in an essay is to construct sentences that are clear and cannot be interpreted in multiple ways and then fill in the descriptive detailing with precise information.

Strength takes from distilling multiple possible interpretations down into one clear and correct direction. Precision is about highlighting the qualitative properties and exact quantities of your subject.

They don't conflict. They are rarely needed together.

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