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Write Simply
21–30 of 354 posts
Re: Write Simply
#22This feels closely related Plain Language [1]. An editor I worked with pointed me to this concept. We were writing documentation for a framework my company was building.
Re: Write Simply
#23Convoluted prose is the natural language equivalent of spaghetti code.
Re: Write Simply
#24I think there are two sources of confirmation bias here: 1. People on HN are already primed to appreciate this style of writing. Simple. Precise. Direct. It suits a technical literal mind to have less ambiguity and fewer flourishes. 2. On the web, where each individual piece of writing is not meant to last as long, the writing style has become more casual. Consider the difference between your average Medium article v…
Yeah but the genre seems to matter.
Fiction and poetry vs whatever type of writing blogging is.
Re: Write Simply
#25My standard recommendation for writing advice is Joseph M. Williams' "Style: Ten Lessons In Clarity And Grace"[1].
Another good one is George Gopen's "The Sense of Structure". It's less inspirational than Clarity and Grace, but it shows more hands-on how to construct sentences and paragraphs.
[1] or "Lessons in Clarity and Grace" or "Toward Clarity and Grace" – they are all substantially the same book
Re: Write Simply
#26Please forward this to the people that write the TOS for software and websites.
Re: Write Simply
#27Achieving simplicity is hard. Allow me to explain, with a software analogy, too many times "customers" or users wants a "simple" solution, wrongly expecting that a simple final product was made with a simple implementation, which is not the case at all. It's the opposite. I would expect the same process about writing, a final and concise essay requires tons of work, removing a word and replacing it with a common alte…
"The greatest elegance is simplicity" - somebody
Re: Write Simply
#28I think there are two sources of confirmation bias here: 1. People on HN are already primed to appreciate this style of writing. Simple. Precise. Direct. It suits a technical literal mind to have less ambiguity and fewer flourishes. 2. On the web, where each individual piece of writing is not meant to last as long, the writing style has become more casual. Consider the difference between your average Medium article v…
How do you define "greatest"?
Re: Write Simply
#29>That's why some people write that way, to conceal the fact that they have nothing to say. That's a great point.
Copywriter here. Sometimes the client gives me the barest thread of a topic, some minor, new product or service or partnership for them, something that could be covered comprehensively in 300 words... and then they say they want a 1000+ word blog post on it (for SEO purposes). That article is going to end up being mostly fluff, and there’s not much I can do about it. Sure, I can work in some background and play up th…
Sounds like your clients might benefit from reading this essay :P
Re: Write Simply
#30A related paper is the delightfully titled "Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly"[0]. It won the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in Literature but it could've won the Economy one just as well in my opinion.
[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.1178