Love pg but lol at opening with "I write simple" and immediately throwing around some Italian words.
Write Simply
231–240 of 354 posts
Re: Write Simply
#232When i was in school, our technical writing teacher constantly drilled in one key concept:
'Get to the point.'
As in, be concise, be clear, don't use more words than necessary and make your writing as simple to understand as possible.
Most writing exists to try and communicate an idea. The words used should be chosen to make that idea as clear as possible with the least amount of effort. (Apart from abstract poetry and such I suppose.)
Re: Write Simply
#233The really good writers can hold multiple ideas in juxtaposition and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Re: Write Simply
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main issue with the article is the imperative title. It's not "here's why I like to write in this style." It's telling the reader to write that way. Sorry but no, I won't write the way you do because you tell me to. edit: the point of my comment is not that I won't write that way. It's that the author is talking about his own preferences, but the title makes it sound prescriptive. In a way it illustrates the oppo…
If the blog post is about programming and it adopts a didactic style, i.e., telling the reader what to do, and it is obviously based on personal preferences -- either the author's or someone else's -- I react the same way. To me, these writings are only opinions. The internet is absolutely loaded with programmers offering opinions or repeating the opinions of others but framing them as directives . Do this or don't d…
I'm not so convinced of the difference between the "real world" and online. Misinformation, propaganda & charlatans all existed in droves long before the internet. In fact, it's almost certainly true that your average internet user is far better informed about actual facts than the average pre-internet person. Scepticism about what you read is advisable everywhere, internet users have become better at it than previous generations.
Hence, I also don't think there's anything at all wrong with the imperative style of writing (or I might as well say "there is nothing wrong with it"). Since it is incumbent upon the reader to consider whether or how far to trust the author anyway, it should make no difference whether the statements are presented as fact or opinion. To treat them differently is to give the author far too much power over your thinking.
And so, as the author, given that any sensible reader will put your statements in context anyway, you might as well simply state them directly.
Re: Write Simply
#235> the ideas leap into your head and you barely notice the words that got them there. Ah, the good old wrong idea that somehow language is a tool that can clone ideas from one brain to another. It doesn't work like that.
Right. I'm surprised at how little thought people seem to have put into that idea. You can hear echoes of that when Musk talks about all the Neuralink stuff and just communicating with "pure thoughts" or whatever. What these pure thoughts and ideas, disconnected from language, are supposed to be, is left as an exercise to the listener.
I am coming from this angle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodermic_needle_model
Re: Write Simply
#236Meh. Reducing language to a mere communication tool also destroys much of its beauty, meaning, and ability to inspire or motivate us. I don't think it's a coincidence that the loss of interest in poetry has coincided with a general loss of respect for literary culture. I had this impression recently while reading the Akbarnama , which is a sort of court-approved biography of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. It was written b…
>Reducing language to a mere communication tool also destroys much of its beauty, meaning, and ability to inspire or motivate us. I don't think it's a coincidence that the loss of interest in poetry has coincided with a general loss of respect for literary culture. That's not the argument here. This talks about language and writing as a means of communicating ideas to as broad an audience as possible. There is still…
There's two things wrong with this. First taking as self-evident the notion that plain or simple language is necessarily more effective in communicating ideas to a broad audience. That's very questionable. Effective orators don't just communicate simply to 'move ideas around', they also inspire and connect emotionally with their audience, just think of any well-regarded and successful politician.
Secondly implicit in that argument is the notion that ordinary people can only comprehend 'simple speech' and have no appreciation for form or aesthetics, which is pretty arrogant but par for the course for your average PG essay and captures perfectly the stereotypical software developer developer mindset of completely lacking appreciation for style and thinking one's own ideas are so brilliant they have to be dumbed down for everyone else.
Re: Write Simply
#237This 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. [1] https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/
The UK government has similar guidelines for writing plain English. [1]
[1]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u...
Re: Write Simply
#238> the ideas leap into your head and you barely notice the words that got them there. Ah, the good old wrong idea that somehow language is a tool that can clone ideas from one brain to another. It doesn't work like that.
Can we write our way from the idea idea? If so, how? If not, why?
Re: Write Simply
#239For grins I pasted PG's text into the demo readability tool at https://app.readable.com/text/?demo>.
'Write Simply' received an overall grade of 'A', and a very-approachable Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 5.9. It's said to be readable by 100% of the literate general public, which is only 85% of the full general public.
But, out of the 507 words and 38 sentences, 4 sentences were flagged as "very long" (over 30 syllables) and 15 as "long" (over 20 syllables).
Two 'hard words' – over 12 letters or over 4 syllables – were flagged, somewhat ironically: "unnecessarily intellectual".
Re: Write Simply
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because James Joyce's style isn't "simple" by any stretch of the imagination, I would guess? And the essay presents its position as a general statement void of all context. What context are we supposed to assume here?
> And the essay presents its position as a general statement void of all context. Are you sure? From the blog (first sentence): > I try to write using ordinary words and simple sentences. Since the "I" in this case refers to someone who does not write poetry, speculative fiction, drama, tragedies, comedies ... and only ever writes for a technical audience, the context is clear: technical[1] audience not seeking poetr…
I don't think Paul Graham writes for a "technical" audience only and am fairly certain he would dispute that claim.
I'm also fairly certain that the type of writing he's talking about is mostly non-fiction prose, such as the essays he writes himself (even though he doesn't state that explicitly). Would you consider those "technical" writing?