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What makes writing more readable?

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Re: What makes writing more readable?

#101

Post by civilized »

zschuessler wrote: post #12

These tips were centered around simplification, and they are good tips. For documentation and technical writing in particular, I picked up a few mannerisms that I now use every time I write. The biggest impact has been to have a goal of limiting a paragraph to 2-3 sentences. From this goal my other writing traits came naturally. When starting a paragraph, start off with a blunt statement that summarizes the paragraph…

I respect your commitment to a particular style, but... I hate it. It feels like there's no connection between statements, just a sequence of atomized declarations. Writing that makes an argument often needs longer paragraphs. You may be limiting what you can say by the format you have to say it in.

Now that you've done the stunt for your publisher, it may be time to transcend this style.

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#102

Post by strken »

The style of the plain English translation is hard for me to read, because it avoids commas to lower the sentence length. Is there any evidence that replacing a comma with a full stop makes a sentence easier to read, or is it just an unintended consequence of the metric?

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#103

Post by dragonwriter »

strken wrote: post #102

The style of the plain English translation is hard for me to read, because it avoids commas to lower the sentence length. Is there any evidence that replacing a comma with a full stop makes a sentence easier to read, or is it just an unintended consequence of the metric?

> Is there any evidence that replacing a comma with a full stop makes a sentence easier to read

You can't generally make two grammatically-correct English sentences by starting with one and swapping a comma for a full stop, and if you can find a case where you can, it probably doesn't preserve meaning, even in the approximate (losing distinctions of how tightly coupled ideas are) sense you can with a semicolon rather than a comma.

But, generally, yes there is considerable evidence that shorter, simpler sentences (even if the total work is similar length) are easier to read, at the expense of reducing the space of ideas that can be clearly expressed.

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#104

Post by bentcorner »

b3morales wrote: post #38
zschuessler wrote: post #12

These tips were centered around simplification, and they are good tips. For documentation and technical writing in particular, I picked up a few mannerisms that I now use every time I write. The biggest impact has been to have a goal of limiting a paragraph to 2-3 sentences. From this goal my other writing traits came naturally. When starting a paragraph, start off with a blunt statement that summarizes the paragraph…

It's worth making explicit: this helps native-language readers too! Scholarly papers full of garden path sentences are mocked for a reason. Convoluted writing is hard for everyone to understand.

I totally agree. When the word "accessible" comes up, people often think of disabled people who have permanent disabilities.

That's only a subsection of how accessibility helps - there's temporal accessibility and cultural accessibility (and probably even more facets). Curb cutouts and automatic doors help people with wheelchairs. But it also helps people carrying large packages in their hands, or are riding a bike.

Similarly, accessible writing helps people who are feeling tired, are distracted, or are trying to skim the material.

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#105

Post by horsawlarway »

bregma wrote: post #60
horsawlarway wrote: post #8

Some of these are clear improvements - but many of them are simplifications that lose depth and nuance. The world is filled with detail, tailoring text to meet the needs of people unable to grasp that detail does not remove it - It obfuscates it. Sometimes simple and direct language is good. Sometimes it makes the entire conversation devoid of usefulness or meaning. Work to understand which context is appropriate for…

> Some of these are clear improvements - but many of them are simplifications that lose depth and nuance. Some of these make writing better. Many of them just leave words out and don't say as much. > The world is filled with detail, tailoring text to meet the needs of people unable to grasp that detail does not remove it - It obfuscates it. There is a lot of stuff around us. Using words meant only for people who do n…

I actually love this comment, since it's a near perfect example of what I mean.

Your first 3 re-writes all lose some of their meaning in the simplified form. The last one is basically fine.

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#106

Post by gnuvince »

b3morales wrote: post #38
zschuessler wrote: post #12

These tips were centered around simplification, and they are good tips. For documentation and technical writing in particular, I picked up a few mannerisms that I now use every time I write. The biggest impact has been to have a goal of limiting a paragraph to 2-3 sentences. From this goal my other writing traits came naturally. When starting a paragraph, start off with a blunt statement that summarizes the paragraph…

It's worth making explicit: this helps native-language readers too! Scholarly papers full of garden path sentences are mocked for a reason. Convoluted writing is hard for everyone to understand.

> full of garden path sentences

FYI, as a non-native English speaker, I have no idea what a "garden path sentence" means.

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#107

Post by gnuvince »

dragonwriter wrote: post #103
strken wrote: post #102

The style of the plain English translation is hard for me to read, because it avoids commas to lower the sentence length. Is there any evidence that replacing a comma with a full stop makes a sentence easier to read, or is it just an unintended consequence of the metric?

> Is there any evidence that replacing a comma with a full stop makes a sentence easier to read You can't generally make two grammatically-correct English sentences by starting with one and swapping a comma for a full stop, and if you can find a case where you can, it probably doesn't preserve meaning, even in the approximate (losing distinctions of how tightly coupled ideas are) sense you can with a semicolon rather…

It's a bit funny to me that a reply about the value of short sentences starts with a sentence of 58 words (including the parenthetical).

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#108

Post by AlchemistCamp »

zschuessler wrote: post #12

These tips were centered around simplification, and they are good tips. For documentation and technical writing in particular, I picked up a few mannerisms that I now use every time I write. The biggest impact has been to have a goal of limiting a paragraph to 2-3 sentences. From this goal my other writing traits came naturally. When starting a paragraph, start off with a blunt statement that summarizes the paragraph…

> The biggest impact has been to have a goal of limiting a paragraph to 2-3 sentences. From this goal my other writing traits came naturally.

This makes your writing, including the comment I'm responding to, slower and harder to read. Paragraphs give text a higher level structure by logically grouping related sentences. Without that grouping, it's a soup of needlessly double-spaced sentences strewn across too much vertical space.

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#109

Post by devilbunny »

gnuvince wrote: post #106
b3morales wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth making explicit: this helps native-language readers too! Scholarly papers full of garden path sentences are mocked for a reason. Convoluted writing is hard for everyone to understand.

> full of garden path sentences FYI, as a non-native English speaker, I have no idea what a "garden path sentence" means.

English gardens are often designed to appear wild. A garden path wanders, showing you only a small amount of what is there at any moment. Thus a "garden path sentence" is one that wanders from one subject to another. You are meant to enjoy the experience of walking through it, not the beauty of the master plan of angles and viewpoints (as compared to most Continental gardens, like Versailles or Schoenbrunn). There are exceptions on both sides, of course.

But the point is that "garden path sentence[s]" are more random, more free and loose.

Re: What makes writing more readable?

#110

Post by strken »

dragonwriter wrote: post #103
strken wrote: post #102

The style of the plain English translation is hard for me to read, because it avoids commas to lower the sentence length. Is there any evidence that replacing a comma with a full stop makes a sentence easier to read, or is it just an unintended consequence of the metric?

> Is there any evidence that replacing a comma with a full stop makes a sentence easier to read You can't generally make two grammatically-correct English sentences by starting with one and swapping a comma for a full stop, and if you can find a case where you can, it probably doesn't preserve meaning, even in the approximate (losing distinctions of how tightly coupled ideas are) sense you can with a semicolon rather…

You can't generally do it. But you can write like this. To artificially reduce sentence length. And it is really difficult to read. For a native English speaker.

It also seems like that style of writing in particular probably doesn't help reading comprehension, even though shorter sentence in general do.

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