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Write simply (2021)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Write simply (2021)

#111

Post by dqv »

paulpauper wrote: post #10

This may be good advice for an instruction manual or children's books, but I think good prose is something of an art in and of itself. Some of the most successful writers do the opposite. Look at the articles that go viral ..you see that the prose is varied and even complicated, not just simple. The best prose is that which conveys the intended message for the intended audience in the best way possible. I think it's…

"Write simply" is given as advice because, well, it's good advice. Too many writers try to ball before they crawl.

A memorable critique, from an English professor, of my writing: "stop trying to sound smart". He meant that I should stop trying to use big words and stop trying to construct complex sentences.

>People state they want/like simple writing but revealed preferences show otherwise.

Simplicity isn't what you think it is. The simplicity people want is sentences that flow regardless of complexity. You say complicated, I say clunky. An author might use a complex sentence to coalesce several ideas, but if that complexity, because the construction interrupts the flow, requires the audience to reread the sentence, the author has failed.

That's how we arrive at simplicity. I find it easier to pepper diversity into my prose ex post facto than try during first draft. Connecting two simple sentences is less work than unwinding a complicated sentence.

The advice isn't really to leave your writing simple, it's to start simple. At some point, you will be required to use a complex sentence to connect ideas.

Re: Write simply (2021)

#112

Post by vzaliva »

There is a reason there are so many words in the dictionary. They communicate different, nuanced shades of meaning and emotion. Same with the grammar going beyond simple sentences. Dumbing down your prose, you lose all that power. Indeed, all this subtlety will be lost on the reader, who does not appreciate or understand it. So you should know your reader but aim not for the lowest possible denominator but close to the limit of their comprehension and appreciation. This way, you will have at your disposal of the full power of the language.

Re: Write simply (2021)

#113

Post by dang »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #105
dang wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, please count me as pseudo intellectual also, because pg is one of the smartest people I've met and I continue to be in awe of how his mind works. I know it's silly to post such a thing, as the bias/conflict of interest is obvious and it will inevitably come across wrong—but I've thought and said this long before I met pg or had any connection to YC, so if there's a causal arrow it goes the other way.…

For what it’s worth, I really loved this relaxed style of writing. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you seem to enjoy yourself. > It used to be a truism that one should "think for oneself" (and even "question authority"!)—not so much anymore—but although we all tell ourselves we do that, most of us don't. We get beaten up when we do. The part that people envy isn’t his money, it’s his freedom. Incidentally, if you…

I think you're right that lack of freedom (or perceived lack of it) is at the root of the "how dare he" reaction. But I'm convinced that pg was always this way. It's a big mistake to think "he's free because he's well off". No; he's well off because, for whatever reason, he behaves as if he's free. I don't think pg was always "in pg's position". I bet if we had known him at 10 he would have been the same way.

The important question is to figure out what one needs to do to become free (i.e. to feel free) oneself. How do you get from your initial conditions to that state? I've basically devoted my life, so far, to that question and I'm still at it.

p.s. I comment like this on HN pretty regularly; those comments are just drowned out by "if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules in the future, we'd sure appreciate it lol xoxo"

Re: Write simply (2021)

#114

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

"it's more considerate to write simply. When you write in a fancy way to impress people"

"When I write a sentence that seems too complicated, or that uses unnecessarily intellectual words, it doesn't seem fancy to me. It seems clumsy."

So apparently the dimensions are writing simply ⮂ writing fancy, which actually gets reduced to writing simply ⮂ writing clumsy. This implies that any writing which is not clumsy is written simply, therefore the best samples of simply writing is something akin to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Heidegger's Being and Time, or Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, for they are the pinnacle of non-clumsy word strings, no sign in those texts is extraneous, however they also are the pinnacle of extremely dense ideas, requiring multiple library shelves to be understood. Something does not follow.

Although, granted, if Kant indeed gave us a specification for artificial intelligence [1] in the form of a post-medieval, transitory Latin to German compendium, a vade mecum if you will, 150+ years prior to the invention of the Turing machine, well, I suppose he couldn't write simply-er than he did.

[1] https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~re14/Evans-R-2020-PhD-Thesis.pdf

Re: Write simply (2021)

#115

Post by paulpauper »

WA wrote: post #91
paulpauper wrote: post #10

This may be good advice for an instruction manual or children's books, but I think good prose is something of an art in and of itself. Some of the most successful writers do the opposite. Look at the articles that go viral ..you see that the prose is varied and even complicated, not just simple. The best prose is that which conveys the intended message for the intended audience in the best way possible. I think it's…

I know zero articles that went viral with varied and complicated prose. Care to share an example or two?

Curtis Yarvin built an entire writing career doing the opposite of this advice, too. Same for David Foster Wallace. Many others.

Re: Write simply (2021)

#116

Post by dang »

Slighted wrote: post #107
dang wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know any "big name programmers" but this is definitely a thing socially. Think actors and musicians commenting on social causes and whatnot.

When I was writing my post Jamie Zawinski (The "Mozilla guy") was what I had in mind. A great programmer but very outspoken in his social views to the point that he's entirely disconnected from reality. Lacking perspective. This is a blog post of his that I find to be one of the better examples of what I'm referring to: https://web.archive.org/web/20221211061513/https://www.jwz.o...

In that case I have to recuse myself because of the hairy balls thing.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Write simply (2021)

#117

Post by sillysaurusx »

dang wrote: post #113
sillysaurusx wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it’s worth, I really loved this relaxed style of writing. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen you seem to enjoy yourself. > It used to be a truism that one should "think for oneself" (and even "question authority"!)—not so much anymore—but although we all tell ourselves we do that, most of us don't. We get beaten up when we do. The part that people envy isn’t his money, it’s his freedom. Incidentally, if you…

I think you're right that lack of freedom (or perceived lack of it) is at the root of the "how dare he" reaction. But I'm convinced that pg was always this way. It's a big mistake to think "he's free because he's well off". No; he's well off because, for whatever reason, he behaves as if he's free. I don't think pg was always "in pg's position". I bet if we had known him at 10 he would have been the same way. The imp…

Perhaps, but you don’t write about lisp the way you write about pg. The enthusiasm is infectious.

If you met yourself at 10 and wanted to transmit some advice about what you need to do to feel free, what would you say? (I’m curious if you’ve made progress towards answering the question, or if it’s as elusive as it sounds.)

Re: Write simply (2021)

#118

Post by littlelady »

One of the things missing from Mr. Graham's musings is the context, e.g. academic, business. And a at least some clarification of what fancy words and sentence structure are.

Mr. Graham doesn't use the term, but purple prose odious to read and I would agree that complicated writing is often used (e.g. in academia) to obfuscate the key message and bolster weak arguments. On the other end of the spectrum too much simplicity is exhausting to read; short, unvaried sentences are boring. For informative writing, I agree that ideas should be clearly and concisely expressed for the intended audience. For this purpose I'd highly recommend "Make it Clear" by Patrick Winston, who was known for his work in AI, but also a lecture series at MIT called "How to Speak".

Which words are deemed "fancy" in the English language requires knowledge of fluent English and jargon of the intended reader. For a native German speaker the word "ersatz" is commonplace, but it probably isn't familiar to many Americans. Likewise, Germans prefer "fancy" passive constructions--sentences that feel inelegant to English speakers, sound fine to Germans.

Re: Write simply (2021)

#119

Post by dang »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #117
dang wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right that lack of freedom (or perceived lack of it) is at the root of the "how dare he" reaction. But I'm convinced that pg was always this way. It's a big mistake to think "he's free because he's well off". No; he's well off because, for whatever reason, he behaves as if he's free. I don't think pg was always "in pg's position". I bet if we had known him at 10 he would have been the same way. The imp…

Perhaps, but you don’t write about lisp the way you write about pg. The enthusiasm is infectious. If you met yourself at 10 and wanted to transmit some advice about what you need to do to feel free, what would you say? (I’m curious if you’ve made progress towards answering the question, or if it’s as elusive as it sounds.)

I've made progress but it's not easy to gauge how much.

10 is too early for the "what would you tell yourself" question. At 10 you don't yet have a self that can be retroactively told things to. I suppose I would say "it's all ok and you're ok and it's all happening for a reason".

To my 15 year-old self and later, I would say: it's not going to be anything like you expect, so trust what happens and try not to resist.

Re: Write simply (2021)

#120

Post by bolanyo »

Uehreka wrote: post #108
WA wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know zero articles that went viral with varied and complicated prose. Care to share an example or two?

Try five: - https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-dropped-acid-and-saw-into-th... - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf - https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview - https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minis...

Slate Star Codex in particular has a way of pushing the indulgence in his essays beyond what seems possible. When I read the one on Moloch, I thought "this is an idea I am extremely familiar with, expanded to 100 times the necessary word count", but now, when I consider the effects of market optimization, I think of that essay.
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