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Seven Sins of Writing

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Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#101

Post by KineticLensman »

rwoerz wrote: post #96

Some sins of technical writing: Undefined/vague abstractions or methaphors: Leave the meaning of notoriously overloaded terms like component, plugin, container etc. unexplained in your specific context of writing. Homonyms: One term has several meanings. E.g., "server" is either a machine or a OS process. Synonyms: One meaning has several terms. E.g., "module" and "project" in Maven. No examples: Only rely on the rea…

One that annoys me is when authors use multiple different terms for the same thing. In fiction, variety can be excellent, but in technical writing, it really adds to the readers' workload. I remember reviewing a doc where, depending on which section you were reading, the terms 'design', 'architecture' 'system' and IIRC 'component framework' were used interchangeably. This made following the reasoning hard because the doc was itself a review of two distinct technical solutions.

This often happens when a doc has multiple authors and no global consistency checking.

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#102

Post by didntcheck »

enkid wrote: post #13
grahamlee wrote: post #2

“Avoid the passive voice” is a rule that annoys me. Sometimes, the rule that’s annoying is more important than the person that’s being annoyed.

The problem is that most people who say this don't know what the passive voice means. What they want to say is make the most important noun in the sentence the subject and keep the subject near the beginning of the sentence. That concept is only tangentially related to the grammatical voice being used.

Sometimes passive voice is the best way to do that though, because the subject of the action is more important (e.g. the target of a shooting rather than the shooter). Using active voice would either put the important person at the end, or might require you to find an alternative verb with reversed arguments, resulting in more awkward phrasing

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#103

Post by jraph »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #76
Tomte wrote: post #70

Regarding the passive: you should read Joseph M. Williams' "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace" that discusses where the passive voice is preferable to the active voice. Namely when it creates better cohesion and flow. The whole idea behind Williams' (and Gopen's and McEnerny's – they are all from the University of Chicago) style is that you should arrange your words so that they sit in the correct positions. Na…

> Regarding the passive: you should read Joseph M. Williams' "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace" that discusses where the passive voice is preferable to the active voice. Namely when it creates better cohesion and flow. Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if…

Ah ah.

I don't get those two though:

> Verbs have to agree with their subjects

> Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#104

Post by enkid »

didntcheck wrote: post #102
enkid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that most people who say this don't know what the passive voice means. What they want to say is make the most important noun in the sentence the subject and keep the subject near the beginning of the sentence. That concept is only tangentially related to the grammatical voice being used.

Sometimes passive voice is the best way to do that though, because the subject of the action is more important (e.g. the target of a shooting rather than the shooter). Using active voice would either put the important person at the end, or might require you to find an alternative verb with reversed arguments, resulting in more awkward phrasing

Yes, passive voice is used effectively all the time. The rule was created by grammarian's who didn't understand its effectiveness or overstated its necessity. Judgement should be used to determine when it works.

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#106

Post by arp242 »

tylerhou wrote: post #63
Gunax wrote: post #17

My disappointment in my education is how much these rules were emphasized over content. The hard part of writing is content--not syntax. Just like programming is about logic, and syntax is a minor nitpick one needs to know. But I think the real reason these rules were emphasized so much is that they are easy to grade and explain.

If you’ve ever read students’ writing, you’d immediately understand why these rules exist. Many students can’t get the basics down — and their writing is borderline illegible. How are they supposed to master content when they can’t master form?

I don't think these kind of rules are a good way to master form, either.

The occasional mixing up of "its" and "it's" (or even "you're" and "your") really isn't the major problem; this rarely causes confusion or makes text flow bad. Even though it looks sloppy in professional writing, it's fine in a great many contexts.

One of the so-called "illogical" examples is "Walking back from the village, my wallet was lost", because apparently "Does your wallet walk?", and the the "correct" is "Walking back from the village, I lost my wallet", which is basically the same sentence for everyone because no one was confused about a walking wallet in the first example (I personally don't like either by the way, and would write "I lost my wallet while walking back from the village").

Good writing is mainly about whether 1) text reads and "flows" fluidly, and 2) if it gets the point across. My main trick to get this right is to read things out loud in my head, but there are probably other ways, some of which may be better. It's certainly not about boring spelling details or personal preferences.

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#107

Post by arp242 »

racktash wrote: post #74
msla wrote: post #3

Be clear about what the passive voice is: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922 > It is clear that some people think The bus blew up is in the passive; that The case took on racial overtones is in the passive; that Dr. Reuben deeply regrets that this happened is in the passive; and so on. (Needless to say, none of those are in the passive voice. Of course, some people think questions are in the passive voice,…

I was surprised when reading The Sense of Style by Pinker (not a book I would recommend incidentally) that the use of 'they' as a generic pronoun was still considered controversial. Pinker opts to alternate his chapters with he, then she, then he again – he explains this is to avoid the issue of having to otherwise use he/she type constructs. Had he used 'they', I would've never thought anything of it. Maybe it's a g…

Pinker is 68; it was extremely uncommon to use "they" for most of his life. I can completely understand it just sounds "wrong" to him, because it really is quite a radical shift to how the word was used (none of this "it's been in use since the 14th century" bollocks please; it fell out of use since well before Pinker was born – you would be unable to even understand English as spoken in the 14th century because it's a different language – it's a bad faith bullshit argument)

I've been using 'they' as a generic pronoun since before it was cool, but I'm also not a native English speaker and a lot younger. In my native Dutch there isn't really a good equivalent of a gender-neutral 'they', but people have tried to introduce it in recent years and it all just sounds spectacularly wrong to me, because I guess my brain is hard-wired to consider these things wrong.

Changing language takes time.

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#108

Post by thfuran »

didntcheck wrote: post #99
cebert wrote: post #5

I’ve always seen recommendations to avoid passive voice in writing. However, when I encounter passive voice it doesn’t bother me. It also is one of my more frequent writing mistakes. Is this still considered bad practice?

It's not a mistake or bad practice at all. I really don't understand the hate for passive voice in style guides (particularly American ones, IME). It's like saying "palm muting is the first sin of guitar playing". No, it's a valid aesthetic choice that everyone will have a different subjective opinion on in different contexts. There are also many contexts when the subject of the verb is of little importance, so passi…

>people generally aren't stupid enough to not notice you dodging just because you did it in passive

But if you write in passive voice for no particular reason, they may think you are when you weren't trying to.

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#109

Post by bitwize »

fasterik wrote: post #14
martinjacobd wrote: post #6

I wish I understood what "wordiness" means. Perhaps it's restating the same simple point three times in as many loose sentences. People who harp on this point usually point to the writing of Hemingway and similar writers (Carver comes to mind). All of these men are better writers than I am, but I still prefer to read Nabokov. Could Nabokov have "made his point" in fewer words? Almost certainly, but I wouldn't have en…

It's a lot more obvious in academic writing and other non-fiction. Using a lot of big words to make a simple point is often a sign that the writer is trying to signal intelligence rather than convey information. In literature the goals are different, but I still think the rule applies in most cases. Nabokov is the exception that proves the rule. Great writers have earned the right to be wordy. When an average writer…

We see this today in movies. Whatever his faults, Joss Whedon is a damn good writer. But today we have a surfeit of inferior writers who make their characters sound "quippy" in imitation of Whedon and these characters become fatiguing to watch.

Re: Seven Sins of Writing

#110

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Denote6737 wrote: post #62
martinjacobd wrote: post #6

I wish I understood what "wordiness" means. Perhaps it's restating the same simple point three times in as many loose sentences. People who harp on this point usually point to the writing of Hemingway and similar writers (Carver comes to mind). All of these men are better writers than I am, but I still prefer to read Nabokov. Could Nabokov have "made his point" in fewer words? Almost certainly, but I wouldn't have en…

To understand wordiness read any of Dickens with the fact he was paid based on the length of the book. Not the sales. He will describe, in excruciating detail, the inconsiquential aspects of a one time characters outfit.

I could use that. I recently read a novel that had a secondary character - incorporeal being - but it had no description of appearance. Aaaargh. How I should see it?
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