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Rules of good writing (2007)

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Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#81

Post by irchans »

phs318u wrote: post #39
irchans wrote: post #32

I believer there is an error in "Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)". It should be, "the SUBJECT (the boy) before the action (the hitting)." (I added caps for emphasis.)

> "the boy hit the ball" In this sentence, boy=subject, hit=verb, ball=object. > All brains work that way. If language sentence structure reflects how brains think, then that's not entirely true. While most languages are SVO (subject-verb-object), not all are. Japanese is SOV (subject-object-verb), while biblical Hebrew is/was VSO (verb-subject-object). I'm sure there are other variations. EDIT: it just occurred to m…

Forth :) It's been like 30 years since I the last time I wrote a Forth program that was more than 10 lines long---fond memories.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#82

Post by n4r9 »

raincole wrote: post #9

Surely. Then you check Paul Graham, whose writing is influential in the world of startup, and find most of them are very long. Arguably unnecessarily so. Perhaps it's a tech startup thing? After all programmers are not famous for their refined literary taste. And then you check the few LitMag that people care enough to pay for even when the content is available for free, like Clarkesworld or BCS. Then you find senten…

Graham writes in punchy sentences. But I often find the overall thrust uncompelling. He has a habit of waffling whilst glossing over nuance. I suspect you're right: writing for entrepeneurs is a slightly different skillset.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#84

Post by [deleted] »

MangoToupe wrote: post #35
mtlynch wrote: post #4

> Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. I agree with this, but I doubt that all brains work this way. It's probably true of almost all English speakers. I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sent…

Imagine how boring literature (or really most sorts of writing) would be if we optimized it around theories of linguistic efficiency rather than taste. I'm left entirely unconvinced.

[deleted]

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#85

Post by jameshart »

GGByron wrote: post #60
jameshart wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the counterargument to this simplistic assertion is that "The boy was hit by a ball" seems equally legible to me to "A ball hit the boy". If you're quickly reporting the details of an accident to a doctor and it's crucial to get the information across quickly, I think many speakers would still start with "He was hit by a ball", not "A ball hit him." We're not interested in assigning agency to the ball here, w…

"I think many speakers would still start with "He was hit by a ball", not "A ball hit him." We're not interested in assigning agency to the ball here, we're interested in the effects on the boy." And you don't favor the shorter message?

I don’t think I would. But not willing to stage a real life experiment where I need to convey this information in an emergency to test my hypothesis.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#87

Post by kofta »

mackeye wrote: post #7
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 80% of the world's languages are classified as SVO or SOV, actually, and probably over 90% of all first language speakers today speak one of these two. Their overwhelming dominance compared to the other four possibilities have led researchers to conclude there may actually be a cognitive benefit to putting the subject first.

arabic can be VSO or SVO. i'm rather new to the langauge but tend to prefer VSO when writing, even as a native english speaker, which gets me to wonder if theres a correlation somewhere between arabic proficiency, other known languages, and VSO/SVO preference. my preference might come from the relative conciseness of VSO in arabic though; often placing the subject before the verb is a bit redundant given context. i'm…

adding to this, besides VSO and SVO. Arabic can also write in OSV and OVS, not very popular in day-to-day use, but is often found in more traditional contexts. What is more interesting is: Diacritical marks (aka vowels) in Arabic can completely alter what is subject and object!

They are a bit similar to strong types in programming, you can have one sentence, and by changing its marks/diacritics (specifically called short vowels), you change what gets to be subject or object.

This is why Arabic poetry (especially Pre-Isalmic) is very interesting in its expressivenss and structural complexity even in the shortest poems (reminds me of code-golfing).

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