The great shift of English prose • Hacker News Board

Re: The great shift of English prose

#21

Post by retrac » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:50 AM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #8

"Man dog walk. Boy biscuit eat. Girl throw ball." are held up as examples of incorrect english, which is largely fair. However, none of those examples are actually ambiguous. I'm pretty sure that those examples translated word for word into any language would also be understandable.

You're cheating with your world knowledge to guide the parsing.

eat man lion. lion man eat. man eat lion. eat lion man.

Who is eating who? When formed according to English grammar it doesn't leave any ambiguity even if the phrase is improbable: "The biscuit has eaten the girl."

Linguistic topology is the study of patterns in languages according to structure. It's a niche topic which is unfortunate because certain patterns hint at something about the structure of human thought.

Such as with word order. Verb in the middle or at the start or at the end? Subject before verb or after verb? Object before verb or after verb? Every permutation does exist in some language.

But object before subject and verb is extremely rare. And in the few languages which do it that way they do not do consistently with it often only occurring in certain moods or certain conditions of syntactic alignment.

To the mind not natural Yoda's speech is.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#22

Post by CGMthrowaway » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:08 AM UTC

hodgehog11 wrote: post #15

I also see the shrinking sentence length celebrated among my scientific colleagues who abhor the dreaded "run-on sentence". Maybe it is because I have no formal literacy or linguistic training but I mourn this loss; older, classical novels used to have a tremendous flavor in their sentence structure by prioritizing the longform. Some English translations of Russian literature can run into the absurd (sentences at hal…

Yes. A long sentence can be thought of as a room, not a hallway.

I learned in high school lit that sentence length is an artistic choice as meaningful as word selection: long sentences can reflect stream of consciousness, recursive thought, associative or digressive exploration. Short sentences can reflect anxiety, urgency, vigilance, cognitive compression.

There are a lot of factors that have led to the decay of long sentences. Scientific writing norms, ubiquitous style guides like Strunk & White, modern distraction/multitasking/short(er)-form content, and my favorite, impoverished education - and the concomitant lack of trust in the reader on the part of the author.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#23

Post by nullorempty » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:45 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #13

nullorempty wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I'd be curious to know how it is better than any of the modern developed languages such as german, french, russian, chinese or japanese ( and many others ). I could see that english borrowed many words from other cultures but other languages borrow too on as needed basis.

I’d be curious to know why you’re making it a competition! Poster you replied to did no such comparisons.

Genuinely interested in the knowing the context for that remark.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#24

Post by bitwize » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:46 AM UTC

hodgehog11 wrote: post #15

I also see the shrinking sentence length celebrated among my scientific colleagues who abhor the dreaded "run-on sentence". Maybe it is because I have no formal literacy or linguistic training but I mourn this loss; older, classical novels used to have a tremendous flavor in their sentence structure by prioritizing the longform. Some English translations of Russian literature can run into the absurd (sentences at hal…

When I was a kid, I learned a run-on sentence was a sentence without adequate conjunctions or punctuations to mark and separate the clauses. E.g.: "My wife and I went to a concert we saw The Cure they were terrific." I still have a tendency to write long sentences, but sometimes when I go overboard (e.g., a whole paragraph turns out to be one long sentence) I might break it in two, for clarity. But I don't go to grug-speak extremes.

I think the preference for short sentences in today's prose is a lot like vocal fry among North American women: a deliberate attempt to sound young.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#25

Post by cyberax » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:00 AM UTC

hodgehog11 wrote: post #15

I also see the shrinking sentence length celebrated among my scientific colleagues who abhor the dreaded "run-on sentence". Maybe it is because I have no formal literacy or linguistic training but I mourn this loss; older, classical novels used to have a tremendous flavor in their sentence structure by prioritizing the longform. Some English translations of Russian literature can run into the absurd (sentences at hal…

Russian is much more conducive to long sentences because it's highly inflected. Adjectives have to agree with the nouns, and verbs can carry the grammatical gender and person markers. This all helps to keep the context clearer, the reader doesn't have to strain their brain to connect the clauses. So long-winded descriptions fit really well into the flow of the text.

It just feels more artificial and self-indulgent in English. As if the author wants to show off how well they can string together longer sentences, and it's up to you, the reader, to keep up with the magnanimousness of the author allowing their readers to glimpse upon their greatness.

Chinese novels are on the other side of the spectrum. The sentences simply can't be very long and but often don't have any connecting words between sentences. The readers have to infer.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#26

Post by AdieuToLogic » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:24 AM UTC

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #22

hodgehog11 wrote: post #15

I also see the shrinking sentence length celebrated among my scientific colleagues who abhor the dreaded "run-on sentence". Maybe it is because I have no formal literacy or linguistic training but I mourn this loss; older, classical novels used to have a tremendous flavor in their sentence structure by prioritizing the longform. Some English translations of Russian literature can run into the absurd (sentences at hal…

Yes. A long sentence can be thought of as a room, not a hallway. I learned in high school lit that sentence length is an artistic choice as meaningful as word selection: long sentences can reflect stream of consciousness, recursive thought, associative or digressive exploration. Short sentences can reflect anxiety, urgency, vigilance, cognitive compression. There are a lot of factors that have led to the decay of lon…

> Yes. A long sentence can be thought of as a room, not a hallway.

The irony of this post having an initial sentence consisting of one word is either a sublime statement regarding the topic at hand or an unintentional affirmation of the subsequent factors enumerated.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#27

Post by pointbob » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:37 AM UTC

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Re: The great shift of English prose

#28

Post by AdieuToLogic » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:37 AM UTC

readthenotes1 wrote: post #10

"Lots of English writing has got simpler through use of the plain style, sticking to a logical shared syntax, especially the syntax of speech. But all the other ways of writing are still there, often showing up when we don’t expect them." My first grade teacher told me never start a sentence with but or and. In this case, the second sentence could equally have been written as just another clause

>> "Lots of English writing has got simpler through ..."

> My first grade teacher told me never start a sentence with but or and.

One of my elementary school teachers also taught me to use past participles, which means the quote from the article should have been written thusly:

  Lots of English writing has gotten simpler through ...

It is amusing that an article dedicated to enumerating the degeneration of English prose uses simplistic sentence structure as well as malformed sentences, such as the above.

Re: The great shift of English prose

#29

Post by pointbob » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:38 AM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #25

hodgehog11 wrote: post #15

I also see the shrinking sentence length celebrated among my scientific colleagues who abhor the dreaded "run-on sentence". Maybe it is because I have no formal literacy or linguistic training but I mourn this loss; older, classical novels used to have a tremendous flavor in their sentence structure by prioritizing the longform. Some English translations of Russian literature can run into the absurd (sentences at hal…

Russian is much more conducive to long sentences because it's highly inflected. Adjectives have to agree with the nouns, and verbs can carry the grammatical gender and person markers. This all helps to keep the context clearer, the reader doesn't have to strain their brain to connect the clauses. So long-winded descriptions fit really well into the flow of the text. It just feels more artificial and self-indulgent in…

[dead]

Re: The great shift of English prose

#30

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 3:52 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #28

readthenotes1 wrote: post #10

"Lots of English writing has got simpler through use of the plain style, sticking to a logical shared syntax, especially the syntax of speech. But all the other ways of writing are still there, often showing up when we don’t expect them." My first grade teacher told me never start a sentence with but or and. In this case, the second sentence could equally have been written as just another clause

>> "Lots of English writing has got simpler through ..." > My first grade teacher told me never start a sentence with but or and. One of my elementary school teachers also taught me to use past participles, which means the quote from the article should have been written thusly: Lots of English writing has gotten simpler through ... It is amusing that an article dedicated to enumerating the degeneration of English pro…

Did your elementary school teacher make it clear whether you should pronounce the middle two t's in gotten as a glottal or a held stop? What do you think of that advice today? How might it vary depending on where in the anglophone world you live, and your age?