41–50 of 74 posts
A nice post whose essential point is that you should eschew formulaic methods of writing that force you to fit your thoughts into a rigid format and thus hamper your ability to express them in a way that best suits the subject. Writing style most definitely ought to be customized for its subject and context. Some say to write simply. This can be good. You engage your reader. You use active voice. You limit adverbs. Y…
[1] Reification vs Abstraction; [2] E-prime vs Evaluation; [3] Active Voice vs Passive Voice; [4] Germanic vs Latin; [5] Specific Diction vs Concatenated Adverbs; Here's a list of the writing ideas (in no particular order) which I've found most helpful. Eveything has its time and place. But as a heuristic, left-side items are better than right-side items. A few explanatory links off the top of my head: [1] http://les…
Q: is there software to transcribe instead of sending it to a virtual assistant (e.g. on the mac?)
A nice post whose essential point is that you should eschew formulaic methods of writing that force you to fit your thoughts into a rigid format and thus hamper your ability to express them in a way that best suits the subject. Writing style most definitely ought to be customized for its subject and context. Some say to write simply. This can be good. You engage your reader. You use active voice. You limit adverbs. Y…
Technical writing is particularly prone to being bogged down in dry, formal, jargon-filled prose -- particularly in documentation or research (anyone trying to glean insight from the MSDN documentation has probably experienced this). Sometimes a punchy, example-driven blog post can explain more than a formal essay filled with abstract reasoning.
[1] Reification vs Abstraction; [2] E-prime vs Evaluation; [3] Active Voice vs Passive Voice; [4] Germanic vs Latin; [5] Specific Diction vs Concatenated Adverbs; Here's a list of the writing ideas (in no particular order) which I've found most helpful. Eveything has its time and place. But as a heuristic, left-side items are better than right-side items. A few explanatory links off the top of my head: [1] http://les…
What do you mean by Germanic vs. Latin?
> To become a better writer you have to stop writing and start speaking. I loved it right up until that point. The problem with the 5 paragraph essay, is that it's a rule-of-thumb. It's a good guide, but isn't necessarily appropriate. People seem like they always want to prescribe 'the rule to follow to do x'. Their 'rule' ends up being a rule-of-thumb, and then smart people dissect its inadequacies. I think that's w…
The problem with the 5 paragraph essay is that it isn't a rule of thumb, it isn't a good guide, and it is never appropriate. Except maybe as a brief skeleton to build a student's understanding of longer-form writing on, to be discarded in the next assignment or two, but to be grading outgoing seniors from high school on it (and so rigidly!) is an atrocity.
Try to find one in the wild, one that was never a school assignment (so no published student homework or anything). Go on. Try it. Find one on HN comment page. (A different page. I'm sure someone will at some point float a 5P essay here as a response to be funny... the thought crossed my mind to try to do this exact criticism in this style, but ye gods is it a worthless style to communicate in and I didn't feel like sacrificing my point for the meager humor that would be produced.) Find one in a newspaper or magazine. Find one in a blog post. Find one in a well-regarded historical work on philosophy. And remember, it's not just a mere "it has five paragraphs", but a very proscribed schema that is at least:
1. Thesis paragraph, 5 sentences
2. Support point #1, 5 sentences
3. Support point #2, 5 sentences
4. Support point #3, 5 sentences
5. Restatement of thesis, 5 sentences
I won't guarantee you can't. I will guarantee that you will be looking for a long time.
There is a reason for this.
[1] Reification vs Abstraction; [2] E-prime vs Evaluation; [3] Active Voice vs Passive Voice; [4] Germanic vs Latin; [5] Specific Diction vs Concatenated Adverbs; Here's a list of the writing ideas (in no particular order) which I've found most helpful. Eveything has its time and place. But as a heuristic, left-side items are better than right-side items. A few explanatory links off the top of my head: [1] http://les…
What do you mean by Germanic vs. Latin?
> use simple, germanic words
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm :
> The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.
pg's essay "Writing, Briefly" mentions it in passing. So I assume that most HNer's are sorta familiar. The idea is that English words of Germanic etymology are usually simple, everyday words. E.g. "event, a lot, boring". English words of Latin etymology are usually flowery, pretentious words. E.g. "phenomenon, cornucopia, quotidian".
Latin words very abstract and hard to read. They often obscure meaning. Sometimes, they don't actually have any meaning. Sometimes, they're used as euphemisms. Germanic words are easier on the eyes and often evoke imagery of tangible objects.
I added links to my original post, because I realized that a single HN comment isn't enough to clearly explain my list.
A nice post whose essential point is that you should eschew formulaic methods of writing that force you to fit your thoughts into a rigid format and thus hamper your ability to express them in a way that best suits the subject. Writing style most definitely ought to be customized for its subject and context. Some say to write simply. This can be good. You engage your reader. You use active voice. You limit adverbs. Y…
As for structured vs informal writing, there’s an interesting experiment by a copywriter who set up a “framework“¹ (on Github) for writing copy (like those press releases, landing page taglines, etc.).
I wonder how the idea of “forkable” templates for pieces of written content could be developed further.
So here's something I just learned recently: be polarizing. By that, I don't mean be controversial for controversies sake (that's cheap). I mean that good writing has a point, and if you have a strong point people will be polarized by it, and that's actually a good thing. The worst writing I read (especially from myself) is writing that tries to hedge so it doesn't offend people. People SHOULD be offended. That's why…
Plenty of proverbs would disagree.
Oh darnit, you got me.
> To become a better writer you have to stop writing and start speaking. I loved it right up until that point. The problem with the 5 paragraph essay, is that it's a rule-of-thumb. It's a good guide, but isn't necessarily appropriate. People seem like they always want to prescribe 'the rule to follow to do x'. Their 'rule' ends up being a rule-of-thumb, and then smart people dissect its inadequacies. I think that's w…
"The problem with the 5 paragraph essay, is that it's a rule-of-thumb. It's a good guide, but isn't necessarily appropriate." The problem with the 5 paragraph essay is that it isn't a rule of thumb, it isn't a good guide, and it is never appropriate. Except maybe as a brief skeleton to build a student's understanding of longer-form writing on, to be discarded in the next assignment or two, but to be grading outgoing…
It definitely is a rule-of-thumb. You may not think it's a good one, but it still is one.
> it isn't a good guide, and it is never appropriate. Except maybe as...
Claims as strong as those are rarely true.