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Five Paragraph Essays

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Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#61

Post by ijk »

grellas wrote: post #29

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…

> 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.

Caveat: rigid formats are de rigueur in some poetry, such as sonnets and haiku. Though if press releases were customarily haikus, I think everyone would be happier.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#62

Post by tcpekin »

munin wrote: post #55
antiterra wrote: post #2

It's liberating and exciting when you learn there are tons of established structural patterns more interesting than five paragraph and you're expected to use and modify them. Then you have to relearn the five paragraph essay for the GRE, and it's worse than the first time.

the GRE doesn't look for a 5 paragraph essay format, I never use one and I repeatably score above the 95th percentile.

Why do you take the GRE often??

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#63

Post by Theodores »

raymondduke wrote: post #34

As a copywriter, I know that the better you are at fine writing, the more of a disadvantage you are in. When you write to sell, you want the focus to be on the product - not your smooth talking voice. Imagine a salesperson using poetry to sell you something. Although it would be entertaining, it would not help sell the product. Don't write to entertain. Don't write to make YOU sound better. Write for THEM. The proble…

Correct - write for them!

The amount of people that can write at the standard people on HN use for a well thought out comment is low. Very low. This also includes people with degrees. The vast majority of the population are as articulate with written language as your average YouTube poster.

Clearly most people can read a higher standard of writing than they can write themselves, particularly if it is a subject that interests them. If you are expecting a response on a one to one basis, e.g. an email, then writing at the top of your craft really might not be the best thing to do. Your well written feature length English and all of those big words might come across as intimidating. This factor means you may not get a response. Writing something simpler, i.e. to not show off one's mastery of the language might get a better result.

Far too often in academia you have people using big words without really knowing what they mean, as if they are using the thesaurus a little too often. Or they use buzzwords and acronyms when simple English will do. It is as if some people have a false idea of what it is to write properly. They try to impress but fail. They then enter the world of business and try to write the same way, caught up in trying to use big words rather than focusing on a simple message.

So yes, write for THEM. At times, to a wider audience this might mean writing at a level found in a tabloid newspaper, which is okay if done properly.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#64

Post by jerf »

adamzerner wrote: post #50
jerf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> The problem with the 5 paragraph essay is that it isn't a rule of thumb 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.

Rarely isn't never. That's not a substitute for an argument and I observe you don't even attempt to give an example where this would be an actual correct choice. I have a good guess why. This format is guaranteed by design to produce a stilted, low-information content essay that is neither informative, nor persuasive, nor entertaining, moreso than an essay freed from the artificially-imposed shackle of "we need an essay format that can be rapidly graded by people in an objective manner without reference to the actual content, indeed perhaps even by computer". Which is, after all, where the 5-paragraph form comes from, and why it lives. It really shouldn't be that surprising why it's such a bad idea to use it for anything you're not being graded on (and graded so superficially, too).

One might as well try to defend scales as being a valid form of music that should be performed in front of thousands of people. (And I mean literal, raw scales, not something that works a scale into a piece, for which there is no meaningful equivalent in this writing context.) Even if someone did that, it would be as some sort of artistic comment on listeners or the nature of art or something (see 4'33"), not because they have any reason to be performed in front of an audience.

By the way, since this may seem a bizarre amount of passion on the topic, what cheeses me off is that we TEACH this as the One True Essay Format. (See the beginning of the linked story.) I just can't believe the unnecessary harm we do with this. Even with my relatively low opinion of the ability of current formal schooling to educate, this still surprises me as a bizarre choice. So if I sound like I'd like everyone reading this to come away with the idea that this format ought to have a stake driven through it and you should never use it, it's just my feeble attempt to undo years of terrible schooling in a handful of paragraphs.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#65

Post by hkmurakami »

munin wrote: post #55
antiterra wrote: post #2

It's liberating and exciting when you learn there are tons of established structural patterns more interesting than five paragraph and you're expected to use and modify them. Then you have to relearn the five paragraph essay for the GRE, and it's worse than the first time.

the GRE doesn't look for a 5 paragraph essay format, I never use one and I repeatably score above the 95th percentile.

I used the 5 paragraph essay format for both the GRE and GMAT and never got anything other than perfect scores on them :/

You don't need that structure, but for what they are looking for, it does often make your life easier.

Then again the essay part is the most pointless part for those pointless tests.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#66

Post by seanmcdirmid »

overgard wrote: post #39

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…

Take a strong position in your writing at the beginning. After the climax of your piece (write cinematically also), you can be a bit more conciliatory and critical of your strong position, because your reader will be also, but only after hooking them pre climax.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#67

Post by jamesbritt »

ijk wrote: post #61
grellas wrote: post #29

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…

> 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. Caveat: rigid formats are de rigueur in some poetry, such as sonnets and haiku. Though if press releases were customarily haikus, I think everyone would be happier.

Though if press releases were customarily haikus, I think everyone would be happier.

I'd settle for limericks.

For all the perceived annoyances of rigid formats they seem to have the benefit of forcing you to really think about what you want to say.

I've done a few Ignite talks, and one talk following the pechakucha format, and they are fairly demanding. I generally start preparing for such talks by writing out an essay of what I hope to cover. It's always way too long. So then comes the hard part: culling the cruft so that your limited time is well spent.

I've come to believe that this is a good way to prepare for any talk. First create the Ignite/pechakucha version, then think carefully about what deserves expansion.

I've not done this with essays. Perhaps, though, there's something to be gained by first drafting an essay as a sonnet, or a series of haikus (or limericks, for that matter).

Then expand as needed. If nothing else the final result should have a number of memorable poetic phrases. Or double-entendres.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#68

Post by jamesbritt »

mcgwiz wrote: post #52
grellas wrote: post #29

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…

Thoughtful comment, but I want to point out that your basis is misleading. His essential point goes beyond eschewing formula, to specifically recommending people use a spoken voice style. The rationale that I infer is that when people sit down to "write", they enter "writing mode". Writing mode is laden with dogmatic baggage. But the ultimate goal is to communicate, not perform ritual. And since people communicate su…

And since people communicate successfully all the time through speech ...

Yes, but. Much speech is filled with hedge words, convoluted phrases, and I'm-still-not-sure-what-point-I-am-making discourse. That stuff needs to go.

There's a fair amount of writing that comes across as if it were literally transcribed from an off-the-cuff spoken exposition, and it is distracting.

In casual speaking it's OK to say, "At this point in time", or, "Let me explain", or, "due to the fact", but if you're taking the time to write you can take the time cut the filler as well.

I much prefer a conversational tone in writing but it works best with some careful editing.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#69

Post by michaelochurch »

Pardon anyone who thinks I'm taking this off the rails to discuss VC instead of writing-- you read that right; I don't need a pardon-- but the easy-to-grade, 5-paragraph stencil essay is a perfect metaphor for the venture-funded startup: creatively immature, built to impress and fill a templateable need (funding pitch, acq-hire) rather than to purpose, formulaic and easy to crank out even on a deadline.

Ok, I won the thread and I'm taking it home with me.

Re: Five Paragraph Essays

#70

Post by nkarpov »

jerf wrote: post #46
adamzerner wrote: post #9

> 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…

I agree that it's a terrible format but why exactly is it a bad format to be graded on? If you are able to construct a good 5 paragraph essay then you certainly have demonstrated the ability to make a point, come up with arguments to support that point, coherently link them together, and finally to write them down using the language of your choice.

You're right - the format doesn't show up outside of school. And if we were being bombarded by 5 paragraph essays in the "real world" then we'd certainly have a lot of justification to this entire thread. But we don't. You just proved it. So what's the issue here?

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