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Rules of good writing (2007)
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Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#12[flagged]
Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#13Earlier 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…
VSO is kinda like AT&T-syntax x86 assembly, if you identify subject with source and object with destination:
add %rdi, %raxRe: Rules of good writing (2007)
#14> Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences. Yes. (Hemingway).
The Hemingway editor is great for word pruning [0].
Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#15[flagged]
You're not wrong, but you're not going to convince anyone like this.
Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#16[flagged]
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Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#17Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#18The first three paragraphs are good advice for business writing. Strunk made the same point with "Omit needless words".
If you approach (or would like to approach) writing more from the perspective of a craft rather than meeting KPIs, Stephen King's On Writing is great.
Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#19Surely. 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…
PG is not influential because of his writing though. His name is what gets his writing circulated, so I'm not sure if it's a good couter example.
Re: Rules of good writing (2007)
#20Surely. 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…
PG is not influential because of his writing though. His name is what gets his writing circulated, so I'm not sure if it's a good couter example.
He became well-known via his writing in the early-mid 00s; first his book about Lisp then his essays that became popular on Slashdot. His investing happened as a consequence of his writing.