Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Write Like You Talk (2015)

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 152 posts

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#111

Post by freetime2 »

jameshart wrote: post #100
freetime2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "mercurial" does the trick in the quoted example, does Paul have a patch? How about: He said "After Altamira, all is decadence." That is the way I would probably phrase it if spoken. Assuming of course that "he" is clear from the context - if not I would use the subject's name.

And if you wanted to attribute that sentiment to some aspect of his character and/or nationality? I can perfectly well imagine saying out loud, in conversation or in a spoken presentation, something like "Being the mercurial Spaniard that he was, Picasso said 'After Altamira, all is decadence'". I don't think there's anything wrong with the vocabulary choices here, but there is a kind of journalistic writing style wh…

I would probably just omit the "mercurial Spaniard" part, which feels like fluff to me. The statement "After Altamira, all is decadence" is interesting enough that it can stand on its own without the author needing to dress it up any further or attribute it to some part of Picasso's character or nationality. Let the reader decide whether Picasso is being mercurial or how relevant it is that he is Spanish.

Or if it really is important to highlight those two attributes (it's hard to say from this single sentence), then I would probably expand it out a bit to similar to what you have done.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#112

Post by owenpalmer »

louison11 wrote: post #56
bcantrill wrote: post #38

As with so many things Paul Graham: there is a good, important idea here (omit needless words!) but he overshoots the mark, descending into venomous overgeneralizations. The truth is more nuanced: speaking and writing are both important vectors for communication (obviously?), but they are different (delightfully so!) -- with different strengths and weaknesses. Great writing is tight: it crackles. If a word serves tha…

And that, sir or madam, was a beautiful comment. I don’t know if you speak like that - and it doesn’t matter.

That right there was Bryan Cantrill himself, one of the greatest speakers on software in my opinion

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#113

Post by rongopo »

tayo42 wrote: post #40
texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #4

> But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are. Disagree. When you're writing / reading, it's much easier to parse complex sentences. It's also much easier to express a cohesive, complex thought this way compared to a meandering, directionless sentence. And the whole point of "fancy words" are to succinctly con…

Fwiw Stephen King in "On Writing" also says to not use a thesaurus and just use the words you already naturally know how to use. He follows on saying your vocabulary will naturally expand as you read more.

Thesaurus is a fundamental tool of any good writer, to refine precise meanings without overdoing a bit. Denying this is certainly strange to me.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#114

Post by rongopo »

louison11 wrote: post #56
bcantrill wrote: post #38

As with so many things Paul Graham: there is a good, important idea here (omit needless words!) but he overshoots the mark, descending into venomous overgeneralizations. The truth is more nuanced: speaking and writing are both important vectors for communication (obviously?), but they are different (delightfully so!) -- with different strengths and weaknesses. Great writing is tight: it crackles. If a word serves tha…

And that, sir or madam, was a beautiful comment. I don’t know if you speak like that - and it doesn’t matter.

Perfectly stated.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#116

Post by lamontcg »

texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #4

> But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are. Disagree. When you're writing / reading, it's much easier to parse complex sentences. It's also much easier to express a cohesive, complex thought this way compared to a meandering, directionless sentence. And the whole point of "fancy words" are to succinctly con…

> And the whole point of "fancy words" are to succinctly convey some nuance

The vast majority of time the point of "fancy words" are for the author to display to the audience that they know the fancy words.

Unless you really are genuinely talented at language and word choice, it often comes across as a transparent attempt to impress other people and often jars the reader out of the text.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#117

Post by lamontcg »

paulpauper wrote: post #19

The most successful writers in the world do not do this, and many who do are not successful. Writing has to be much more precise than speech. Speech has tone, cadence, and body language. Writing does not, so you need to be articulate to get the the desired message and intent across and most importantly avoid confusion. And it has to be interesting enough for the reader to hopefully not give up too soon. This is much…

> The most successful writers in the world do not do this

Chances are good this does not describe most of the people reading the original article or this comment section.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#118

Post by toomanyrichies »

I mean, I do prefer to read text that errs on the conversational side, and I do wish more people wrote this way. But writing is a big tent. There's room for people to use all kinds of language.

Note that I'm not talking about jargon here- people can use words with a very specific, technical meaning and still sound conversational to those unfamiliar with the vocabulary, simply by defining it in everyday language and perhaps using the jargon in a clarifying sentence. And it depends on your audience too, of course. An engineer talking to other engineers can assume a certain level of technical sophistication, and attempts to "dumb down" the conversation would just hinder the group's progress.

Instead, I'm referring to language that (to my ears, at least) sounds pretentious and melodramatic, like the example PG gave. If someone's writing sounds overly ornate to me, then I'm probably not their target audience. And that's fine. The world doesn't revolve around me. That same audience might read my writing and think it doesn't sound ornate enough. Different strokes etc. etc.

Also, "the medium is the message". We don't speak in paragraphs, but we do write with them. This gives us the opportunity to convey ideas in a differently-organized way than we would when we're speaking, which in turn affects the way people receive our message and the take-aways they leave with.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#119

Post by jameshart »

freetime2 wrote: post #111
jameshart wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you wanted to attribute that sentiment to some aspect of his character and/or nationality? I can perfectly well imagine saying out loud, in conversation or in a spoken presentation, something like "Being the mercurial Spaniard that he was, Picasso said 'After Altamira, all is decadence'". I don't think there's anything wrong with the vocabulary choices here, but there is a kind of journalistic writing style wh…

I would probably just omit the "mercurial Spaniard" part, which feels like fluff to me. The statement "After Altamira, all is decadence" is interesting enough that it can stand on its own without the author needing to dress it up any further or attribute it to some part of Picasso's character or nationality. Let the reader decide whether Picasso is being mercurial or how relevant it is that he is Spanish. Or if it re…

Yes, context matters. Presumably, one is raising the Picasso quote as part of attempting to make some sort of point. Perhaps, as part of that point, one might want to provide context for why this particular comment from Picasso is relevant to the argument.

Communication is not the recitation of mere facts: "Picasso said 'after Altamira, all is decadence.' The ratio of the diameter and circumference of a circle is pi.".

Nor are we like the Tamarians of Star Trek, where mere cultural references have deeply shared denotative meaning. "Picasso, commenting on decadence after Altamira. Shaka, when the walls fell.".

We use other words around these things we say to express the thoughts in our head and try to replicate them in someone else's.

For what it's worth, here's the actual paragraph from A History of Ancient Britain in whose context this sentence was originally written:

The Upper Palaeolithic cave art of Europe was a tradition that lasted for perhaps 20,000 years and it will always be rightly described as primitive. But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders - giants' shoulders - that later masters like Picasso were able to stand. The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: 'After Altamira, all is decadence'.

I mean, sure, this is probably not a great use of the word 'mercurial'. Maybe the author thought that Picasso's volatile moods mean the fact that he said something so profound on such a subject lends the quote some particular poignancy? Personally, the idea that a person of a mercurial temperament might dismiss the entire arc of Western art as pointlessly indulgent seems totally in character. I suspect Byron probably said all of literature after Aristotle was repetition during one of his moods, too. So probably not the author's finest turn of phrase, for sure.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#120

Post by PhasmaFelis »

teucris wrote: post #72
texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #4

> But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying more than you actually are. Disagree. When you're writing / reading, it's much easier to parse complex sentences. It's also much easier to express a cohesive, complex thought this way compared to a meandering, directionless sentence. And the whole point of "fancy words" are to succinctly con…

The Spaniard, known to change his moods on a whim, himself declared: “After Altimara, all is decadence.” > And the whole point of "fancy words" are to succinctly convey some nuance rather than using a generic word which is much broader. Which can be bad when you want your audience to understand you without significant effort. Reading a novel, a reader may be willing, or excited even, to expend effort to get all the n…

> The Spaniard, known to change his moods on a whim, himself declared: “After Altimara, all is decadence.”

That's even worse. It does nothing to fix the "nobody talks like this" problem if you care about that, and it's as awkward as replacing, I dunno, "He picked up a vermilion coat" with "He picked up a coat the red-orange of mercury sulfide pigment."

If you were writing a technical document, then you'd chop out the whole epithet and just say "Picasso." But that sentence clearly isn't from a technical document, but from a piece where a poetic turn of phrase is more appropriate.

Post reply on HN