How to Write Usefully • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Write Usefully

#141

Post by syndacks » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:42 PM UTC

The title should be How to Write [an Essay] Usefully.

This blog post is NOT about writing in general. It's not about the craft of writing, or the many varied types of writing (fiction, memoir, biography, essay, marketing blog, etc).

Instead, it's a formula that Mr. Graham gives the reader:

>I believe the formula I've given you, importance + novelty + correctness + strength, is the recipe for a good essay.

For a good essay, maybe. For writing in general, no. It's formulaic, which may very well be a horrible approach depending on the context.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#142

Post by abrax3141 » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

Saying that you should write useful essays isn’t really saying anything. Presumably you should only do anything that’s useful. (Which is not to say that everyone always does so.) Being useful is a less stringent requirement than being persuasive, so it’s actually less ambitious, not more so.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#143

Post by grvdrm » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

xvector wrote: post #2

My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing. Over time I found this unwieldy and now I find myself re-reading my sentences to see what I can delete. It's satisfying, like deleting unused code in a messy codebase. I envy writers who manage to densely pack information in sentences that are beautiful to read.

Professionally this was described to me as: 1. you write like a salesperson 2. you write like a scientist

It's hard to please everyone. The vast majority of writing tilts in one direction or another. Very few writers (in any setting) strike the right balance. Very few readers take off their own lenses to attempt to understand the writer's angle.

One tool I like using: Grammarly. It's not fool-proof by any means. But it helps point out verbosity and write more clearly by helping me learn when my writing isn't as clear as it can be.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#144

Post by soneca » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:47 PM UTC

abrax3141 wrote: post #142

Saying that you should write useful essays isn’t really saying anything. Presumably you should only do anything that’s useful. (Which is not to say that everyone always does so.) Being useful is a less stringent requirement than being persuasive, so it’s actually less ambitious, not more so.

For me it said a lot. Because he doesn't stop at the title, it's not a tweet, he goes on to properly explain what he consider usefulness and how to achieve it. And the idea that I should aim to being useful and not persuasive is pretty powerful to me. I do think is more ambitious to be useful in the way the described than just persuasive.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#145

Post by TimPC » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

r3vrse wrote: post #47

Convey a singular point with intent. Below is first paragraph rewritten. Just my 2¢. --- Essays should be persuasive. But we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should be useful. Useful writing makes a strong claim without resorting to falsehoods. It is more useful to say that Pike's Peak is in the center of Colorado than somewhere within. Precision and correctness are like opposing forces. Useful wri…

I think this deletes an important sentence. The comment about saying Pike's peak is in the centre of Colorado being inaccurate and that you can only say it's near the centre is showing an example of precision and correctness being opposites. You've lost the point of the example in your paragraph and the sentence suddenly seems like a completely random insertion.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#146

Post by TimPC » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

dugditches wrote: post #11

While the Internet provides a platform for Essays, as he says, I think maybe a bigger point is it allowing the rise of 'Video Essays'. Where now content creators are turning out 30+ minute videos on a single subject. While in the past it used to be more 'dry' things like History and the like it seems more mainstream subjects are being covered. Movies, cars, current social issues, etc. And just how much you actually g…

A very small portion of video's are video essays even if content creators are turning out 30m on a single topic. The organization and structure of the argument is completely different. Usually the goal of videos are primarily entertainment and occasionally a secondary goal of being informative. Usually the goal of an essay is primarily being informative with an occasional secondary goal of being entertaining.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#147

Post by TimPC » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:52 PM UTC

timerol wrote: post #121

Traster wrote: post #26

>How can you ensure that the things you say are true and novel and important? Believe it or not, there is a trick for doing this. I learned it from my friend Robert Morris, who has a horror of saying anything dumb. His trick is not to say anything unless he's sure it's worth hearing. This makes it hard to get opinions out of him, but when you do, they're usually right. How is this useful? How do I say things that are…

PG never justifies this, and just claims that "with essay writing, publication bias is the way to go." There are a huge number of essayists that I have the option to read. I would prefer to read each of their best thoughts, rather than read more of their thoughts. In my life, Twitter is for hot takes, and Feedly is for deep thoughts.

You actually agree with him then. He's referring to publication bias coming from only publishing your best essays.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#148

Post by illvm » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

injb wrote: post #125

osdiab wrote: post #12

While the internet is full of garbage writing, I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act. Like learning a language, if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn. And separately,…

" if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn" If you're afraid to say your idea because you know (or suspect) that it's wrong, then you have already learned the hardest part of the lesson. Of course, it still remains to find out what the right idea is, but voicing one that you know to be wrong is hardly going to help with that.

This isn't always true, though. History of full of examples of people returning to "wrong" ideas only to find them not wrong at all.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#149

Post by TimPC » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #69

PG speaks of writing usefully while not writing well. Many of his sentences are phrases. The subject of his sentence is often unclear. He begins sentences with the preposition, "But". Yet, his writing remains useful. I'd rather the latter than the former if I had to choose, but considering the volume that he writes, it's surprising that he hasn't put effort into writing well. He just doesn't care to improve his work.

Starting a sentence with But is perfectly fine as long as it's actually starting a sentence. We get to not to in grammar school only because starting a 'sentence' with But often turns that 'sentence' into a phrase.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#150

Post by philwelch » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #110

randcraw wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Short sentences and clear points are more persuasive even if they're nonsense. What you're describing is propaganda -- an emotional appeal that solicits mindless reaction. That's the basest form of communication -- hardly something to espouse as the paradigm for a good essay. As Graham points out, the best essays often are not intended to persuade as much as inform. The essentials of writing that's useful to the re…

When you get to the root of it, there's not much to differentiate between something written to inform versus something written to persuade.

Is there not? I think a big part of the difference might be how defensive one is against a hostile audience. For example, let’s consider that we’re writing about something like the Monty Hall problem. A piece of writing that explains and informs the reader about the Monty Hall problem will describe and work through all of the counter-intuitive logic involved, but it will do so from a position of (a) absolute certainty about the conclusion and (b) a good-faith assumption that disagreeing with that conclusion is due to an innocent mistake in reasoning, which the writer will want to anticipate and patiently address. And this is probably the right approach for the Monty Hall problem, but most of the time you’re writing persuasively, projecting absolute certainty that you are right and anyone who disagrees with you is confused or mistaken isn’t always the best decision, especially when it’s a disagreement over subjective preferences and value judgments. If I was writing an endorsement of a political candidate, I would approach that much differently than I would approach an explanation of the Monty Hall problem. In both cases you do similar things (in terms of presenting clear and explicit reasoning) but there are more differences than similarities.