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Rules of good writing (2007)

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Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#31

Post by Brajeshwar »

mtlynch wrote: post #4

> Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. I agree with this, but I doubt that all brains work this way. It's probably true of almost all English speakers. I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sent…

I weirdly learned this by chance. Most, if not all, Indian languages (as far as I know) are spoken/written in the passive voice. It sounds more respectful that way. Hence, the default way for us Indians is to speak English in the passive voice.

Early on, I forced myself to write and speak in the active voice. Now, I believe, it comes naturally to write or speak English the “right” way.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#32

Post by irchans »

I believer there is an error in

"Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)".

It should be, "the SUBJECT (the boy) before the action (the hitting)." (I added caps for emphasis.)

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#34

Post by pansa2 »

mtlynch wrote: post #4

> Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. I agree with this, but I doubt that all brains work this way. It's probably true of almost all English speakers. I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sent…

> Both sentences mean the same

Not really. The first sentence is about a boy, the second is about a ball. The best one to use depends on context.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#35

Post by MangoToupe »

mtlynch wrote: post #4

> Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. I agree with this, but I doubt that all brains work this way. It's probably true of almost all English speakers. I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sent…

Imagine how boring literature (or really most sorts of writing) would be if we optimized it around theories of linguistic efficiency rather than taste. I'm left entirely unconvinced.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#36

Post by skrueger »

senkora wrote: post #13
mackeye wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, %rax

It's good to combined both to form a sort of palindrome to chain ideas together. This is explained in more detail in Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#37

Post by alvah »

bbor wrote: post #8
mtlynch wrote: post #4

> Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. I agree with this, but I doubt that all brains work this way. It's probably true of almost all English speakers. I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sent…

I had the same thought, glad you phrased it so succinctly! Surprisingly, a Holocaust-denying white nationalist is not someone you should trust on matters concerning global anthropology.

>Holocaust-denying

Didn't he write "no reasonable person doubts that the Holocaust happened" in the blog post you are referring to? That's an....unusual way to deny the Holocaust.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#38

Post by sandspar »

90s_dev wrote: post #33

[flagged]

Huh? It's trivially easy to write a Reddit post that gets thousands of readers. A mid tier YouTube scriptwriter can reach tens of millions of readers/listeners every week. A well-written Instagram comment can receive millions of views in a matter of days.

If you're content to remain nameless then you can reach millions of readers.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#39

Post by phs318u »

irchans wrote: post #32

I believer there is an error in "Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)". It should be, "the SUBJECT (the boy) before the action (the hitting)." (I added caps for emphasis.)

> "the boy hit the ball"

In this sentence, boy=subject, hit=verb, ball=object.

> All brains work that way.

If language sentence structure reflects how brains think, then that's not entirely true. While most languages are SVO (subject-verb-object), not all are. Japanese is SOV (subject-object-verb), while biblical Hebrew is/was VSO (verb-subject-object). I'm sure there are other variations.

EDIT: it just occurred to me that Japanese SVO is syntactically similar to Forth/RPN.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#40

Post by LoganDark »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #5
mtlynch wrote: post #4

> Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. I agree with this, but I doubt that all brains work this way. It's probably true of almost all English speakers. I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sent…

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.

There probably is. For me receiving the subject after anything else requires me to buffer everything else awaiting the subject in order to parse it correctly. My brain seems to naturally work in cause->effect order so it's naturally easiest for me to process the cause first and then the effect. I don't think everyone works the same way, but there is definitely an order of information flow that is most efficient for me. I also generally seem to process things somewhat like an LLM would...
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