351–360 of 533 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot: "He waddled up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'"
"He scrambled up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" "He kick-flipped up to Helen and asked, 'What are you doing?'" [edit] electric-slid! Pirouetted! Somersaulted!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obsession with short sentences and generally pushing extreme simplicity of structure and word choice has been terrible for English prose. It’s not been terrible because most people aren’t aided by such guidance (most are) but because the same people who can’t be trusted to wield a quill without the bumper-lanes installed see a sentence longer than ten words, or a semicolon, or god forbid literate and appropriate nuan…
I consider myself fluent in English, I watch technical talks and casual youtubers on English daily, and this is the first time I encounter this word lol. The only "stride" I know relates to the gap betweeb heterogeneous elements in a contiguous array
They have to actually read material, and not just use the structure as a proxy for ability.
That's just sad. I really feel for this author.
> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…
> This style has a history, of course, a history far older than the microchip: It is a direct linguistic descendant of the British Empire. The English we were taught was not the fluid, evolving language of modern-day London or California, filled with slang and convenient abbreviations. It was the Queen's English, the language of the colonial administrator, the missionary, the headmaster. It was the language of the Bible, of Shakespeare, of the law. It was a tool of power, and we were taught to wield it with precision. Mastering its formal cadences, its slightly archaic vocabulary, its rigid grammatical structures, was not just about passing an exam.
> It was a signal. It was proof that you were educated, that you were civilised, that you were ready to take your place in the order of things.
Much of writing style is not about conveying meaning but conveying the author's identity. And much of that is about matching the fashion of the group you want to be a member of.
Fashion tends to go through cycles because once the less prestigious group becomes sufficiently skilled at emulating the prestige style, the prestigious need a new fashion to distinguish themselves. And if the emulated style is ostentatious and flowery, then the new prestige style will be the opposite.
Aping Hemingway's writing style is in a lot of ways like $1,000 ripped jeans. It sort of says "I can look poor because I'm so rich I don't even have to bother trying to look rich."
(I agree, of course, that there is a lot to be said for clean, spare prose. But writing without adverbs doesn't mean one necessarily has the clarity of thought of Hemingway. For many, it's just the way you write so that everyone knows you got educated in a place that told you to write that way.)
> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…
Well there are two forms of writing, each serving a different purpose. (1) writing to communicate ideas, in which case simpler is almost always better. There's something hypnotic about simple writing (e.g. Paul Graham's essays) where information just flows frictionlessly into your head. (2) writing as a form of self-expression, in which case flowery and artistic prose is preferred. Here's a good David Foster Wallace…
Many all-time great writers, Hemingway being the leading exemplar, completely disagree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well there are two forms of writing, each serving a different purpose. (1) writing to communicate ideas, in which case simpler is almost always better. There's something hypnotic about simple writing (e.g. Paul Graham's essays) where information just flows frictionlessly into your head. (2) writing as a form of self-expression, in which case flowery and artistic prose is preferred. Here's a good David Foster Wallace…
Rich vocabulary allows a lot of meaning to be packed into short, simple structures. The words themselves carry the subtleties. It might take three or four simple words to convey the meaning of one uncommon word.
Or just find the appropriate 'simple' word, which is very often available.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well there are two forms of writing, each serving a different purpose. (1) writing to communicate ideas, in which case simpler is almost always better. There's something hypnotic about simple writing (e.g. Paul Graham's essays) where information just flows frictionlessly into your head. (2) writing as a form of self-expression, in which case flowery and artistic prose is preferred. Here's a good David Foster Wallace…
Even when communicating ideas, there's a simplicity/nuance trade-off to be made. I could say "Trump's unpredictable, seemingly irrational policy choices have alienated our allies, undermined trust in public institutions, and harmed the US economy" Or I could "The economy sucks and it's Trump's fault because he's dumb and an asshole" They both communicate the same broad idea - but which communicates it better? It depe…
Ugh. They say different things. The first describes the policy mechanisms and impacts. The second says nothing about those things; it describes your emotions.
The biggest communication problem I see now is people, especially on the Internet, including on HN, use the latter for the former purpose and say nothing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd characterise Americans as less pretentious and more straight talking. Various registers representing a huge proportion of US English we see and hear day-to-day are terrible. American “Business English” is notably bad, and is marked by this sort of fake-fancy language. The dialect our cops use is perhaps even worse, but at least most of us don’t have to read or hear it as much as the business variety.
Most writing is intended to communicate. Business writing is intended to create an impression.
If you mean 'communicate information', no. Communication, including written, is for emotion, social expression, and other things before information.
Even information requires those other things to be retained well.