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

41–50 of 152 posts

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#41

Post by jesuscript »

dasil003 wrote: post #33

This is an unconvincing straw man argument. Bad writing is just... bad writing. You can just as easily point to bad speaking and say people should talk more like they write. The fact is, speaking and writing are different, and even within them there are different goals and styles. While PG's plain-spoken dialectical style attracted me early, and has been effective, I wouldn't call it the end-all-be-all approach to wr…

Edit:

I re-read your post. You and David Milch agree:

https://youtu.be/SaE9cB6iHks

It depends on what you are conveying. Different approaches for different situations.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#42

Post by dehrmann »

hinkley wrote: post #14
spacedcowboy wrote: post #2

I like a lot of what Graham writes, but I fundamentally disagree with him on this one. Spoken language is the JIT compiler of information transferral. It’s spur-of-the-moment; it’s stream-of-consciousness; it gets the job done by stripping away a lot of nuance and complexity. Written language is more subtle, more considered, more edited - he states himself that he writes then edits - in his case to make it more “spok…

I’ve outgrown a few bloggers. Spolsky still stings a bit. I really liked his early stuff and then my frowns got bigger and a lot more frequent. The problem I found with blogging is that I only have about two year’s of things to say, and either I start scraping the bottom of the barrel or I had to take a long break and then circle back, reiterating 80% of what I already said but with new or better examples. If I was f…

> I only have about two year’s of things to say, and either I start scraping the bottom of the barrel or I had to take a long break and then circle back, reiterating 80% of what I already said but with new or better examples

You sound like a Youtuber!

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#43

Post by cole-k »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #2

I like a lot of what Graham writes, but I fundamentally disagree with him on this one. Spoken language is the JIT compiler of information transferral. It’s spur-of-the-moment; it’s stream-of-consciousness; it gets the job done by stripping away a lot of nuance and complexity. Written language is more subtle, more considered, more edited - he states himself that he writes then edits - in his case to make it more “spok…

I don't see why what you're saying and what the blog post says are incompatible. I feel like Graham is not saying "simplify your thoughts," but rather "simplify your words." Think Up Goer 5 (https://xkcd.com/1133/) but maybe not as extreme.

What I understood from your comment is that for complex topics (like quantum mechanics), complex language is necessary. This section of the post clarifies Graham's thoughts on the matter:

> You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas. When specialists in some abstruse topic talk to one another about ideas in their field, they don't use sentences any more complex than they do when talking about what to have for lunch. They use different words, certainly. But even those they use no more than necessary.

I kind of agree, although I don't know exactly whether I've studied things that y'all might consider "abstruse".

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#46

Post by karmakaze »

There is a good message here if you don't get distracted by whatever may particlarly bother you about the presentation.

> You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas. [...] Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.

I interpret this as following my basic mode of operation: express everything as simply as I can, even if that makes my brilliant idea sound so obvious. The goal isn't to make myself seem smart, it's to get the idea across. With practice this is natural and you find yourself able to express more complex things than you thought you could. If I use complex ways of describing less complex things I'd be putting a lower limit on what I could express.

Basically, how would Richard Feynman say it? He was a master of using the simplest descriptions of the most complex subjects.

The same goes for coding style. There is a time where fancy metaprogramming will be needed to make something compact and manageable. But that isn't the first thing you should reach for in simpler cases.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#47

Post by hinkley »

jesuscript wrote: post #34
hinkley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve outgrown a few bloggers. Spolsky still stings a bit. I really liked his early stuff and then my frowns got bigger and a lot more frequent. The problem I found with blogging is that I only have about two year’s of things to say, and either I start scraping the bottom of the barrel or I had to take a long break and then circle back, reiterating 80% of what I already said but with new or better examples. If I was f…

You are just circling the truth that ultimately we all really have one or two things to really say to the world. And that’s okay. Refining the few themes that you have conviction for until the end of time is worthy. Hubris is if you think those few things now qualifies you for all things. It helps if your topic of interest has endless fodder. Misanthropes know what I mean.

I always wonder if half the time other writers are trying to win arguments they lost somewhere else or if that’s just me.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#48

Post by chromatin »

mr_sturd wrote: post #13

Whey if a wrert like a taa'ked, a divn't think anyone would kna what a wa' gaan an aboot...

What an absurd and pathetic characterization of Southern Mountain Speech and/or rural American dialect. It comes across as speaking more to your character than your polemic target.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#49

Post by extragood »

I'm pleasantly surprised to see so many diverging with Paul on this point.

“Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick”

My take is: don't let language get in the way of expressing yourself. Language is one of our most important social constructs. Restricting yourself to simple language has the side effect of losing precision and/or meaning in communication.

Re: Write Like You Talk (2015)

#50

Post by cole-k »

secondcoming wrote: post #16

I see some people on HN, presumably Americans, start sentences with 'Like,...' I find it annoying and it dims my view of the poster.

I would encourage you to try and push past this feeling.

It's part of a natural change in dialect. There are instances of prejudice toward similar phenomena such as vocal fry or uptalk that have been shown to disproportionately be attributed to women, even though this is not the case.

(https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article... some reading I found on the subject)

Post reply on HN