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Rules of good writing (2007)

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Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#41

Post by jll29 »

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

Or, in "Intel Latin" (machine code),

  01001000 00000001 11111000

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#42

Post by yesfitz »

90s_dev wrote: post #33

[flagged]

There are benefits to writing well besides increasing your audience.

Paul Graham illustrates in his post, “Good Writing”.[1]

“How does that help the writer? Because the writer is the first reader.”

This is also supported by Graham’s post “Writes and Write-Nots”[2]

“To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.”

I don’t take Paul Graham’s word as gospel, but I have yet to find any contradictory stance, let alone one that’s been useful to me.

1: https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html 2: https://www.paulgraham.com/writes.html

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#43

Post by Brajeshwar »

j_bum wrote: post #14
djoldman wrote: post #6

> Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences. Yes. (Hemingway).

The Hemingway editor is great for word pruning [0]. [0] https://hemingwayapp.com/

This has been my go-to pruner since a while. The best thing I learnt is to break up long sentences into shorter ones.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#45

Post by JadeNB »

sandspar wrote: post #38
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.

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

Why should namelessness help? None of the examples you mention seem to require it.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#46

Post by mdorazio »

djoldman wrote: post #6

> Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences. Yes. (Hemingway).

This is great advice if you want to write like Hemingway. Most of the great authors are not so sparing with their words, though. And I often find that people who excessively prune their writing end up with quite generic paragraphs that seem like they were written for elementary school children. I've personally found a better tip for writing is to not use two "cheap" words when one "expensive" one will convey your meaning more fully. To use your example, "He was very happy" doesn't convey as much feeling as, "He was ecstatic". But depending on what you want to say, "He was restlessly giddy with barely contained joy" could be even better.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#47

Post by gammarator »

tomhow wrote: post #20
treve wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG is not influential because of his writing though. His name is what gets his writing circulated, so I'm not sure if it's a good couter example.

He became well-known via his writing in the early-mid 00s; first his book about Lisp then his essays that became popular on Slashdot. His investing happened as a consequence of his writing.

His investing happened as a consequence of having available capital (and, certainty, forward-looking ideas about how to seed startups).

As to the writing, I think its influence (in terms of ideas) makes people overrate its stylistic quality. An enjoyable critique: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#48

Post by tptacek »

gammarator wrote: post #47
tomhow wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He became well-known via his writing in the early-mid 00s; first his book about Lisp then his essays that became popular on Slashdot. His investing happened as a consequence of his writing.

His investing happened as a consequence of having available capital (and, certainty, forward-looking ideas about how to seed startups). As to the writing, I think its influence (in terms of ideas) makes people overrate its stylistic quality. An enjoyable critique: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Paul Graham had an audience before he was an investor, which is the point Tom was making. He didn't get famous because of Viaweb; he got famous as an eloquent smug lisp weenie.

Re: Rules of good writing (2007)

#50

Post by riwsky »

MangoToupe wrote: post #35
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.

Anyone optimizing for some specific taste already has an implicit theory of linguistic efficiency. Most writers aren’t optimizing for anything at all, and they have no taste, and their writing is boring, and it wastes my time, and I hate it.
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