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It was actually Blaise Pascal who said it. But the point is, that clear writing means removing lots of fluff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although you should probably take into consideration that some professional linguists think the book is trash containing "prescriptivist poppycock" that the author doesn't even follow. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18345 Also a tiny study on whether adj/adv usage correlates with good/bad writing: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18398
A lot of writing rules are of the "follow it until you know how and when to break it" variety. That way if you never learn how to break them correctly, your writing is still a lot better than it was. It's no surprise that studies of writing already known to be good will find much rule-breaking, as one is not surprised to find race cars on a race track moving faster than we'd want any car to, ordinarily.
Prescriptivists never seem to add that clarifying nuance to their advice though.
> That way if you never learn how to break them correctly, your writing is still a lot better than it was.
That assumes their advice is good in the first place - when professional linguists call it trash, I'd have to wonder if it is.
Meh. Reducing language to a mere communication tool also destroys much of its beauty, meaning, and ability to inspire or motivate us. I don't think it's a coincidence that the loss of interest in poetry has coincided with a general loss of respect for literary culture. I had this impression recently while reading the Akbarnama , which is a sort of court-approved biography of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. It was written b…
Agreed, but entirely dependent on context. Most writing on the web (including most of my work) is designed for reach, for all of the narcissistic reasons like retweets and shares, but also the reason that we live in a more democratic world today, and ideas that have more reach often have more impact. When you write, you want yourself to succeed through your writing, but to me it's far more important that my ideas suc…
Otherwise, sure, I agree. I'd just say that the beauty of democratization and widespread literacy is that we all have access to the high culture of the past.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well okay, who is he addressing? That’s pretty much the only question I had reading it. Surely it isn’t the modern blogger or clickbait ‘journalists’, since they know what they are doing and we know what they are doing. It’s possible he simply said nothing.
Try to not be autistic for a second. Paul Graham is in the tech scene. PERHAPS he's talking about things like coding tutorials, technical blogs, press releases, documentaiton, etc. I'd argue that simple writing is great in that domain.
You're already hypocritical - readers don't want to 'engage' with writing. People don't want to 'engage' at all. This is not an ordinary way of talking about things outside a pretty niche circle of VCs and marketing managers.
Choose what to read and who to associate with as well as it will strongly influence your own language :)
The man is undeniably intelligent, undeniably successful, and undeniably talented in business (and deserves huge credit for his contributions to the startup community).
But I just thing he's deeply wrong here. His simple writing style (and those that have inherited/copied it) is a detriment to the community.
It's the take of a (talented!) engineering mind. It's the same attitude that engineers often take with building digital products ("we don't need a designer - just present the UI elements simply and people will get it.")
Design is an art. Communication is an art. Writing is an art. Essays are an art. They have function, of course, and a simple straightforward style is, indeed, a style that is more functional for some.
But it also diminishes the joy of reading and purees it into the blandness of an economics textbook. I've tried to read his essays and yes, they have some great ideas, but they're just....bland.
They're like Soylent for the mind. Does it deliver nutrition to your body in an maximally-efficient vehicle? Sure. Do you enjoy drinking that Soylent shake?
shiver
EDIT: I should explicitly clarify something: I'm not arguing that one should use jargon or unnecessarily complex words in their writing. That's obviously bad. But there's a gap between the "simple writing style" and "enjoyable rich prose".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of writing rules are of the "follow it until you know how and when to break it" variety. That way if you never learn how to break them correctly, your writing is still a lot better than it was. It's no surprise that studies of writing already known to be good will find much rule-breaking, as one is not surprised to find race cars on a race track moving faster than we'd want any car to, ordinarily.
> A lot of writing rules are of the "follow it until you know how and when to break it" variety. Prescriptivists never seem to add that clarifying nuance to their advice though. > That way if you never learn how to break them correctly, your writing is still a lot better than it was. That assumes their advice is good in the first place - when professional linguists call it trash, I'd have to wonder if it is.
They often do, in my experience. AFAIK it hasn't been common to attempt any kind of real, strict prescriptivism in English since the middle of last century (yes, I'm sure a few examples exist). These days it's mostly "write like this—until you know better" or "avoid X if your audience is Y, for such-and-such reason".