8 ms·

I came to the comments to see if I was the only one feeling this way. The writing feels like the ramblings of someone who is either drunk or loves the run on se

I came to the comments to see if I was the only one feeling this way. The writing feels like the ramblings of someone who is either drunk or loves the run on sentence.

pjlegato 11y ago
This and its parent post are (honestly) mystifying to me. I found it very easy to read. I can only conclude that bite-sized Twitter and Facebook content have left many people incapable of reading long-form prose.
- falsedan 11y ago
  Can you explain the first sentence to us? Most of the references go right over my head.
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    Sure. > I've been hearing about how East New York, Brooklyn is 'that bad that hard that street' since 1983, > when I was sixteen years old and heard a NYC felon... The author quotes some felon he met in 1983, who boasted that his neighborhood, East New York, is "bad," "hard," and "street." The source is proud of the fact that his neighborhood is dangerous ("bad"), difficult to survive in ("hard"), and thoroughly imbued with the "street" culture of youth gangs -- as opposed to an area with a bourgeois or a working class culture, both of which looked down on gangs and gang culture. The source is proud of the fact that he comes from such an area, as he highly values the sort of mental and physical toughness that mere survival in such an area requires. > and dope shooter in a halfway facility playing as if he were in prison The source is a heroin addict who is in a "halfway facility," a residential institution where people who suffer from various mental and physical problems, or who have recently been released from prison, live in a structured and professionally supervised setting, yet still have some access to the mainstream community. They are supposed to be learning the skills necessary to cope and adapt to life in mainstream society. "Playing as if he were in prison" means the source is acting as though his halfway house were a prison. The halfway house is far less harsh and restrictive than a prison; the author thus says that the source is exaggerating his own degree of toughness by making his condition out to be worse than it actually is. > calling out and toasting East New York cross streets (Pitkin and Pine) The source is rapping, namedropping the streets of East New York and praising them, to demonstrate his deep personal connection to the area. > as if the phrase was a standard thug-life signifier The author states that the source believes the names of these East New York streets are well known by those in the thug / street gang subculture and connotated with being a valid and authentic thug from a tough area -- though in reality they are not, in the author's opinion, actually such signifiers in that subculture. >on par with On the gate; On the lock In; Don't reach over my food; You better sleep with one eye open. The author says the source believes that namedropping these East New York streets is equivalent to uttering these various phrases about prison life, which are supposed to be the authentic signifiers of a genuine thug. The author believes this is not true and the source is exaggerating the degree to which he is an authentic thug, and moreover that the source is deluded into believing that others will accept his ENY street namedropping as the equivalent of uttering these standardized prison phrases in terms of proving authentic affinity for the thug subculture.
- Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
  You see, I think it goes a different way: Editable-any-time-after-publishing digital content combined with Snapchat-esque manic speeds of delivery have made a significant dent in clear, well assembled writing.
- ubercore 11y ago
  Totally not true. I'm very capable of reading cogent long-form prose. Hell, I even made it through Gravity's Rainbow. This is not a question of lowered attention span.
- kbenson 11y ago
  I think it has to do with the fact the first four paragraphs are 348 words, but only 5 sentences. Any time you are using a single sentence for a full paragraph, multiple times in a short period, you should probably examine those sentences (at least if your intent is to inform or educate). Long sentences make us keep more state about the current thing we are parsing in our head, as later portions of the sentence may cause reinterpretation of earlier portions. What you may be seeing is less that people are becoming incapable of reading long-form prose, but more that prose itself has shifted to using shorter sentences and simpler structures, at least in contexts that have to do with reporting. I don't find it surprising that people that are exposed less to longer, more complex sentence structures will have more problems parsing them correctly. In any event, it's stylistic choice, and one that some may find pleasing, but it does make the work less approachable (those used to longer sentence structures should have no problem with shorter ones, but the opposite is not necessarily true).
  - ubercore 11y ago
    I think you're half there, but in the end I stand by it just being kind of poor writing. It's not so much a development of prose tending towards shorter sentences. Rather, the author is making a stylistic choice that uses longer sentences while _also_ loading the sentences with structural aberrations and external, sometimes opaque, references. I'd argue that it's always been a good idea to use style judiciously in prose, and balance longer more complex sentence structure with fewer references or other oddities. Or load up unusual structure and abstruse language, but keep things shorter.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      I won't deny that longer sentences often seem to be the result of authors trying to shoe-horn more than they should into the sentence, and that appears to be the case here. Length is a bit less subjective (IMO, which of course makes it subjective... ;) though, so I figured it might be easier to approach the argument from that direction.

I came to the comments to see if I was the only one feeling this way. The writing feels like the ramblings of someone who is either drunk or loves the run on sentence.

pjlegato 11y ago

This and its parent post are (honestly) mystifying to me. I found it very easy to read. I can only conclude that bite-sized Twitter and Facebook content have left many people incapable of reading long-form prose.

falsedan 11y ago
Can you explain the first sentence to us? Most of the references go right over my head.
- pjlegato 11y ago
  Sure. > I've been hearing about how East New York, Brooklyn is 'that bad that hard that street' since 1983, > when I was sixteen years old and heard a NYC felon... The author quotes some felon he met in 1983, who boasted that his neighborhood, East New York, is "bad," "hard," and "street." The source is proud of the fact that his neighborhood is dangerous ("bad"), difficult to survive in ("hard"), and thoroughly imbued with the "street" culture of youth gangs -- as opposed to an area with a bourgeois or a working class culture, both of which looked down on gangs and gang culture. The source is proud of the fact that he comes from such an area, as he highly values the sort of mental and physical toughness that mere survival in such an area requires. > and dope shooter in a halfway facility playing as if he were in prison The source is a heroin addict who is in a "halfway facility," a residential institution where people who suffer from various mental and physical problems, or who have recently been released from prison, live in a structured and professionally supervised setting, yet still have some access to the mainstream community. They are supposed to be learning the skills necessary to cope and adapt to life in mainstream society. "Playing as if he were in prison" means the source is acting as though his halfway house were a prison. The halfway house is far less harsh and restrictive than a prison; the author thus says that the source is exaggerating his own degree of toughness by making his condition out to be worse than it actually is. > calling out and toasting East New York cross streets (Pitkin and Pine) The source is rapping, namedropping the streets of East New York and praising them, to demonstrate his deep personal connection to the area. > as if the phrase was a standard thug-life signifier The author states that the source believes the names of these East New York streets are well known by those in the thug / street gang subculture and connotated with being a valid and authentic thug from a tough area -- though in reality they are not, in the author's opinion, actually such signifiers in that subculture. >on par with On the gate; On the lock In; Don't reach over my food; You better sleep with one eye open. The author says the source believes that namedropping these East New York streets is equivalent to uttering these various phrases about prison life, which are supposed to be the authentic signifiers of a genuine thug. The author believes this is not true and the source is exaggerating the degree to which he is an authentic thug, and moreover that the source is deluded into believing that others will accept his ENY street namedropping as the equivalent of uttering these standardized prison phrases in terms of proving authentic affinity for the thug subculture.
Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
You see, I think it goes a different way: Editable-any-time-after-publishing digital content combined with Snapchat-esque manic speeds of delivery have made a significant dent in clear, well assembled writing.
ubercore 11y ago
Totally not true. I'm very capable of reading cogent long-form prose. Hell, I even made it through Gravity's Rainbow. This is not a question of lowered attention span.
kbenson 11y ago
I think it has to do with the fact the first four paragraphs are 348 words, but only 5 sentences. Any time you are using a single sentence for a full paragraph, multiple times in a short period, you should probably examine those sentences (at least if your intent is to inform or educate). Long sentences make us keep more state about the current thing we are parsing in our head, as later portions of the sentence may cause reinterpretation of earlier portions. What you may be seeing is less that people are becoming incapable of reading long-form prose, but more that prose itself has shifted to using shorter sentences and simpler structures, at least in contexts that have to do with reporting. I don't find it surprising that people that are exposed less to longer, more complex sentence structures will have more problems parsing them correctly. In any event, it's stylistic choice, and one that some may find pleasing, but it does make the work less approachable (those used to longer sentence structures should have no problem with shorter ones, but the opposite is not necessarily true).
- ubercore 11y ago
  I think you're half there, but in the end I stand by it just being kind of poor writing. It's not so much a development of prose tending towards shorter sentences. Rather, the author is making a stylistic choice that uses longer sentences while _also_ loading the sentences with structural aberrations and external, sometimes opaque, references. I'd argue that it's always been a good idea to use style judiciously in prose, and balance longer more complex sentence structure with fewer references or other oddities. Or load up unusual structure and abstruse language, but keep things shorter.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    I won't deny that longer sentences often seem to be the result of authors trying to shoe-horn more than they should into the sentence, and that appears to be the case here. Length is a bit less subjective (IMO, which of course makes it subjective... ;) though, so I figured it might be easier to approach the argument from that direction.