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This makes me think of a teacher I had in school - he told us we should try to keep our exams to about 600 words. Whereas students in other classes routinely wr
by krylon 10y ago
This makes me think of a teacher I had in school - he told us we should try to keep our exams to about 600 words. Whereas students in other classes routinely wrote about 2000 words, sometimes 3000.
I first disliked him, because he meant business - my first exam with this teacher was about 1100 words, and he explicitly told me he would have given me a better grade if it had been shorter. (Boy, was I mad!)
But in time, I came to appreciate this attitude, because it forced me to really think about what I wanted to say and how to say it. And I suppose that is what Pascal referred to, as well. Thinking about what you want to say and boiling it down to the essentials takes time.
The upside is that, with a little practice, it helps one to focus and what is essential and strip it as bare as possible.
(As you can see, I have since forgotten that valuable lesson and reverted to my old rambling ways.)
- eitally 10y agoYour rambling was the result of providing context. You can be concise and clear when the reader is already knowledgeable. When that's missing, things get messy (witness any corporate email chain involving more than 3 people or 2 teams). Lots of folks have resorted to footnotes, which isn't a bad tool at all, but it detracts from the core message Pascal was trying to relay: know your audience, and make sure each word is carefully selected to reinforce your message.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoEyeballing it, I think I could halve the length of his comment while sharpening the context-giving story. But krylon was probably right not to bother with that second, non-trivial pass.
- ams6110 10y agoCorporate email chains are wordy because everyone wants to mark his territory, or reinforce his relevance.
- ghaff 10y agoI've long been a fan of footnotes. Alas, they often don't work well in electronic formats. But they are a good way to provide context, justification, or additional detail without breaking the flow.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI believe they do work[0], it's that most people simply don't use them. I use them in articles, e-mails and HN comments[1] pretty often ;). -- [0] - especially if you can hyperlink to them and from them back to the main text. [1] - as demonstrated.
- Avshalom 10y agoThe main problem with foot notes in electronic form vs print is the lack of pages. In print you can glance slightly down for the foot note and the back up with out too much effort. In electronic form "without pages" it can be a significant effort to find your place again. < a >'s being remarkably unreliable. Grantland often used marginalia which usually worked well but tragically is non trivial.
- ghaff 10y agoFully agree. By way of comparison, endnotes in printed material are pretty much required citations, etc. But footnotes could often be "Hey, if you want a bit of additional context without interrupting the flow" with a quick glance. But there tends to be a commitment in electronic form to following a hyperlink even if everything works as it's supposed to. I don't have a good solution. It's one of the reasons that fiction works better than non-fiction in non-paginated electronic formats.
- ComputerGuru 10y agoFully agreed, though Wikipedia and Kindle solve this with hover/click to view footnote in a tooltip/bubble - though obviously not as effortless as letting your eyes slide to the bottom of the page, it's honestly not bad.
- KON_Air 10y agoWhile I fully agree mastery of the subject is vital to be able to get your point across with less sentences and/or words, it really needs some time to go over the text to make it worth the label "concise", which just doesn't exist in an exam.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoMaybe you forgot nothing: it's just that HN comments aren't important enough to condense.
- Lordarminius 10y ago> As you can see, I have since forgotten that valuable lesson and reverted to my old rambling ways. A superior way to close your argument. Have an upvote :)
- Spooky23 10y agoI got a crash course in this when I took a journalism class and a history class from a grumpy professor who required handwritten papers and would tear up anything that required two sheets. Probably the single most important thing I did in college.