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> This is great seeing so many PG essays! I've really missed his writing. I love reading his tweets! They're all so down to earth and illuminating. That said,
by anonytrary 7y ago
> This is great seeing so many PG essays! I've really missed his writing.
I love reading his tweets! They're all so down to earth and illuminating. That said, I'm not a fan of his blog writing as much. I find it full of overly-sparse nuggets of wisdom. It needs to be more concise, to the point, with fewer clever metaphors. This article could've been compressed 70% and still have been human readable.
- pyb 7y agopg seems to have a backlog of essay ideas that he's catching up on. This is all good, but also means that they get written a bit too quickly. It's the classic "had I had more time to spend on this text, it would have been shorter" syndrome.
- anonytrary 7y agoIndeed, time is of the essence; playing tug-of-war with quality.
- kashyapc 7y agoI've read the article in full. It raises an important point, but it's indeed a laborious read. As I read it, the haunting paragraph from The Elements of Style came to mind: "Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." - - - If you enjoy the essay form, I highly recommend the "Essays of E.B. White" (yes, the same White of The Elements of Style). Some of the essays stay with you for a long time. https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060932237/essays-of-e-b-white/ https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060932237/essays-of-e-b-wh...