7 ms·
My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing. Over time I found this unwieldy and now I find myself re-reading my sentences to see what I can delete.
by xvector 7y ago
My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing. Over time I found this unwieldy and now I find myself re-reading my sentences to see what I can delete.
It's satisfying, like deleting unused code in a messy codebase. I envy writers who manage to densely pack information in sentences that are beautiful to read.
- rmason 7y agoI experienced the same thing with English teachers. But I had a friend point out that Hemingway (whom we both adored) wrote sentences that were 7 words shorter than normal. Writing short punchy sentences without a single spare word. Steinbeck wrote that way and so did Elmore Leonard. Leonard said he'd get down a first draft and then go back a second time taking words out that weren't necessary. https://www.litcharts.com/blog/analitics/what-makes-hemingway/ https://www.litcharts.com/blog/analitics/what-makes-hemingwa...
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoEssayists may believe that what they're writing is true, but they're not best placed to judge that. Truth requires objective testing and replication, and essays aren't the right tool for that. So it's useful to remember that the point of an essay is persuasion, not truth. Short sentences and clear points are more persuasive even if they're nonsense. The longer your sentences, the more you'll filter out readers with short attentions spans and limited literacy. Which is why terse novels about dramatic situations sell better than florid novels with academic subtexts. It's also why political campaigns like to reduce slogans to soundbites.
- randcraw 7y ago> Short sentences and clear points are more persuasive even if they're nonsense. What you're describing is propaganda -- an emotional appeal that solicits mindless reaction. That's the basest form of communication -- hardly something to espouse as the paradigm for a good essay. As Graham points out, the best essays often are not intended to persuade as much as inform. The essentials of writing that's useful to the reader are facts and logic, leading intuitively to a conclusion that is meaningful and important to the audience. HOW you achieve these ends matters less, be they short sentences or emotional appeals. But illogic has no place in an informative essay. That's the bailiwick of provocateurs, politicians, and propaganda.
- iamacyborg 7y agoWhen you get to the root of it, there's not much to differentiate between something written to inform versus something written to persuade.
- philwelch 7y agoIs there not? I think a big part of the difference might be how defensive one is against a hostile audience. For example, let’s consider that we’re writing about something like the Monty Hall problem. A piece of writing that explains and informs the reader about the Monty Hall problem will describe and work through all of the counter-intuitive logic involved, but it will do so from a position of (a) absolute certainty about the conclusion and (b) a good-faith assumption that disagreeing with that conclusion is due to an innocent mistake in reasoning, which the writer will want to anticipate and patiently address. And this is probably the right approach for the Monty Hall problem, but most of the time you’re writing persuasively, projecting absolute certainty that you are right and anyone who disagrees with you is confused or mistaken isn’t always the best decision, especially when it’s a disagreement over subjective preferences and value judgments. If I was writing an endorsement of a political candidate, I would approach that much differently than I would approach an explanation of the Monty Hall problem. In both cases you do similar things (in terms of presenting clear and explicit reasoning) but there are more differences than similarities.
- brlewis 7y ago> The longer your sentences, the more you'll filter out readers with short attentions spans and limited literacy. And readers who have not yet been persuaded that your writing is worth their time. If long sentences are essential to a point you're making in a persuasive essay for a non-captive audience, use inverted pyramid style and push the long sentences down.
- throwanem 7y agoOne can idolize Hemingway to a fault. Removing the unnecessary is largely what a second draft is for, no matter who's doing the work; concision is a virtue, but to pursue concision above all else risks erring into insufficiency and rendering oneself unable to write in one's own style and voice, rather than in an emulation of someone else's. Voice elevates an informative essay from a dry recitation of facts, offering the reader little of genuine interest, into a conversation in which the reader is able and welcome to participate. Voice also offers interest of its own, which can help sustain a reader through what might otherwise prove intolerable complexities or difficulties in the subject matter of the work. You may, of course, consider this, and consider the virtues of the Hemingwayesque ultimacy of concision, and decide that the latter outweigh the former. I don't agree, but we all ideally write in our own ways. I would, though, ask that you do consider those virtues - and their contrary vices - rather than partake of the blind veneration of Hemingway so common among the rather dim luminaries of modern literature.
- wenc 7y agoAs someone who admired and aspired to Hemingway's parsimononius style of writing in my youth, nowadays I'm starting to back away from it and am growing to be more inclusive other (less concise) styles of writing. I aspired to concision because I believed I wasn't an interesting person and didn't deserve any attention outside of the little I'm able to grab, so I kept my writing pithy in the hopes that I wouldn't have to "take up too much of anyone's time/attention". Unfortunately, too much concision can lead to short pieces that are tiring to read -- your brain has to work harder to fill in the gaps. Sometimes "unnecessary" words are needed to help the reader feel more comfortable. Not everyone is an engineer or a technocrat. Parsimony isn't always a virtue. There's is a place for concision, but I now believe concision is the wrong goal to aim for. Often the real goal is to create an emotional connection, and if it takes a few more words to achieve it (without belaboring the subject), so be it. People -- often teachers -- think good writing is solely about effective communication -- to me, there has never been a wronger conclusion than this.
- clairity 7y agopacking a lot into sentences is entirely different from writing short sentences. for instance, pynchon packs a ton into his sentences, yet they're long and winding at the same time (confusingly so, sometimes). hemingway's sentences are just short, like playing every note in staccato, which in itself can become tiring (i like, but don't love, hemingway).
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoI tend to be too terse.
- grvdrm 7y agoProfessionally this was described to me as: 1. you write like a salesperson 2. you write like a scientist It's hard to please everyone. The vast majority of writing tilts in one direction or another. Very few writers (in any setting) strike the right balance. Very few readers take off their own lenses to attempt to understand the writer's angle. One tool I like using: Grammarly. It's not fool-proof by any means. But it helps point out verbosity and write more clearly by helping me learn when my writing isn't as clear as it can be.
- TimPC 7y agoI experienced this too. I'm trying my best to unlearn it because I'm writing a novel. I'm not so adept with flowery prose as to write literary fiction, so I want to have more practical sentences that have better pacing.
- combatentropy 7y ago> My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing. Same here, and I suspect the same for most people: "due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature" --- http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html Toward the end of high school I found The Elements of Style by accident and it changed my life. Yes, it changed my life! I was always more interested in art than science. So I didn't become a programmer until I was almost 30. What struck me was how similar it was to prose. 1. There are many ways to write a program 2. Your first draft of a program is usually bad, but you can steadily improve it by rewriting it over and over and over. This unglamourous technique is the secret behind good prose too, as Graham points out. 3. As you rewrite it, you find you can do the same thing in half the space. 4. The programs that are most pleasant to use are ones where the programmer first wrote it for himself. Likewise, as Graham said here, a good strategy for useful essays is to write it first for yourself.
- jimbokun 7y agoI completely agree. And there are definitely some programmers whose code and prose are both eloquent and beautiful: https://norvig.com/sudoku.html https://norvig.com/sudoku.html This is my all time favorite programming book, both for the prose and the code within it: https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp Interestingly, I find that the set of Lisp programmers also contains many of the best writers about programming: Norvig, Graham, Stallman, McCarthy, Steele, Abelson, Sussman, etc.
- safety-third 7y agoThis is how I do it as well. I usually find inspiration that makes my code much better. My secret sauce is telling others I am debugging it instead of making a new draft. This keeps someone from insisting that my first draft is "good enough." In addition, I design my programs such that I can confidently rewrite important sections. This is OOP encapsulation's main purpose. In practice, everyone writes getters and setters until every object is an ugly struct.
- tpaschalis 7y agoIt's satisfying because it's also surprisingly hard! Like Mark Twain once said "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one."
- teddyh 7y ago> Like Mark Twain once said No he didn’t. It was Blaise Pascal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
- WhompingWindows 7y agoThey're English teachers, they view language through the lens of literature. If you read Faulkner, you'll find extremely long and verbose sentences. If you read Hemingway or McCarthy, you'll find much more economic and sparing use of words. The problem is outside of literature, readers want knowledge, not pretty language. I think many teachers lead their students astray, as the vast majority of us write for knowledge and not for prettiness.