4 ms·
Convey a singular point with intent. Below is first paragraph rewritten. Just my 2¢. --- Essays should be persuasive. But we can aim for something more ambiti
by r3vrse 7y ago
Convey a singular point with intent. Below is first paragraph rewritten. Just my 2¢.
---
Essays should be persuasive. But we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should be useful.
Useful writing makes a strong claim without resorting to falsehoods.
It is more useful to say that Pike's Peak is in the center of Colorado than somewhere within.
Precision and correctness are like opposing forces. Useful writing is bold and true. It tells people something important, that they might not have known, without resorting to manufactured surprise or equivocality. This is formative of fundamental insights.
Any idea will not be novel to all, but may still have impact for the many.
In argument: be correct, be important, be strong. This will ensure usefulness.
- iainmerrick 7y agoIt is more useful to say that Pike's Peak is in the center of Colorado than somewhere within. This kind of thing is taking terseness too far, I think. If I’m not immediately familiar with Pike’s Peak it takes me a moment to unpack your meaning, but I immediately understood the more verbose explanation in the original.
- Kye 7y agoYep. People often confuse understanding audience with verbosity. Waffling and context both add word count. edit: I could reduce this to "Waffling and context both add word count." but then: 1: It's not clear I agree with you and 2: Triplets--like the three sentences I wrote there--are an artistic device that improve clarity and help prose flow.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoThere's a large international audience here. So, slang like "yep" should probably be avoided if one is keen to carefully tailor their writing? (I debated whether to use 'one' or 'someone' here, for similar reasons.)
- Kye 7y agoIt never occurred to me that it was American slang. That's a new thing to think about.
- TimPC 7y agoI think this deletes an important sentence. The comment about saying Pike's peak is in the centre of Colorado being inaccurate and that you can only say it's near the centre is showing an example of precision and correctness being opposites. You've lost the point of the example in your paragraph and the sentence suddenly seems like a completely random insertion.