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Won't speak to literary/journalistic writing, but business writing definitely has a problem of quantity over quality. The exercise of really dumbing down the la
by munchbunny 6y ago
Won't speak to literary/journalistic writing, but business writing definitely has a problem of quantity over quality. The exercise of really dumbing down the language helps with making sure you're actually getting the point across instead of just talking in vague abstractions. It also helps for communicating with ESL colleagues. In that sense, "more like Hemingway" is probably going in the right direction.
- sanderjd 6y agoI guess it's that I've always thought this is a misunderstanding of what Hemingway was doing. He wasn't trying to write simple language comprehensible to busy business people trying to get their jobs done. He was trying to write good literature as he saw it. Any alignment of the two things is accidental at best but often just a misapplication. He left things out in order for them to exist in the reader's own imaginative journey through the book; his spareness was a way of welcoming the reader into the story. That is not a good thing in business writing!