4 ms·

I know this is going to sound crazy, but give it a try sometime. When I lose track while reading an article, or find difficult to understand it, I stop and rea

I know this is going to sound crazy, but give it a try sometime. When I lose track while reading an article, or find difficult to understand it, I stop and reading it bottom up, one paragraph at a time. First the last paragraph, then the one before that, etc... This cuts through directly to the conclusion, then the detailed explanations form particular to general (which works better for me) and I can skip the "excitement build up" at the top of the article.

vishnugupta 5y ago
I second this. I applied it to this[1] super long winded article in New Yorker to get the gist of the article. This article is littered with these passages and it's super frustrating. In the end from my view point it's a shallow piece with very little new insights. FWIW the article didn't age well as India is being ravaged by the 2nd wave. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-pandemic-seem-to-be-hitting-some-countries-harder-than-others https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-p...
- saurik 5y ago
  The New Yorker is a magazine, not a newspaper: it doesn't exist to quickly present information every day, but to provide entertaining writing once a month; reading it backwards to try to get to the point as fast as possible sounds as silly as doing the same to a movie or a book.
pbronez 5y ago
man... this is exactly the opposite of how news articles are supposed to be written. Good news articles should tell you everything in the headline. Then tell you everything again in the first body sentence. Then tell you everything again in the first paragraph. and the first page. And so on. It's supposed to be a fractal that unfolds additional detail as you press forward, while ensuring that even a casual reader comes away with a mostly complete and accurate understanding of the issue. More of THAT please.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Yeah, it's called "inverted pyramid", and it's supposed to be the gold standard of journalistic writing. IIRC it's being taught as part of vocational education. And yet, news media are the last place you're likely to find articles written in this style. Somehow, they manage to deliver the exact opposite of what they should be. A fractal of confusion, recursively unfolding noise. (It's as if they were making a lot of money on maximizing the time a reader is engaged with any given article. It's as if - and I know this sounds crazy - the articles were there just to hold the user down, while they're being exposed to something else...)
  - rcoveson 5y ago
    > Yeah, it's called "inverted pyramid"... Narrow (succinct) at the top and broad (detailed) at the bottom seems like a normal pyramid to me. An "inverted pyramid" would be like one of those poems that describes fine details first and only in the last sentence reveals what it's been describing. I don't doubt that it's actually called that, but it seems backwards to me.
    - Angostura 5y ago
      Yeh, it's simply called pyramid structure.
    - thatcat 5y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism... It is ordered most relevant to least.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        Thank you. The other replies made me worried my memory is failing me.
  - saurik 5y ago
    Wired is a magazine, not a newspaper: it doesn't exist to quickly present information every day, but to provide entertaining writing once a month; insisting it use an inverted pyramid is as strange as arguing that if only movies and books just led with the resolution, it would save you a lot of time.
throwawayboise 5y ago
Sounds like the recommended way to read a research paper: (1) read the abstract; (2) if you're still interested, read the conclusion; (3) if you're still interested, read the body of the paper.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Excellent practice. I'll also frequently apply this to HN comment streams. 1. Collapse the top comment. It's frequently good, but also frequently is an avalanche of compounded hot takes. 2. Scroll to the bottom of the discussion. Odds are that comments are lower-quality, but not always. I collapse these as I go up, upvoting the underrated ones. Occasionally comment. 3. If there's a long stream of lower-quality / redundant comments, I'll collapse those as well. I really wish there were some way to surface more deeply-nested, high-quality comments. There isn't. (Though occasionally an email to mods will elevate one to a top-level comment.) There used to be a periodic HN curation. That no longer occurs AFAIU.

vishnugupta 5y ago

I second this. I applied it to this[1] super long winded article in New Yorker to get the gist of the article. This article is littered with these passages and it's super frustrating. In the end from my view point it's a shallow piece with very little new insights. FWIW the article didn't age well as India is being ravaged by the 2nd wave. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-pandemic-seem-to-be-hitting-some-countries-harder-than-others https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/01/why-does-the-p...

saurik 5y ago
The New Yorker is a magazine, not a newspaper: it doesn't exist to quickly present information every day, but to provide entertaining writing once a month; reading it backwards to try to get to the point as fast as possible sounds as silly as doing the same to a movie or a book.

pbronez 5y ago

man... this is exactly the opposite of how news articles are supposed to be written. Good news articles should tell you everything in the headline. Then tell you everything again in the first body sentence. Then tell you everything again in the first paragraph. and the first page. And so on. It's supposed to be a fractal that unfolds additional detail as you press forward, while ensuring that even a casual reader comes away with a mostly complete and accurate understanding of the issue. More of THAT please.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Yeah, it's called "inverted pyramid", and it's supposed to be the gold standard of journalistic writing. IIRC it's being taught as part of vocational education. And yet, news media are the last place you're likely to find articles written in this style. Somehow, they manage to deliver the exact opposite of what they should be. A fractal of confusion, recursively unfolding noise. (It's as if they were making a lot of money on maximizing the time a reader is engaged with any given article. It's as if - and I know this sounds crazy - the articles were there just to hold the user down, while they're being exposed to something else...)
- rcoveson 5y ago
  > Yeah, it's called "inverted pyramid"... Narrow (succinct) at the top and broad (detailed) at the bottom seems like a normal pyramid to me. An "inverted pyramid" would be like one of those poems that describes fine details first and only in the last sentence reveals what it's been describing. I don't doubt that it's actually called that, but it seems backwards to me.
  - Angostura 5y ago
    Yeh, it's simply called pyramid structure.
  - thatcat 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism... It is ordered most relevant to least.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Thank you. The other replies made me worried my memory is failing me.
- saurik 5y ago
  Wired is a magazine, not a newspaper: it doesn't exist to quickly present information every day, but to provide entertaining writing once a month; insisting it use an inverted pyramid is as strange as arguing that if only movies and books just led with the resolution, it would save you a lot of time.

throwawayboise 5y ago

Sounds like the recommended way to read a research paper: (1) read the abstract; (2) if you're still interested, read the conclusion; (3) if you're still interested, read the body of the paper.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Excellent practice. I'll also frequently apply this to HN comment streams. 1. Collapse the top comment. It's frequently good, but also frequently is an avalanche of compounded hot takes. 2. Scroll to the bottom of the discussion. Odds are that comments are lower-quality, but not always. I collapse these as I go up, upvoting the underrated ones. Occasionally comment. 3. If there's a long stream of lower-quality / redundant comments, I'll collapse those as well. I really wish there were some way to surface more deeply-nested, high-quality comments. There isn't. (Though occasionally an email to mods will elevate one to a top-level comment.) There used to be a periodic HN curation. That no longer occurs AFAIU.