4 ms·

Grading theses, this is a very common trap. Students believe they have to be creative, change it up and use a Thesaurus. Because that is in fact what everyone i

Grading theses, this is a very common trap. Students believe they have to be creative, change it up and use a Thesaurus. Because that is in fact what everyone is taught in school! Yet, technical writing doesn't work that way. Synonyms are almost always wrong. We have the luxury of precision, where most often one term means one concept or thing. A 1:1 mapping with little ambiguity. Deviating from that is almost always the wrong decision. Also notice the style I am writing this comment in. Short, concise, to-the-point sentences. Sparing use of filler words (thus, however, ...). I wish all technical writing was more like that (and I find that good technical writing either is, or is on such a high level that they can get away with longer sentences). I believe it a boon: you get a style of "Statement. Statement. Idea. Question. Idea. Statement. Solution. Conclusion.", if that makes sense, allowing easier mental access and partitioning. Technical topics are hard, and writing should accommodate the reader, making it as easy as possible.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Yes! My intuition about writing is that technical writing should leave every reader with the same understanding of the same ides, whereas creative writing should leave each reader with different emotions, images, thoughts- the ones in the reader themself. My favourite example- H. P. Lovecraft's vague descriptions of Mythos horrors, that contrive to be genuinely disturbing because they leave all the work to the reader's imagination. For me, that's good creative writing technique: allude, evoke, suggest, don't ever, ever show or tell directly. Exactly the opposite of what should go into a thesis, say (like the one I'm writing currently...)!
pdabbadabba 5y ago
There is a lot here I agree with. But: > We have the luxury of precision, where most often one term means one concept or thing. A 1:1 mapping with little ambiguity. Deviating from that is almost always the wrong decision. This is true of some words in a piece of technical writing, but not most of them. Don't allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that every word in your paper has a single clear meaning. At the same time, you're right that a writer shouldn't reach too far to find synonyms just to mix things up. > Short, concise, to-the-point sentences. Sparing use of filler words (thus, however, ...). "Thus" and "however" are not just filler words! Yes, they may be overused. But they also signal the conceptual relationship between one thought and the one that follows it in a clear way, at the beginning of the sentence. This allows the reader to understand how a sentence relates to the previous one before they have fully parsed and understood it.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

Yes! My intuition about writing is that technical writing should leave every reader with the same understanding of the same ides, whereas creative writing should leave each reader with different emotions, images, thoughts- the ones in the reader themself. My favourite example- H. P. Lovecraft's vague descriptions of Mythos horrors, that contrive to be genuinely disturbing because they leave all the work to the reader's imagination. For me, that's good creative writing technique: allude, evoke, suggest, don't ever, ever show or tell directly. Exactly the opposite of what should go into a thesis, say (like the one I'm writing currently...)!

pdabbadabba 5y ago

There is a lot here I agree with. But: > We have the luxury of precision, where most often one term means one concept or thing. A 1:1 mapping with little ambiguity. Deviating from that is almost always the wrong decision. This is true of some words in a piece of technical writing, but not most of them. Don't allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that every word in your paper has a single clear meaning. At the same time, you're right that a writer shouldn't reach too far to find synonyms just to mix things up. > Short, concise, to-the-point sentences. Sparing use of filler words (thus, however, ...). "Thus" and "however" are not just filler words! Yes, they may be overused. But they also signal the conceptual relationship between one thought and the one that follows it in a clear way, at the beginning of the sentence. This allows the reader to understand how a sentence relates to the previous one before they have fully parsed and understood it.