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You can probably spot me at work because I use really simple words. I write obviate then I re-read and replace it with “removes the need to do $foo. Some writ

You can probably spot me at work because I use really simple words. I write obviate then I re-read and replace it with “removes the need to do $foo. Some writers at work forget that the goal of the written word is to communicate to the reader not impress them with word salad. I regard it the same as clever code (note: not the same as complex code) - written for the author not the reader.

club_tropical 4y ago
Your example doesn't match the principles you highlighted. Obviate->remove is replacing a perfect-fit with a generic alternative. "Obviate" was neither a word salad nor complex, it was straight up (marginally) better. This was a tradeoff to appeal to people whose vocabulary is narrow, not improve comprehension.
- noir_lord 4y ago
  People reading what I write are frequently users of English as a second language. Expecting most of the English people to know obviate is pushing it, for someone using English as a second language it’s just adding complexity. It’s about aiming where you expect the average reader to be. Because you know the word don’t fall into the trap of assuming everyone else does.
  - groffee 4y ago
    Treating everyone like an idiot is just doing you and them a disservice. The word exists for a reason, use it.
  - Shorel 4y ago
    Many times it's the other way around. Obviate has several cognates in romance languages, so it is straightforward. Now, the phrasal verbs that are so obvious to a native speaker, these are the real head-scratchers. Or street slang. It may sound like dumbing it down to you, but it actually adds complexity for a non-native.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
      Indeed. "Register": I immediately know what it means and it takes tenths of a second for me to make the decision to click (or not to). "Sign up": despite having a CEFR C2 level of English and using it at work every day, I still need to think for a few seconds if this is a registration or a login (cf. "sign in"). For a native speaker I suppose the latter is (marginally?) easier, but for a non-native, it's much harder, not even close.
      - jsjohnst 4y ago
        Your examples are very illustrative, but I would argue that both phrases suffer from being too generic. I wish that there wasn’t such a push for “one word” CTAs. Examples of alternatives I’d advocate for depending on context: “Create an account” “Subscribe to mailing list” “Submit contest entry”
  - retrac 4y ago
    As a native speaker, it's very unpleasant to write like that. I will if necessary for effective communication, but it's like wearing a straitjacket. It can be awful to read, too. Rarer synonyms and the phrasal verbs (both commonly avoided in a simple style) are sometimes necessary to avoid excessive repetition. It is one of the downsides of being a native speaker. I write pretty much like how I speak. It's hard to use it like a foreign language, but that's what technical international English feels like to me, in a way. In my experience, fluent second language learners master that style more easily than native speakers do.
- Timpy 4y ago
  Isn't that how communication works? Understanding your audience and "appealing" to them does improve comprehension for them.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Yeah, using words you're sure your audience knows just is communication, to me. That said, there is of course a gray zone here.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    > your audience There lies the spring coil. The less it is established what your audience is, the more you shift from "calibrated expression" to a form of expression which is as absolute and universal as possible. (See my previous post here, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33045225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33045225 .) If you have a message for an audience, you will try and condition its expression according the audience; the more the audience is abstract, the more the expression will be unconditioned, as if intended for an ideal audience.
- dlkf 4y ago
  > This was a tradeoff to appeal to people whose vocabulary is narrow, not improve comprehension. ”Comprehension” is not some audience-independent property of a text. Comprehension is what happens when a text is well-calibrated for an audience. If your audience is unlikely to know the word ”obviate” (which seems true of many engineering settings, where the audience is international), you absolutely improve comprehension by replacing it with words the audience is more likely to know. I agree with you that ”obviate” sounds better, and in a setting like a blog post, monograph, or even an hn comment, that’s probably what I’d use. But in e.g. a work email for colleagues in another country, you reduce the risk of miscommunication by following OP’s suggestion.
SoftTalker 4y ago
"Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do." I would have sworn that was from Elements of Style but apparently it's a Mark Twain quote.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  As a sesquipedalian, my writing is sesquipedalian. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sesquipedalian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sesquipedalian
- groffee 4y ago
  Arguably it's that kind of thinking that's destroyed society. Dumbing things down to the lowest common denominator.
  - im3w1l 4y ago
    When I compare modern thinkers to those of say 150 years ago, I find that modern thinkers not only use a simpler style, the ideas are better too.
  - Shorel 4y ago
    I agree with the sentiment, but in some cases it is not dumbing down but making it clearer. For me, the gold standard of this is Carl Sagan writings. Beautiful ideas, explained in the clearest language possible.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    > destroy[ing] society More precisely: not just having people less intellectually exercised¹, but also and especially creating some sort of "demand" that "things have to be simple". Non-recognition of complexity is also one of the cracks allowing populism. Your duty is to "spend one further thought", while some instances seem to defend an idea of an "as-if-constitutional right to reduced consideration". (¹ I wrote the other day, «I also believe that "Now drop and give me twenty" will return us fitter personnel than "Please, be fed from a straw"»)
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
ISO-morphism 4y ago
"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter"
- marton78 4y ago
  If I had had more time, you mean.
cbozeman 4y ago
William Faulkner: "Ernest Hemingway: he has no courage, has never crawled out on a limb. He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary to see if it is properly used." Ernest Hemingway: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."
mdp2021 4y ago
> not impress them with word salad No. Look, I had some "fight" in these pages two days ago because somebody complained of my style. It is the farthest from legitimate to suppose that one's intention is to impress - that is accusing people of childishness, and you need to have solid grounds to suppose that. There are higher chances that one wants to be _precise_. That would be precision in the expression of some content, to have such expression match as perfectly as possible a defined structure of thoughts you elaborated. You may want to describe the facts precisely, and/or the mental processes that those facts provoke. Also some image subtly (and not so subtly) emerged, days ago, of "language as a cage": but if you want to express exactly some "/that/", it is the language that will have to provide the means - as opposed to a horrifying idea of "expressing what language allows". There are contexts in which it is of paramount importance that the reader understands the message (e.g. instructions) - pay attention towards using the most digestible expression then. But when you want your content to be expressed as the defined sculpture of structures of ideas, while many different expressions are possible they are pretty much "what they are, because they are what they should be".
vixen99 4y ago
Nit pick. Fair point in some ways but it depends on your audience. If the latter consists primarily of folk with an extensive vocabulary that enables them to detect the nuance that might be intended by the use of a supposedly unusual word (like obviate) then they won't know what you mean by 'word salad' unless you're using some word inappropriately. Seven letters versus twenty three characters. No competition. If obviate is what you mean then use it. For a general audience however, you're absolutely right. Occurs to me there's another point in your favor as expressed in Orwell's version of a well-known passage from the Old Testament 'Ecclesiastes' into modern English. He makes the point brilliantly. Aesthetics does come into it! https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

club_tropical 4y ago

Your example doesn't match the principles you highlighted. Obviate->remove is replacing a perfect-fit with a generic alternative. "Obviate" was neither a word salad nor complex, it was straight up (marginally) better. This was a tradeoff to appeal to people whose vocabulary is narrow, not improve comprehension.

noir_lord 4y ago
People reading what I write are frequently users of English as a second language. Expecting most of the English people to know obviate is pushing it, for someone using English as a second language it’s just adding complexity. It’s about aiming where you expect the average reader to be. Because you know the word don’t fall into the trap of assuming everyone else does.
- groffee 4y ago
  Treating everyone like an idiot is just doing you and them a disservice. The word exists for a reason, use it.
- Shorel 4y ago
  Many times it's the other way around. Obviate has several cognates in romance languages, so it is straightforward. Now, the phrasal verbs that are so obvious to a native speaker, these are the real head-scratchers. Or street slang. It may sound like dumbing it down to you, but it actually adds complexity for a non-native.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
    Indeed. "Register": I immediately know what it means and it takes tenths of a second for me to make the decision to click (or not to). "Sign up": despite having a CEFR C2 level of English and using it at work every day, I still need to think for a few seconds if this is a registration or a login (cf. "sign in"). For a native speaker I suppose the latter is (marginally?) easier, but for a non-native, it's much harder, not even close.
    - jsjohnst 4y ago
      Your examples are very illustrative, but I would argue that both phrases suffer from being too generic. I wish that there wasn’t such a push for “one word” CTAs. Examples of alternatives I’d advocate for depending on context: “Create an account” “Subscribe to mailing list” “Submit contest entry”
- retrac 4y ago
  As a native speaker, it's very unpleasant to write like that. I will if necessary for effective communication, but it's like wearing a straitjacket. It can be awful to read, too. Rarer synonyms and the phrasal verbs (both commonly avoided in a simple style) are sometimes necessary to avoid excessive repetition. It is one of the downsides of being a native speaker. I write pretty much like how I speak. It's hard to use it like a foreign language, but that's what technical international English feels like to me, in a way. In my experience, fluent second language learners master that style more easily than native speakers do.
Timpy 4y ago
Isn't that how communication works? Understanding your audience and "appealing" to them does improve comprehension for them.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Yeah, using words you're sure your audience knows just is communication, to me. That said, there is of course a gray zone here.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > your audience There lies the spring coil. The less it is established what your audience is, the more you shift from "calibrated expression" to a form of expression which is as absolute and universal as possible. (See my previous post here, at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33045225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33045225 .) If you have a message for an audience, you will try and condition its expression according the audience; the more the audience is abstract, the more the expression will be unconditioned, as if intended for an ideal audience.
dlkf 4y ago
> This was a tradeoff to appeal to people whose vocabulary is narrow, not improve comprehension. ”Comprehension” is not some audience-independent property of a text. Comprehension is what happens when a text is well-calibrated for an audience. If your audience is unlikely to know the word ”obviate” (which seems true of many engineering settings, where the audience is international), you absolutely improve comprehension by replacing it with words the audience is more likely to know. I agree with you that ”obviate” sounds better, and in a setting like a blog post, monograph, or even an hn comment, that’s probably what I’d use. But in e.g. a work email for colleagues in another country, you reduce the risk of miscommunication by following OP’s suggestion.

SoftTalker 4y ago

"Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do." I would have sworn that was from Elements of Style but apparently it's a Mark Twain quote.

fsckboy 4y ago
As a sesquipedalian, my writing is sesquipedalian. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sesquipedalian https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sesquipedalian
groffee 4y ago
Arguably it's that kind of thinking that's destroyed society. Dumbing things down to the lowest common denominator.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  When I compare modern thinkers to those of say 150 years ago, I find that modern thinkers not only use a simpler style, the ideas are better too.
- Shorel 4y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but in some cases it is not dumbing down but making it clearer. For me, the gold standard of this is Carl Sagan writings. Beautiful ideas, explained in the clearest language possible.
- mdp2021 4y ago
  > destroy[ing] society More precisely: not just having people less intellectually exercised¹, but also and especially creating some sort of "demand" that "things have to be simple". Non-recognition of complexity is also one of the cracks allowing populism. Your duty is to "spend one further thought", while some instances seem to defend an idea of an "as-if-constitutional right to reduced consideration". (¹ I wrote the other day, «I also believe that "Now drop and give me twenty" will return us fitter personnel than "Please, be fed from a straw"»)
- denton-scratch 4y ago

ISO-morphism 4y ago

"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter"

marton78 4y ago
If I had had more time, you mean.

cbozeman 4y ago

William Faulkner: "Ernest Hemingway: he has no courage, has never crawled out on a limb. He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary to see if it is properly used." Ernest Hemingway: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use."

mdp2021 4y ago

> not impress them with word salad No. Look, I had some "fight" in these pages two days ago because somebody complained of my style. It is the farthest from legitimate to suppose that one's intention is to impress - that is accusing people of childishness, and you need to have solid grounds to suppose that. There are higher chances that one wants to be _precise_. That would be precision in the expression of some content, to have such expression match as perfectly as possible a defined structure of thoughts you elaborated. You may want to describe the facts precisely, and/or the mental processes that those facts provoke. Also some image subtly (and not so subtly) emerged, days ago, of "language as a cage": but if you want to express exactly some "/that/", it is the language that will have to provide the means - as opposed to a horrifying idea of "expressing what language allows". There are contexts in which it is of paramount importance that the reader understands the message (e.g. instructions) - pay attention towards using the most digestible expression then. But when you want your content to be expressed as the defined sculpture of structures of ideas, while many different expressions are possible they are pretty much "what they are, because they are what they should be".

vixen99 4y ago

Nit pick. Fair point in some ways but it depends on your audience. If the latter consists primarily of folk with an extensive vocabulary that enables them to detect the nuance that might be intended by the use of a supposedly unusual word (like obviate) then they won't know what you mean by 'word salad' unless you're using some word inappropriately. Seven letters versus twenty three characters. No competition. If obviate is what you mean then use it. For a general audience however, you're absolutely right. Occurs to me there's another point in your favor as expressed in Orwell's version of a well-known passage from the Old Testament 'Ecclesiastes' into modern English. He makes the point brilliantly. Aesthetics does come into it! https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...