4 ms·

The day you became a better writer (2007)

35 points by sherilm 3y ago

rektide 3y ago
I need to be more observant of what writing I like. I'd love to have a pocket anyzer that could tell me how much of this advice here creates things I like. I try to be much more mindful when I have real intent & want things done. But so much writing is an attempt to communicate unclear things, to explore, not convince. I have a hard time believing writing like this produces the things I like to read.
dang 3y ago
Related: The Day You Became a Better Writer by Scott Adams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953775 - March 2017 (4 comments) The Day You Became a Better Writer (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13673276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13673276 - Feb 2017 (1 comment)
amelius 3y ago
Glad to see it didn't involve LLMs.
Wowfunhappy 3y ago
> Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. My understanding was that that words are typically ordered differently in other languages, is that true? That would seem to disprove the idea that "all brains work this way" (although it may be how the brains of native english speakers work).
- cocacola1 3y ago
  I think the general advice in English has been to write in active voice (“the boy hit the ball”) rather than passive (“the ball was hit by the boy.”) As I understand it: the subject is acting on the object – in that order – instead of the object being acted upon by the subject – again, in that order.
  - Enginerrrd 3y ago
    For what it's worth, I often find myself defending the passive voice in various contexts. I don't know why the Style Tsars decided to hate in that one, but it's really not universally bad.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      Most of my complaints about excessive/inappropriate use of passive voice are when it's used to obscure a point. "It was decided that we'd do XYZ." rather than "Pat decided that we'd do XYZ."
    - p0pcult 3y ago
      Mistakes were made.
      - TomDavey 3y ago
        Excellent example! This sentence contains no actor at all, unless the mistakes made themselves.
        euroderf 3y ago
        A finger pointing into... thin air.
- taosx 3y ago
  I'm bilingual and a lot of times if I speak/write fast without post-processing my thoughts I get the order of the words mixed up to the other language. And yes, words are ordered differently from language to language (ex. french / english).
  - eks391 3y ago
    > I get the order of the words mixed up to the other language. I'm trying to piece whether this would be anicdotal evidence for or against the previous statement of > All brains work that way. Since there are many ways this could be occuring, would you say that you are ... • putting the 2nd language in the order of your native language (or opposite) • putting word order in active voice (or passive) regardless of which language you are speaking • or putting the words in the order of whichever language has been dominate at the time. Like if you are somewhere where you mostly have been speaking Language A, and suddenly switch to Language B, you accidentally use Language A grammar
    - taosx 3y ago
      > • or putting the words in the order of whichever language has been dominate at the time. It's something along the lines of the third case, but there are also cases where a word by word translation is going on when I'm trying to express concepts I've learned in a language into the other.
- dmurray 3y ago
  Words are ordered differently in other languages, but it's an extremely rare language where it's standard to put the object before the subject. Wikipedia says that 96% of studied human languages, covering over 99% of the population, have the subject before the object [0]. So it may not be an absolute, but there does seem to be something fundamental about subject-object being the more natural order. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93verb%E2%80%93object_word_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93verb%E2%80%93o...
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > My understanding was that that words are typically ordered differently in other languages, is that true? That would seem to disprove the idea that "all brains work this way" (although it may be how the brains of native english speakers work). Well, first, the quoted extract is referring to the subject of the sentence as "the object", which is a terrible mistake to make - the claim is incomprehensible unless you pay attention to what should be a superfluous example. It is very common for languages to put objects before verbs by default, but not in English. Most potential word orders are attested in some language or other. Creoles (new languages that don't develop from ancestors) are usually subject-verb-object, which is evidence that supports the idea that that word ordering is more natural. Creoles can develop that word ordering even when no language in the local environment uses it. As further support for SVO order being "more natural", you can also observe that it seems to have spontaneously developed in the major trade languages. Latin was SOV; French, Spanish, and Italian are SVO. Most Chinese languages are SOV today, but Mandarin is SVO. (So is Cantonese. Old English, unfortunately for this line of thought, seems to have already been SVO by the time it's documented.) All languages feature ways to rearrange the words in a sentence.[1] The reason it's an option in English to say "the ball was hit by the boy" is that you might be talking about the ball. A text written entirely in the active voice is going to end up being much harder to understand than a natural text, specifically because using that style will prevent you from organizing your ideas correctly. The call to "learn how brains organize ideas" is misguided puffery. [1] Active/passive is kind of an impoverished way to do this, though English does also support topic fronting. In Mandarin there's a three-way syntactic split between SVO ("active"), O被SV ("passive"), and S把OV (with 把 being a "preposition marking the direct object").
paulpauper 3y ago
I used to think it was good prose, simplicity, clarity, etc. that matters most. Those do, but what matters more is finding the right audience that will be most receptive to your work. Try sharing a pro-Marxism article on an an-cap forum, or a pro-capitalism article in a Marxist forum, you're going to have a bad time, or at least create unnecessary obstacles to success. Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences. By this logic, most popular writers and bloggers not be as successful as they are, such as Moldbug. Simple , strait-forward writing does not mean more successful, viral writing. If you're writing a how-to guide or an investment pitch, maybe simple is better, but expository writing does not need to be simple
vanjajaja1 3y ago
this is some of my favourite advice. once you have your message down to its bare essentials, you can riff over it with decorations to get the feeling across. I reference this a lot
TomDavey 3y ago
Preferring the active voice to the passive voice (to use the terms from formal grammar) whenever feasible is the universal recommendation of writing instruction in English, e.g. by everyone from Strunk & White to the Random House Handbook to George Orwell. As noted by others in this thread, the active voice puts the focus on the actor, i.e. the grammatical subject. This lends the construction vigor. The passive voice, which puts the focus on the grammatical object, is weak and even dull by comparison. As well, by diminishing the actor, the passive voice can serve to evade responsibility and accountability: "The campaign finance rules were violated by the senators." rather than the more pointed "The senators violated the campaign finance rules." This convenient effect explains the prevalence of the passive voice in bureaucratic prose, which was Orwell's particular bête noire. The active voice is also less "wordy," which improves the vigor of the style. In the example I just gave, the word count is 9 versus 7. I achieved the lower count by removing an auxiliary verb ("were") and a preposition ("by"). Now, I could have written the previous sentence like this: "The lower count was achieved by removing an auxiliary verb . . ." etc. Here the passive voice is probably preferred, because the actor, "I", is not of significance, and may even distract. The passive voice does have its uses, hence the caveat "whenever feasible" in the first sentence above.
asdfman123 3y ago
The author of “ Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter” and a guy whose claim to fame was making cartoons about how much it sucks to be an boring middle aged man with no personality
abhayhegde 3y ago
Essentially: 1. Keep sentences short. 2. Use appropriate vocabulary. 3. Engage your audience with a captivating beginning. 4. Prefer active voice.

35 points by sherilm 3y ago

I need to be more observant of what writing I like. I'd love to have a pocket anyzer that could tell me how much of this advice here creates things I like. I try to be much more mindful when I have real intent & want things done. But so much writing is an attempt to communicate unclear things, to explore, not convince. I have a hard time believing writing like this produces the things I like to read.

dang 3y ago

Related: The Day You Became a Better Writer by Scott Adams - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953775 - March 2017 (4 comments) The Day You Became a Better Writer (2007) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13673276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13673276 - Feb 2017 (1 comment)

amelius 3y ago

Glad to see it didn't involve LLMs.

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

> Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. My understanding was that that words are typically ordered differently in other languages, is that true? That would seem to disprove the idea that "all brains work this way" (although it may be how the brains of native english speakers work).

cocacola1 3y ago
I think the general advice in English has been to write in active voice (“the boy hit the ball”) rather than passive (“the ball was hit by the boy.”) As I understand it: the subject is acting on the object – in that order – instead of the object being acted upon by the subject – again, in that order.
- Enginerrrd 3y ago
  For what it's worth, I often find myself defending the passive voice in various contexts. I don't know why the Style Tsars decided to hate in that one, but it's really not universally bad.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Most of my complaints about excessive/inappropriate use of passive voice are when it's used to obscure a point. "It was decided that we'd do XYZ." rather than "Pat decided that we'd do XYZ."
  - p0pcult 3y ago
    Mistakes were made.
    - TomDavey 3y ago
      Excellent example! This sentence contains no actor at all, unless the mistakes made themselves.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        A finger pointing into... thin air.
taosx 3y ago
I'm bilingual and a lot of times if I speak/write fast without post-processing my thoughts I get the order of the words mixed up to the other language. And yes, words are ordered differently from language to language (ex. french / english).
- eks391 3y ago
  > I get the order of the words mixed up to the other language. I'm trying to piece whether this would be anicdotal evidence for or against the previous statement of > All brains work that way. Since there are many ways this could be occuring, would you say that you are ... • putting the 2nd language in the order of your native language (or opposite) • putting word order in active voice (or passive) regardless of which language you are speaking • or putting the words in the order of whichever language has been dominate at the time. Like if you are somewhere where you mostly have been speaking Language A, and suddenly switch to Language B, you accidentally use Language A grammar
  - taosx 3y ago
    > • or putting the words in the order of whichever language has been dominate at the time. It's something along the lines of the third case, but there are also cases where a word by word translation is going on when I'm trying to express concepts I've learned in a language into the other.
dmurray 3y ago
Words are ordered differently in other languages, but it's an extremely rare language where it's standard to put the object before the subject. Wikipedia says that 96% of studied human languages, covering over 99% of the population, have the subject before the object [0]. So it may not be an absolute, but there does seem to be something fundamental about subject-object being the more natural order. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93verb%E2%80%93object_word_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93verb%E2%80%93o...
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> My understanding was that that words are typically ordered differently in other languages, is that true? That would seem to disprove the idea that "all brains work this way" (although it may be how the brains of native english speakers work). Well, first, the quoted extract is referring to the subject of the sentence as "the object", which is a terrible mistake to make - the claim is incomprehensible unless you pay attention to what should be a superfluous example. It is very common for languages to put objects before verbs by default, but not in English. Most potential word orders are attested in some language or other. Creoles (new languages that don't develop from ancestors) are usually subject-verb-object, which is evidence that supports the idea that that word ordering is more natural. Creoles can develop that word ordering even when no language in the local environment uses it. As further support for SVO order being "more natural", you can also observe that it seems to have spontaneously developed in the major trade languages. Latin was SOV; French, Spanish, and Italian are SVO. Most Chinese languages are SOV today, but Mandarin is SVO. (So is Cantonese. Old English, unfortunately for this line of thought, seems to have already been SVO by the time it's documented.) All languages feature ways to rearrange the words in a sentence.[1] The reason it's an option in English to say "the ball was hit by the boy" is that you might be talking about the ball. A text written entirely in the active voice is going to end up being much harder to understand than a natural text, specifically because using that style will prevent you from organizing your ideas correctly. The call to "learn how brains organize ideas" is misguided puffery. [1] Active/passive is kind of an impoverished way to do this, though English does also support topic fronting. In Mandarin there's a three-way syntactic split between SVO ("active"), O被SV ("passive"), and S把OV (with 把 being a "preposition marking the direct object").

paulpauper 3y ago

I used to think it was good prose, simplicity, clarity, etc. that matters most. Those do, but what matters more is finding the right audience that will be most receptive to your work. Try sharing a pro-Marxism article on an an-cap forum, or a pro-capitalism article in a Marxist forum, you're going to have a bad time, or at least create unnecessary obstacles to success. Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences. By this logic, most popular writers and bloggers not be as successful as they are, such as Moldbug. Simple , strait-forward writing does not mean more successful, viral writing. If you're writing a how-to guide or an investment pitch, maybe simple is better, but expository writing does not need to be simple

vanjajaja1 3y ago

this is some of my favourite advice. once you have your message down to its bare essentials, you can riff over it with decorations to get the feeling across. I reference this a lot

TomDavey 3y ago

Preferring the active voice to the passive voice (to use the terms from formal grammar) whenever feasible is the universal recommendation of writing instruction in English, e.g. by everyone from Strunk & White to the Random House Handbook to George Orwell. As noted by others in this thread, the active voice puts the focus on the actor, i.e. the grammatical subject. This lends the construction vigor. The passive voice, which puts the focus on the grammatical object, is weak and even dull by comparison. As well, by diminishing the actor, the passive voice can serve to evade responsibility and accountability: "The campaign finance rules were violated by the senators." rather than the more pointed "The senators violated the campaign finance rules." This convenient effect explains the prevalence of the passive voice in bureaucratic prose, which was Orwell's particular bête noire. The active voice is also less "wordy," which improves the vigor of the style. In the example I just gave, the word count is 9 versus 7. I achieved the lower count by removing an auxiliary verb ("were") and a preposition ("by"). Now, I could have written the previous sentence like this: "The lower count was achieved by removing an auxiliary verb . . ." etc. Here the passive voice is probably preferred, because the actor, "I", is not of significance, and may even distract. The passive voice does have its uses, hence the caveat "whenever feasible" in the first sentence above.

asdfman123 3y ago

The author of “ Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter” and a guy whose claim to fame was making cartoons about how much it sucks to be an boring middle aged man with no personality

abhayhegde 3y ago

Essentially: 1. Keep sentences short. 2. Use appropriate vocabulary. 3. Engage your audience with a captivating beginning. 4. Prefer active voice.