4 ms·

Excellent point on "Death of a pig" by E.B White. It's the perfect example of a timeless essay, without a "big scientific idea". For others unaware of it, that

Excellent point on "Death of a pig" by E.B White. It's the perfect example of a timeless essay, without a "big scientific idea". For others unaware of it, that essay was written in 1948[1], go read it in full. It starts like this: "I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round and none left to do the accounting." [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240227003736/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/01/death-pig/309203/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240227003736/https://www.theat...

tptacek 3y ago
I want to be careful not to pummel a straw man, because it's sort of clear that Graham doesn't believe the Best essay must come from an exploration of science or of exciting new ideas (though most of the advice he gives is for that kind of essay). If I have a concern, I think it's about the chemistry his writing has with this community, how threads here will bleach it down to a game of prog-rock writing, trying to somehow outdo Darwin.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  I cannot decipher your second sentence here.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    I think that Graham's essays have a special significance to HN, and that the community here has a tendency to project things Graham says further along a direction of HN-think than Graham intends in his writing, so that you can imagine threads about how the only contenders for "Best" essays, like, prove P!=NP or something. I'm mostly motivated to comment by that phenomenon, not by the plain text of Graham's essay.
    - callalex 3y ago
      [flagged]
samsolomon 3y ago
Would also like to mention that the Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White is an all-time great book on non-fiction writing. It was required for my Newspaper Fundamentals class in college and I've used it so much since that the creases are wearing thin. There's another fantastic book—On Writing Well—that is a recurring read for me. An aside—I was in one of the early programing bootcamps, The Starter League. My class was held in 37signals office. Jason Fried and some of the other 37signals designers were in this class with me. One day Jason stood up and answered a few questions. One of the other students asked him about books. He walked over to a closet and opened the door. There were hundreds of copies of On Writing Well. That's the book he'd gift to people. That always struck me as interesting. Especially since he'd written (or co-authored) several books at that point.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Though, with respect to Strunk & White, Pullum's timeless takedown: https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar-advice/ https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar...
  - gjm11 3y ago
    Ah yes, as Pullum timelessly put it, "To continue reading for FREE, please sign up". An un-walled version is (legitimately, so far as I know) at https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/5bd889926431f1de07115e6e/209-50-Years-of-stupid-grammar-advice.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/fil... . [EDITED to add:] I don't know how close to identical this is to the Chronicle article; at the end it says "Adapted from an article written for The Chronicle of Higher Education"; my guess is that essentially nothing was changed, but I haven't tried to check.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Your link was the one I was looking for anyways.
  - samatman 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

I want to be careful not to pummel a straw man, because it's sort of clear that Graham doesn't believe the Best essay must come from an exploration of science or of exciting new ideas (though most of the advice he gives is for that kind of essay). If I have a concern, I think it's about the chemistry his writing has with this community, how threads here will bleach it down to a game of prog-rock writing, trying to somehow outdo Darwin.

bongodongobob 3y ago
I cannot decipher your second sentence here.
- tptacek 3y ago
  I think that Graham's essays have a special significance to HN, and that the community here has a tendency to project things Graham says further along a direction of HN-think than Graham intends in his writing, so that you can imagine threads about how the only contenders for "Best" essays, like, prove P!=NP or something. I'm mostly motivated to comment by that phenomenon, not by the plain text of Graham's essay.
  - callalex 3y ago
    [flagged]

samsolomon 3y ago

Would also like to mention that the Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B White is an all-time great book on non-fiction writing. It was required for my Newspaper Fundamentals class in college and I've used it so much since that the creases are wearing thin. There's another fantastic book—On Writing Well—that is a recurring read for me. An aside—I was in one of the early programing bootcamps, The Starter League. My class was held in 37signals office. Jason Fried and some of the other 37signals designers were in this class with me. One day Jason stood up and answered a few questions. One of the other students asked him about books. He walked over to a closet and opened the door. There were hundreds of copies of On Writing Well. That's the book he'd gift to people. That always struck me as interesting. Especially since he'd written (or co-authored) several books at that point.

tptacek 3y ago
Though, with respect to Strunk & White, Pullum's timeless takedown: https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar-advice/ https://www.chronicle.com/article/50-years-of-stupid-grammar...
- gjm11 3y ago
  Ah yes, as Pullum timelessly put it, "To continue reading for FREE, please sign up". An un-walled version is (legitimately, so far as I know) at https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/file/5bd889926431f1de07115e6e/209-50-Years-of-stupid-grammar-advice.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-file-manager/fil... . [EDITED to add:] I don't know how close to identical this is to the Chronicle article; at the end it says "Adapted from an article written for The Chronicle of Higher Education"; my guess is that essentially nothing was changed, but I haven't tried to check.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Your link was the one I was looking for anyways.
- samatman 3y ago