4 ms·

What's the second axiom?

by _akhe 2y ago

rawgabbit 2y ago
The first says the message should be simple and short. The second axiom says the explanation should be long and not only full of details that delight our sight sound and touch, but convey a sense of wonder by offering a fresh perspective and eschewing tired literary tropes. In the opening of Dickens The Bleak House, “London” is the one word message. For a Dickens reader, you can infer London means Victorian Society. The rest of the paragraph is a delightful description of London. “Megalosaurus”, “The death of the sun”, and the reader’s realization that Dickens may be diagnosing what ails Victorian society and caked it with mud is the obsession with money or lack of it. > London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
- _akhe 2y ago
  In your view does Dickens satisfy both? That is if you removed or changed a single word in that lovely description would it change its meaning? Is there a case where a sentence is of a minimum length out of necessity (to achieve a certain flow, level of description, etc.?) Think I share your opinion - succinct is great but so is flowery if it's utilized.
  - rawgabbit 2y ago
    Yes, Dickens satisfies both. He gets his message across simply. When he wants to expounds on what he means, he does it a beautiful and memorable way.

What's the second axiom?

by _akhe 2y ago

What's the second axiom?

The first says the message should be simple and short. The second axiom says the explanation should be long and not only full of details that delight our sight sound and touch, but convey a sense of wonder by offering a fresh perspective and eschewing tired literary tropes. In the opening of Dickens The Bleak House, “London” is the one word message. For a Dickens reader, you can infer London means Victorian Society. The rest of the paragraph is a delightful description of London. “Megalosaurus”, “The death of the sun”, and the reader’s realization that Dickens may be diagnosing what ails Victorian society and caked it with mud is the obsession with money or lack of it. > London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

_akhe 2y ago
In your view does Dickens satisfy both? That is if you removed or changed a single word in that lovely description would it change its meaning? Is there a case where a sentence is of a minimum length out of necessity (to achieve a certain flow, level of description, etc.?) Think I share your opinion - succinct is great but so is flowery if it's utilized.
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  Yes, Dickens satisfies both. He gets his message across simply. When he wants to expounds on what he means, he does it a beautiful and memorable way.