3 ms·
I would assume that his suggestions for clarity in "scientific papers" and his literary style don't overlap all that much to infer the former from the later.
by mariusor 1y ago
I would assume that his suggestions for clarity in "scientific papers" and his literary style don't overlap all that much to infer the former from the later.
- greenie_beans 1y ago> the former from the later my writing advice: never use the former and the latter
- mariusor 1y agoDoes it make me sound pretentious? That's fine, we're debating literary styles after all. :D
- greenie_beans 1y agono, it's just a stylistic pet peeve of mine. lacks specificity and always makes me have to think about which is the latter and which is the former, no matter how many times i look it up. scrambles my brain.
- suuuuuuuu 1y agoThis is certainly the case, but it does make it all the more amusing that the myth > Commas denote a pause in speaking.... Speak the sentence aloud to find pauses. made its way into this article. Hard to imagine that this particular point, to which I might attribute many of the comma splices I see in scientific writing, actually came from a professional writer.
- jjmarr 1y agoMcCarthy's books involve unrelenting violence. If he viewed commas as pauses, it makes sense that he would never use them.
- oh_my_goodness 1y agoIt goes without saying that you're a better writer than Cormac McCarthy. Tell us something beyond that.
- suuuuuuuu 1y agoThe implication was that likely not all of the advice in this article, which was written by biologists, is actually attributable to McCarthy.