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>One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs—who is generally, though not entirely correctly

>One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs—who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American —is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. I read the article till I encountered this. I guess some people may be able to parse this in one pass. So just wanted to ask: does anyone feel any enjoyment when he/she encounters such a statement?

JonnieCache 12y ago
The person who wrote it I guess. It's like they're trying to cargo cult the postmodern literary criticism they studied at university but they didn't have a big enough dictionary to hand to create the right effect. Irascible, paen... where's the melioristic, where's the recherché. Must try harder.
ximeng 12y ago
I liked it up until the "diamond triangle" - diamonds have a cubic crystal lattice!
lmm 12y ago
I feel as much enjoyment as I would with any other moderately interesting statement. I have no trouble parsing it, so I don't consciously notice anything about its structure. I think requiring writers to always use short sentences would make many articles worse, by forcing them to express the same ideas in a more verbose way.
- maratd 12y ago
  > I have no trouble parsing it I must be slow. I had quite a bit of trouble reading it. I counted 8 disparate ideas in that one sentence. I had to read it 4 times to actually understand everything.
cgio 12y ago
Maybe the author intended to filter his readers. Maybe he wanted the readers to switch to serious reading and comprehending mode. Writers do not always engage the maximal readership but sometimes they may not wish to do so either.
- aangjie 12y ago
  Whenever, I see statements like that my sceptism of the basic hypothesis goes up.
cantrevealname 12y ago
> Does anyone feel any enjoyment when he/she encounters such a statement? It's impossible to read in a leisurely manner for me as well. But I do have good news: Far fewer writers do this than in the past. Here's a sentence from the first page of "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens: In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night. A wordy tedious style was common in the past -- at least from what I've read. I think that most people write way more clearly and simply these days than they did 100-200 years ago. This applies to news reports, novels, advertisements, and even academic papers.
- evgen 12y ago
  It is not that modern writing is more clear or in any way better than the styles of the past, it is more often the case that the audience for a modern author is a barely educated simpleton who has a hard time keeping track of a sentence with more than one subordinate clause. The problem is not with Dickens...
  - crusso 12y ago
    The beauty of good writing is the ability of the author to state things simply without requiring the reader to meander through all the half-filled closets of the author's mind.
    - vvvv 12y ago
      Horses for courses. I don't enjoy overly complex business-speak but I do sometimes like reading novels where you even have to refer to footnotes to fully understand the word plays and cultural/historical connotations. Certain writers would have spent days and weeks crafting a single sentence to perfection and I appreciate the effort.
jlaswell 12y ago
I sure don't. I really don't enjoy seeing a single sentence with this many unnecessary commas or two em dashs. This is a 'grammar smell' just as obviously as when we see blatant code smells.
- zimpenfish 12y ago
  You'd normally have em dashes in pairs though if you're using them instead of brackets to set off a sub-sentence (as is the case here.)
leoc 12y ago
It's not particularly hard to read, but it does partake of the cringey middlebrowness that shows up fairly often in the article. It was the barn-raisings that did for me.
sergiosgc 12y ago
This kind of sentence is par for the course in (my native) Portuguese. I have to consciously break down sentences when writing in English, to the point that my discourse in written English sometimes sounds, to me, too "stop and go". As such, I am used, and enjoy, such long, diverging, sentences. To each his own, I guess. Both formats have strengths and weaknesses. Simple sentences, in logical form, are easier to parse and make it easier to follow the "formal"(ish) proof. Complex sentences more closely grasp and transmit divergent thought processes, where you attack related avenues of thought at the same time you are making the main point. I don't think one option can be graded as better than the other. Use a hammer on nails, fetch a screwdriver for screws.
everyone 12y ago
I wasnt very invested in this article or anything but also for me that sentence was the point at which I stopped.
wolfgke 12y ago
For me as native German speaker it's not a really problem, since especially in older German texts, (very) multi-clause sentences are not unheard of. To give an example (source: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Anekdote_aus_dem_letzten_preu%C3%9Fischen_Kriege http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Anekdote_aus_dem_letzten_preu%...): "In einem bei Jena liegenden Dorf, erzählte mir, auf einer Reise nach Frankfurt, der Gastwirth, daß sich mehrere Stunden nach der Schlacht, um die Zeit, da das Dorf schon ganz von der Armee des Prinzen von Hohenlohe verlassen und von Franzosen, die es für besetzt gehalten, umringt gewesen wäre, ein einzelner preußischer Reiter darin gezeigt hätte; und versicherte mir, daß wenn alle Soldaten, die an diesem Tage mitgefochten, so tapfer gewesen wären, wie dieser, die Franzosen hätten geschlagen werden müssen, wären sie auch noch dreimal stärker gewesen, als sie in der That waren." Or Kant (very famous for his multi-clause sentences) (Source: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/kritik-der-reinen-vernunft-2-auflage-3502/3 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/kritik-der-reinen-vernunft-...): "Wenn sie nach viel gemachten Anstalten und Zurüstungen, sobald es zum Zweck kommt, in Stecken gerät, oder, um diesen zu erreichen, öfters wieder zurückgehen und einen andern Weg einschlagen muß; imgleichen wenn es nicht möglich ist, die verschiedenen Mitarbeiter in der Art, wie die gemeinschaftliche Absicht erfolgt werden soll, einhellig zu machen: so kann man immer überzeugt sein, daß ein solches Studium bei weitem noch nicht den sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft eingeschlagen, sondern ein bloßes Herumtappen sei, und es ist schon ein Verdienst um die Vernunft, diesen Weg womöglich ausfindig zu machen, sollte auch manches als vergeblich aufgegeben werden müssen, was in dem ohne Überlegung vorher genommenen Zwecke enthalten war."
- rurban 12y ago
  Adalbert Stifter!
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
chrisBob 12y ago
Maybe he is a big Melville fan. Moby Dick has some sentences with paragraph breaks to help you keep your place.
oftenwrong 12y ago
It is the natural language equivalent of using a complex, "clever" expression in code instead of multiple, simple expressions. If the goal is to be as clear as is possible, keep it simple. In works that are intended to be appreciated on an artistic level, I don't mind some meandering and flourish. There should be an obfuscated writing contest.
pyre 12y ago
> Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after This is the part that tripped me up at first. I kept grokking that as the his book being named Coming (and that the quote just had a capitalization error). This didn't make sense: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, <TITLE>, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs Other than that you just break it down like this: 1. The stuff between the emdashes is just an aside. It could have been in paranthesis, thought I'm not hip to the finer points of when to separate with dashes vs. parenthesis. So you could rewrite it like this: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs (who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American) is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. Or even remove it entirely: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs, is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. 2. Those last clauses are just a list of ideas that are tied to the book. You could just grok it like so: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs, is that it is a paean <LIST OF "to ..." CLAUSES EXPRESSING IDEAS IN THE BOOK>.
netcan 12y ago
I kind of feel like this is an old fashioned style of writing. I enjoy simple conversational style more, though it's not exactly painful to read this. It just takes more concentration than it should to understand. I don't see the benefit over breaking it up. Also, that disembodied tense is a little harder to connect to. Just narrate the damn paragraph. This long sentence makes you forget that he's trying to contrast something. One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs—who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American —is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 1 sentence Issacson's new book follows his biography of Steve Jobs who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American. In contrast, 'The Innovators' is a paean to cooperation, the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 2 sentences, shorter The Innovators follows Issacson's popular biography of the famously brilliant-but-belligerent Steve Jobs. His new book praises different virtues: the force-multiplication power of collective effort and the transformative power of industry, academia and government working together. - shorter & flatter The Innovators follows Issacson's popular biography of Steve Jobs. It's an interesting contrast. Steve jobs was famous for both his belligerence and his brilliance. He is presented as an archetypical a lone genius. His new book is different. It praises cooperation and the the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort. Interestingly, the book even emphasizes the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 6 sentences, more narration. Tells you what it's trying to tell you.
- spenuke 12y ago
  Before seeing your reply, I did a similar "alternate version" write up. I disagree that the long sentence makes you forget he's trying to contrast something. There's a built in hierarchy in the grammar itself that tells you this is all tied together (in a comparison). I find that short, rapidfire sentences makes me lose track of the controlling idea easier. Edited to add: How many times do you have to repeat that each sentence is continuing the thought: "This is interesting..." "His new book is different..." ... Your example isn't hard to read, either. But it's hard to say that it's more concise and precise.
spenuke 12y ago
I parsed it in one pass (don't have strong feelings for pleasure or pain on it). It's not the best sentence ever, but I don't really see the problem with it. To find out, how about we try to say the same thing in a different style: >Issaacson's book is surprising, because his last book was about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was portrayed in that book as a radical and congenitally irascible individual. The kind we think of as totally "American". Now, since Isaacson's book was kind to Jobs, we might think that he is in favor of such an individualistic understanding of genius. It is thus surprising that his new book strongly praises the virtue of three ideas: (1) cooperation in general, (2) the idea that collective effort has a multiplicative result from its individual parts, and (3) the way that industry, academia, and government can work together with exceptional results. These are antithetical to the myth of the lone genius that appears in the Jobs book. So, like we said, it's surprising. ..... All he's saying here is that he's surprised because one book seemed to argue for the individual, and this new one argues for collective effort. I, for one, find his version easy to read, and my version to be easy to understand, but boring. You'll also notice it's not actually any shorter, and I find that breaking things into short sentences gets more tedious to read than a long, well-formed sentence. It forces you to really be pedantic, like with my closing sentence - which was necessary to tie all those individual short sentences together. In a long sentence, those are just subclauses, so you don't have be repetitious about the hierarchy of meaning.

JonnieCache 12y ago

The person who wrote it I guess. It's like they're trying to cargo cult the postmodern literary criticism they studied at university but they didn't have a big enough dictionary to hand to create the right effect. Irascible, paen... where's the melioristic, where's the recherché. Must try harder.

ximeng 12y ago

I liked it up until the "diamond triangle" - diamonds have a cubic crystal lattice!

lmm 12y ago

I feel as much enjoyment as I would with any other moderately interesting statement. I have no trouble parsing it, so I don't consciously notice anything about its structure. I think requiring writers to always use short sentences would make many articles worse, by forcing them to express the same ideas in a more verbose way.

maratd 12y ago
> I have no trouble parsing it I must be slow. I had quite a bit of trouble reading it. I counted 8 disparate ideas in that one sentence. I had to read it 4 times to actually understand everything.

cgio 12y ago

Maybe the author intended to filter his readers. Maybe he wanted the readers to switch to serious reading and comprehending mode. Writers do not always engage the maximal readership but sometimes they may not wish to do so either.

aangjie 12y ago
Whenever, I see statements like that my sceptism of the basic hypothesis goes up.

cantrevealname 12y ago

> Does anyone feel any enjoyment when he/she encounters such a statement? It's impossible to read in a leisurely manner for me as well. But I do have good news: Far fewer writers do this than in the past. Here's a sentence from the first page of "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens: In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night. A wordy tedious style was common in the past -- at least from what I've read. I think that most people write way more clearly and simply these days than they did 100-200 years ago. This applies to news reports, novels, advertisements, and even academic papers.

evgen 12y ago
It is not that modern writing is more clear or in any way better than the styles of the past, it is more often the case that the audience for a modern author is a barely educated simpleton who has a hard time keeping track of a sentence with more than one subordinate clause. The problem is not with Dickens...
- crusso 12y ago
  The beauty of good writing is the ability of the author to state things simply without requiring the reader to meander through all the half-filled closets of the author's mind.
  - vvvv 12y ago
    Horses for courses. I don't enjoy overly complex business-speak but I do sometimes like reading novels where you even have to refer to footnotes to fully understand the word plays and cultural/historical connotations. Certain writers would have spent days and weeks crafting a single sentence to perfection and I appreciate the effort.

jlaswell 12y ago

I sure don't. I really don't enjoy seeing a single sentence with this many unnecessary commas or two em dashs. This is a 'grammar smell' just as obviously as when we see blatant code smells.

zimpenfish 12y ago
You'd normally have em dashes in pairs though if you're using them instead of brackets to set off a sub-sentence (as is the case here.)

leoc 12y ago

It's not particularly hard to read, but it does partake of the cringey middlebrowness that shows up fairly often in the article. It was the barn-raisings that did for me.

sergiosgc 12y ago

This kind of sentence is par for the course in (my native) Portuguese. I have to consciously break down sentences when writing in English, to the point that my discourse in written English sometimes sounds, to me, too "stop and go". As such, I am used, and enjoy, such long, diverging, sentences. To each his own, I guess. Both formats have strengths and weaknesses. Simple sentences, in logical form, are easier to parse and make it easier to follow the "formal"(ish) proof. Complex sentences more closely grasp and transmit divergent thought processes, where you attack related avenues of thought at the same time you are making the main point. I don't think one option can be graded as better than the other. Use a hammer on nails, fetch a screwdriver for screws.

everyone 12y ago

I wasnt very invested in this article or anything but also for me that sentence was the point at which I stopped.

wolfgke 12y ago

For me as native German speaker it's not a really problem, since especially in older German texts, (very) multi-clause sentences are not unheard of. To give an example (source: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Anekdote_aus_dem_letzten_preu%C3%9Fischen_Kriege http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Anekdote_aus_dem_letzten_preu%...): "In einem bei Jena liegenden Dorf, erzählte mir, auf einer Reise nach Frankfurt, der Gastwirth, daß sich mehrere Stunden nach der Schlacht, um die Zeit, da das Dorf schon ganz von der Armee des Prinzen von Hohenlohe verlassen und von Franzosen, die es für besetzt gehalten, umringt gewesen wäre, ein einzelner preußischer Reiter darin gezeigt hätte; und versicherte mir, daß wenn alle Soldaten, die an diesem Tage mitgefochten, so tapfer gewesen wären, wie dieser, die Franzosen hätten geschlagen werden müssen, wären sie auch noch dreimal stärker gewesen, als sie in der That waren." Or Kant (very famous for his multi-clause sentences) (Source: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/kritik-der-reinen-vernunft-2-auflage-3502/3 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/kritik-der-reinen-vernunft-...): "Wenn sie nach viel gemachten Anstalten und Zurüstungen, sobald es zum Zweck kommt, in Stecken gerät, oder, um diesen zu erreichen, öfters wieder zurückgehen und einen andern Weg einschlagen muß; imgleichen wenn es nicht möglich ist, die verschiedenen Mitarbeiter in der Art, wie die gemeinschaftliche Absicht erfolgt werden soll, einhellig zu machen: so kann man immer überzeugt sein, daß ein solches Studium bei weitem noch nicht den sicheren Gang einer Wissenschaft eingeschlagen, sondern ein bloßes Herumtappen sei, und es ist schon ein Verdienst um die Vernunft, diesen Weg womöglich ausfindig zu machen, sollte auch manches als vergeblich aufgegeben werden müssen, was in dem ohne Überlegung vorher genommenen Zwecke enthalten war."

rurban 12y ago
Adalbert Stifter!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

chrisBob 12y ago

Maybe he is a big Melville fan. Moby Dick has some sentences with paragraph breaks to help you keep your place.

oftenwrong 12y ago

It is the natural language equivalent of using a complex, "clever" expression in code instead of multiple, simple expressions. If the goal is to be as clear as is possible, keep it simple. In works that are intended to be appreciated on an artistic level, I don't mind some meandering and flourish. There should be an obfuscated writing contest.

pyre 12y ago

> Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after This is the part that tripped me up at first. I kept grokking that as the his book being named Coming (and that the quote just had a capitalization error). This didn't make sense: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, <TITLE>, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs Other than that you just break it down like this: 1. The stuff between the emdashes is just an aside. It could have been in paranthesis, thought I'm not hip to the finer points of when to separate with dashes vs. parenthesis. So you could rewrite it like this: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs (who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American) is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. Or even remove it entirely: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs, is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. 2. Those last clauses are just a list of ideas that are tied to the book. You could just grok it like so: > One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs, is that it is a paean <LIST OF "to ..." CLAUSES EXPRESSING IDEAS IN THE BOOK>.

netcan 12y ago

I kind of feel like this is an old fashioned style of writing. I enjoy simple conversational style more, though it's not exactly painful to read this. It just takes more concentration than it should to understand. I don't see the benefit over breaking it up. Also, that disembodied tense is a little harder to connect to. Just narrate the damn paragraph. This long sentence makes you forget that he's trying to contrast something. One of the surprising features of Isaacson’s latest book, coming, as it does, after his biography of Steve Jobs—who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American —is that it is a paean to cooperation, to the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 1 sentence Issacson's new book follows his biography of Steve Jobs who is generally, though not entirely correctly, understood to be the model of the radical (and congenitally irascible) American. In contrast, 'The Innovators' is a paean to cooperation, the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort and, in particular, to the transformative power of the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 2 sentences, shorter The Innovators follows Issacson's popular biography of the famously brilliant-but-belligerent Steve Jobs. His new book praises different virtues: the force-multiplication power of collective effort and the transformative power of industry, academia and government working together. - shorter & flatter The Innovators follows Issacson's popular biography of Steve Jobs. It's an interesting contrast. Steve jobs was famous for both his belligerence and his brilliance. He is presented as an archetypical a lone genius. His new book is different. It praises cooperation and the the idea of force-multiplication through collective effort. Interestingly, the book even emphasizes the diamond triangle of industry, academia and government. - 6 sentences, more narration. Tells you what it's trying to tell you.

spenuke 12y ago
Before seeing your reply, I did a similar "alternate version" write up. I disagree that the long sentence makes you forget he's trying to contrast something. There's a built in hierarchy in the grammar itself that tells you this is all tied together (in a comparison). I find that short, rapidfire sentences makes me lose track of the controlling idea easier. Edited to add: How many times do you have to repeat that each sentence is continuing the thought: "This is interesting..." "His new book is different..." ... Your example isn't hard to read, either. But it's hard to say that it's more concise and precise.

spenuke 12y ago

I parsed it in one pass (don't have strong feelings for pleasure or pain on it). It's not the best sentence ever, but I don't really see the problem with it. To find out, how about we try to say the same thing in a different style: >Issaacson's book is surprising, because his last book was about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was portrayed in that book as a radical and congenitally irascible individual. The kind we think of as totally "American". Now, since Isaacson's book was kind to Jobs, we might think that he is in favor of such an individualistic understanding of genius. It is thus surprising that his new book strongly praises the virtue of three ideas: (1) cooperation in general, (2) the idea that collective effort has a multiplicative result from its individual parts, and (3) the way that industry, academia, and government can work together with exceptional results. These are antithetical to the myth of the lone genius that appears in the Jobs book. So, like we said, it's surprising. ..... All he's saying here is that he's surprised because one book seemed to argue for the individual, and this new one argues for collective effort. I, for one, find his version easy to read, and my version to be easy to understand, but boring. You'll also notice it's not actually any shorter, and I find that breaking things into short sentences gets more tedious to read than a long, well-formed sentence. It forces you to really be pedantic, like with my closing sentence - which was necessary to tie all those individual short sentences together. In a long sentence, those are just subclauses, so you don't have be repetitious about the hierarchy of meaning.