[jgrahamc]

I found this very hard to read. There are so many short sentences and bullet points that it looks like a PowerPoint presentation masquerading as prose.

What he seems to have lost with this approach is a rhythm. It's a staccato battering with ideas. I'd much rather be seduced and cradled by writing that made me feel I'm learning by osmosis and not trepanning.

EDIT:

The author illustrates how his writing goes wrong by saying that the following paragraph:

To be brief on the sentence-level, remove words that don’t add necessary context. Extra words cause readers to slow down and do extra work. That makes it harder for them to recognize the sentence’s point. And when you bore readers, they quit reading.

is better rewritten as:

Your sentence is brief when no additional words can be removed. Being succinct is important because filler buries your talking points and bores readers into quitting.

It's not. The two sentence rewrite is ugly. The first sentence is weird because it uses "additional" (which sounds like adding something) for things that will be removed. The second sentence uses "talking points" which makes it appear the writer is aiming for sound bites and not to educate the reader.

I much prefer the first paragraph above. Partly because it makes me empathize with the trouble readers might have and makes me want to work for them. When I read the first paragraph I imagine myself, the reader; when I read the second I'm being instructed by a voice that sounds like it comes from a cold machine.

[nobody9999]

William Safire's Rules for Writers:

Remember to never split an infinitive.

The passive voice should never be used.

Do not put statements in the negative form.

Verbs have to agree with their subjects.

Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.

=========

The above, plus Strunk & White[0], should be enough for most folks IMNSHO.

[0] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134

[fanf2]

On the wrong-headed advice of Strunk & White http://www.languagesoftheworld.info/bad-linguistics/on-passi...

Strunk and White: fifty years of stupid grammar advice http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549...

The Land of the Free and the Elements of Style: everything in strunk and White is wrong http://ling.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.pdf

[nobody9999]

>everything in strunk and White is wrong

That's quite a broad brush, friend.

Here's an example I'd ask you to opine upon:

"If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at the cats. The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the dedicatory ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things straight.”

What fault, dear reader, might you find in the above advice? I'd be quite interested in your assessment, given your apparent expertise.

[fanf2]

If you are examining your own writing critically, it is worth critically examining the writing of others that you admire, and those you might disagree with. This kind of criticism is supposed to be constructive, so it should not be taken as an attack.

I thought it would be informative to share a few links that might help readers and writers approach Strunk and White from other perspectives. The authors of those essays have far more expertise than I.

[nobody9999]

>If you are examining your own writing critically, it is worth critically examining the writing of others that you admire, and those you might disagree with.

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I find that my own prose has benefited greatly from reading those who write well.

>This kind of criticism is supposed to be constructive, so it should not be taken as an attack.

Your point is well taken, however your characterization ("Everything is wrong") is even more extreme than what Pullum said in the piece you linked. He said "almost everything is wrong."

What's more, all the links you posted are quite critical of The Elements of Style and are not representative of the many other voices out there (cf. [0][1][2][3][4]). I'd expect that one might attempt to balance the criticism, rather than just piling on.

That's not to say I reject outright the criticisms of Pullum and Pereltsvaig. Rather, they both make interesting points.

However, from the standpoint of a lay person who wishes to write cogently and concisely (that is, most of us) rather than a grammarian or professional writer, Elements provides useful advice and numerous examples of good writing.

Are the recommendations contained therein universally apropos? Certainly not.

That said, for most people who wish to get a better sense, not only of how to write more clearly and concisely, but also what such writing looks like, Elements provides a wealth of suggestions and examples.

Whether or not you disagree with some of the recommendations in Elements, it stresses clarity, concision and direct expression of ideas.

That many will go beyond those recommendations doesn't invalidate the value of elucidating good writing habits, and utilizing them to provide cogent examples of the same.

Writing styles are inherently subjective, and a text like Elements is and can be a worthy supplement to reading widely and honing one's own style.

The Elements of Style isn't a tome with a litany of prescribed and proscribed methods and techniques. Rather it's a slim (only 52 pages) volume focused on expressing ideas clearly and concisely -- a goal it achieves for itself.

I recommend that you read it[5]. It shouldn't take more than 30-45 minutes.

[0] https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2018/why-strunk-wh...

[1] https://www.ragan.com/helpful-writing-habits-from-strunk-and...

[2] https://proofreadingpal.com/proofreading-pulse/writing-guide...

[3] https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/strunk-w...

[4] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2909/what-s-purp...

[5] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37134/37134-h/37134-h.htm

[eganist]

> William Safire's Rules for Writers:

> Remember to [preserve the full] infinitive.

> [Always use] the [active] voice.

> [Always] put statements in the [positive] form.

> Verbs have to agree with their subjects. (nobody9999 corrected this one already - was "has" in place of "have")

> Proofread carefully to see if you [leave] words out.

For those not in on the joke. Not sure if this would be how Safire would correct it, but I made an effort.

[nobody9999]

I didn't "correct" anything. Those are all Safire's words and none of mine.

Safire was using sarcasm through those examples to get his point across.

[eganist]

The original:

https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/04/archives/on-language-the-...

> • Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

But I saw what happened. Googling Safire's rules, the "helpful" top result via Google quoted a source that misquoted Safire, which I'm guessing is how it made it into your comment. So no worries.

[FemmeAndroid]

Thanks for this. I was stuck trying to figure out that line.

[nobody9999]

Thank you for the correction and the original link.

It's much appreciated!

[criddell]

> Proofread carefully to see if you [leave] words out.

Shouldn't it be left rather than leave?

[eganist]

Good catch, though the fix I don't think is quite right. "Proofread carefully to see if you [have left/are leaving] words out" probably should've been what I wrote. I invite a much more competent writer to fact-check me.

"Proofread carefully to see if you [leave] words out." I believe is grammatically correct but a bit nonsensical as I'm no longer in the act of writing words when I'm proofreading. But again, I'm also possibly just embarrassing myself at this point.

[goto11]

I disagree with two of Safires points:

There is nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive. Shakespeare does it and Star Trek does it.

Passive voice is fine. Sure it can be used to make the text impersonal and hide responsibility. But is can also be used to make the text clearer and to emphasize what is important. Use it as appropriate.

[jgrahamc]

You've missed the point entirely. Go back and reread.

[goto11]

I don't think his point is that the you shouldn't follow these rules though. Surely nobody would think you shouldn't proofread? He is just stating the rules ironically with an embedded example. Most of his rules are fine.

[loevborg]

Yeah, he's obliquely endorsing the rules, most of which — certainly the ones about infinitives, passives and negation — are moronic.

[marcosdumay]

What I take from it is that those points aren't important at all.

That's surely hyperbolic, because nobody would think about completely ignoring them. But they certainly do not make any text great, and they shouldn't be followed on the cost of something more important.

[jfk13]

Use as appropriate, yes. But there are some writers who massively over-use it.

Most such rules can sometimes be broken to good effect, but they offer a useful default. In many cases, rewriting so as to "follow the rules" will aid clarity. Deviations and exceptions should be the result of careful consideration, not just carelessness.

[goto11]

I'm questioning if these two rules are good defaults.

[ramblerman]

> Proofread carefully to see if you words out.

That omission almost seems too perfect

[GavinMcG]

That's the point. Each line violates the rule it states.

[nobody9999]

>That omission almost seems too perfect

It is perfect -- because William Safire was a wonderful writer[0].

I didn't care much for his politics, but that man could write!

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/by/william-safire

[kinghtown]

The passive voice has been used well on occasion.

[cousin_it]

I think both versions are kinda lacking in rhythm. Here's my attempt, certainly imperfect too:

If you make an effort to omit unnecessary words, your sentences will be easy for readers to understand without slowing down. It also reduces the chance that readers will get bored and quit.

I used to uncritically accept the idea that concision was the single important thing about writing. The problem is, if you only ever write in short sentences, you'll neglect the skill of writing longer sentences that flow. And if you're writing anything longer than a tweet, you really need that skill! Having a natural mix of long and short sentences leads to a less "stuttery" feeling, and has a kind of hypnotic effect pulling the reader into your text and making them feel at home.

[dctoedt]

Or even: Try deleting words, lest your reader feel bogged down and give up — but brevity must serve clarity, so a few extra words might be worthwhile.

[tartoran]

To avoid repeating the readers I would change to: “If you make an effort to omit unnecessary words, your sentences will be easy for readers to understand without slowing them down. It also reduces the chance that they will get bored and quit.”

[nicoburns]

I was taught in high school that I should alternate long and short sentences in order to keep writing interesting. It seems like a pretty good rule of thumb.

[gclv]

As a sibling has said, writing to maximise engagement is a different beast from writing “well”. I’m sure some “growth hacker” types would argue for defining “well” in a way that’s quantifiable, hence the confusion.

I personally find that style very annoying. It’s especially popular on LinkedIn. When I notice that I’m reading some vertically-set essay, it’s my cue to stop scrolling and stay off LinkedIn for the next month.

[ghaff]

I've had people try to convince me to use one of those apps that supposedly help you write for better "engagement." Invariably, they just don't get it when I say I'm not interested.

[bonoboTP]

I've been thinking about how useful raw engagement metrics actually are. Likes on your post or view on your video. These metrics count every reader and audience member equally, when they are far from equally relevant to you. By writing according to some common denominator you may trade a smaller high-quality audience off for a larger low-quality audience.

For example if you want to promote your work, who cares if you get lots of views from people with small attention span and no deep interest? The goal is to put your thoughts out there into good hands (or minds). To foster collaboration, to get insightful feedback. (Or to make sales, but there again, consumers can have widely different behavior. Some have noted that pricing higher will get you a nicer user base.)

Just one thoughtful reader may be worth a thousand inattentive bored scroller-clickers on LinkedIn. Because that one may write you an interesting message, which may lead to new opportunities, open up new communities for you. What do a thousand likes get you besides stroking your ego? I just don't see the value in that sort of mechanistic "karma farming".

[ghaff]

There's some value in raw numbers, especially at scale. It's reasonable for a company to care about how many views a product page, how to, or topic page gets. And it's a proxy for a lot of other things that are really hard to suss out. (Though you can measure things like how far people read/watch, time they spend, etc.)

But for me personally, I mostly go by what I want to read and I don't really care if an SEO plug-in is telling me I should be writing at a sixth grade level--which is the level a lot of these tools work at. (And I'm often working with experienced editors who have a pretty good sense of what their audience/desired audience is looking for.) They're also not mostly ad-supported so there isn't a lot of incentive to go for pageviews for the sake of pageviews.

[bonoboTP]

What I had in mind was for example popularizing one's research as a scientist, or spreading your thoughts about your industry. In these cases it can be much more important to reach some people in your small niche, as opposed to a mass of a generic audience. Applying the same growth hacks as generic Youtubers may not be fitting in one's specific use case. Perhaps you could clickbaitify your content, and increase the raw numbers (makes sense in case of an ad-driven Youtuber) but if you're hoping for high quality feedback or getting to know other interesting people, you may better spend your time on catering to your special audience even when it's small. And instead of promoting it left and right, target it specifically through niche channels, like email contacts, etc.

This may seem obvious, but sometimes people can get caught up in cargo-culting the established trendy marketing strategies that are actually designed for another use case than yours.

[darkerside]

People aren't machines. We don't take an input and process it completely the first time. Human functions are not idempotent because we are stateful to the extreme, and when we hear the same message, we process it a different way the second time.

Repetition is a tool. Repeating yourself is useful. When I was younger, I thought it was good to be brief, succinct, and concise (and for some purposes, it is). But with most audiences, repeating yourself several times, as I have done here, is your best chance at getting your message to actually hit home. People need to understand and process your idea from different angles and perspectives, and if you aren't able or willing to take efforts to make yourself understood, they will justifiably not make the effort to understand you either.

Or, as I could have said more succinctly, there is value in repeating an important message in different but overlapping ways.

[taphangum]

Very well put. To add to this, the onus is really on the writer to help the reader understand. Repetition is one of the best tools for this.

If your reader doesn't get it, they blame you. So its wise to use all of the tools at your disposal.

[gdubs]

A parent walks into a gallery, points at a Picasso, and says: “my five year old could do that.”

The truth is, simplicity is hard. It’s about editing down to what’s essential. But not everything has to be Hemingway. Not everyone is a fan of that. So it’s also about knowing your audience, and finding your voice.

I’ll take a crack at it:

“Keep it simple. Aim for clarity. Know your audience. If a word doesn’t help move things along, get rid of it — otherwise you might put your readers to sleep.”

[JacobSuperslav]

I work with SEO, CRO, UX and I can confirm that this style of writing - short sentences, tiny paragraphs - results in better outcomes: time on page is higher and bounce rate is lower.

[Veen]

The title of the article is "Writing Well". It is not "Writing that Reduces Bounce Rates." These are not the same thing and marketing copy is not something every writer should seek to emulate.

[capableweb]

The thing is, "Well" in "Writing Well" needs to be defined, because everyone sees it differently.

For some, "Writing Well" is writing in a way that gives the reader a emotional reaction, like lots of fiction tends to aim for.

For others, "Writing Well" is deconstructing concepts so people can understand complex ideas easier, like what most of technical writing aims to do.

For yet others, "Writing Well" is writing in a way that visitors on a website stays for longer and reduces bounce rates, like content marketing tries to do.

Like many things in life, what you understand "well" to mean, changes how you need to do your writing. Sometimes you need to switch how you see "well", depending on your goals. There is no right or wrong answer what "well" actually means.

[JacobSuperslav]

This is Hacker News, so I assumed we're talking about websites/web apps, but you're right.

[jgrahamc]

I wonder if those metrics are like that because this style of writing has the reader thinking that the author has something important to say and has to spend a long time figuring out what it is because the sentences have been cut to the bone.

[JacobSuperslav]

I honestly don't know, but the metrics rise on average, sending a positive signal to Google, which yields us higher rankings in Google, which equals more visitors. It's a constant battle between competitors -- finding out what the visitors want to read -- and how they want to read it.

[GavinMcG]

Ironically, "when no additional words can be removed" is the same number of words as "remove words that don’t add necessary context" but communicates less by leaving out the concept of context.

Changing "To be brief on the sentence-level" to "To write brief sentences" then leaving the rest would have been better.

[jfk13]

Wouldn't it be simpler to just say something like:

> Keep sentences brief; unnecessary filler obscures your point and bores the reader.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

[bonoboTP]

There are different kinds of long windedness. One kind, that people most think about, is rambling, bringing up unimportant points, repeating something you've already said etc. The other kind is more on the wordsmithing level of formulating the same thing in fewer words by switching out longer, less dense grammatical structures with snappier ones.

It's very much like refactoring code. You can do it on a higher level by cutting out entire chunks of code that don't really need to be done, or on a low level by being familiar with the language's helpful syntactic sugars, best practices, to make the meaning clear and less obscured by boilerplate and "syntactic chores".

I noticed the effectiveness of low-level refactoring in prose when I first started writing academic papers. Since page limits are strict, you need to pay attention to eliminate any words that aren't necessary and are thin on semantics. This doesn't mean writing in staccato. But when you spot a paragraph where a single word spills over to an extra line, it requires a specific learnable skill to rewrite a sentence or two to eliminate the extra line. You can often tell how much someone wordsmithed around on a paper by seeing how long the last line of each paragraph is.

Of course sometimes gains are on the high level, I'm not saying that good writing is just about messing with the low level of the actual words and the grammar. Similarly to the debate whether premature optimization is the root of all evil, it's about a balance in writing too. First you must have clear thoughts on what to say and what you can leave out. But at the end, when things have settled, it is worth to go over it once again at specific places and low-level edit things to be snappier, counting words, letters and millimeters on the paper.

[jfk13]

On the topic of brevity vs. long-windedness, I'm surprised nobody seems to have mentioned the (in)famous:

> I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/

[nobody9999]

Not strictly on topic, but your comment made me think of this...

From: https://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/10/21/pen-mystique/

My dear Morse:

It was very pleasant to receive a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don’t think I mastered anything beyond the date, which I knew, and the signature, at which I guessed.

There is a singular and perpetual charm in a letter of yours — it never grows old, and it never loses its novelty. One can say every morning, as one looks at it, ‘Here’s a letter of Morse’s I haven’t read yet. I think I shall take another shy at it to-day, and maybe I shall be able in the course of a few years to make out what he means by those t’s that look like w’s and those i’s that haven’t any eyebrows.’

Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever–unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime.

Admiringly yours,

T.B. Aldrich

[andrewingram]

I remember at university, we had a lot of exams with heavy emphasis on essay-based answers where I'd frequently see my friends and peers ask for second and even third answer booklets. As a left-handed person with poor writing technique, writing continuously for a 3 hour exam caused me a fair amount of discomfort and pain, so i'd take a lot of breaks. So when my friends were leaving the exam 30 minutes early, having filled three booklets, I was staying to the very end - struggling to fill even one.

In nearly every example of this, I got (marginally) better grades than them.

[szszrk]

Your sentence is brief when no additional words can be removed. Being succinct is important because filler buries your talking points and bores readers into quitting.

I find it harder to understand as well. I do get it but I see that a lot of my fellow non-native speakers will struggle with this kind of writing. Second sentence is way more complex then the whole original paragraph. "Succint", "filler", "buries", "bores into quitting" - whoah. Give me a breath, please! Is this an articatle on how to write good looking text, or easy to understand text? At first glance I though it was supposed to ilustrate the exact opposite of what it tries to ilustrate.

The whole first page is composed of only bullet points and it requires a lot of focus and effort to go through. I had no urge to click to the next page after that introduction. Is it grandiose (had to google that), or do they treat me like an idiot? Bizarre.

It's like reading a list of quotes from famous people. If you would read it aloud after 3 or 4 of these I'm done. Next ones could be a dinner recipe - I might not notice.

When I write to much and too fast (like now I am, sorry!) I like to remind myself how authors write on sites for beginners in a particular language [0][1]. It's clean and doesn't treat me like an idiot.

[0] https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de/

[1] https://www.sr.de/

[PlugTunin]

Is this an articatle on how to write good looking text, or easy to understand text?

good question

[clubdorothe]

By watching the UChicago class[1] on " Writing Effectively ", this is exactly what happens to some HN readers:

1- You slow down - and read again

2- You don't understand

3- you get angry

4- You're done

5 - (optional) You write about it on HN because 3 and 4

[1] https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM?t=413

[xenopticon]

Doesn't this depend a lot on _what_ and _where_ you are reading?

I suspect people have completely different styles when reading e.g. a fiction book on a Kindle vs. a tutorial about deploying a Docker container. I wouldn't be surprised if generation/age played a factor too.

[coffeefirst]

Absolutely. Academic writing has its own conventions that a lot of people have to unlearn when they leave that world, legal writing literally has its own grammar rules, etc.

That said, the author strikes me as trying to teach something he isn't actually good at while pretending to be authorative. Most of this advice is standard stuff found in Strunk and White, Stephen King's "On Writing," and a hundred other solid books on this topic, but his style is disjointed, his examples aren't great, and then there's just the sheer silliness:

> Why? The best writing is therapy that you publish for the world to learn from.

No, it's really not.

[WesolyKubeczek]

Is yet better rewitten as:

Skip fluff. It’s boring and obscures the point.

[appleflaxen]

Thanks for sharing your opinion. I found myself strongly agreeing with the post, and it's really helpful to get a counter-perspective.

[paulpauper]

Agree. I found this guide full of fluff and filler.