[GCA10]

Kept out of sight in this rogue essay is the classic question: Who's your audience?

If you're writing for yourself (and maybe a very small number of equally erudite readers) cut loose! Embrace "anfractuous density and heedless flamboyance." But if you're trying to change people's minds, or share knowledge widely, everything in this essay is defiantly at odds with what's necessary to get the rest of the world to pay attention.

[scandox]

What's interesting to me is that the examples he gives are beautiful because of their sincerity. Even if there is artifice, or they're being formal or playful, their style reflects their reading, their shared culture and of course as you say their audience - which I think for them was a very small elite.

Anyone who writes in a flamboyant style now - as the essay's author does - necessarily comes across as a kind of pastiche. There is something camp or affected about it. Maybe that can change. Maybe a new flamboyance can develop. But I think his antiquated style of flamboyance is unlikely to come back to real life.

[gerdesj]

Take a copy of "Usage and Abusage" and blend with Lord Byron after applying suitable libations; toss in the bear for body. Season to taste with the darker dictionary (the parts chained down to protect the reader). Simmer over a fire of coked Latin and Greek primers, scented with a whiff of lilac.

Serve in a curiously beige vessel.

[dofm]

> Anyone who writes in a flamboyant style now - as the essay's author does - necessarily comes across as a kind of pastiche. There is something camp or affected about it

Necessarily? Not at all. I am not sure where “camp” or “affected” come into it. I am a nerdy English bloke and I suppose Americans, Canadians and Australians etc., will assume I am camp (which troubles me not one bit) so I may be unable to accurately judge, but I didn’t get either from this. It reminded me more of Fry or Lewis than Self, put it that way.

[dofm]

I fully disagree. It is immensely readable (even if you might want an inline dictionary, something afforded by every contemporary operating system and eBook reader).

I think that in 2026, if you really want someone to read something, there should be some evidence that you wrote it. That means being brave and using your powers, whether they are misspelled, ungrammatical, or ornate.

There is guidance to strike a balance here, but there’s also encouragement to aim for beauty. Is his audience everyone, no, but it might be everyone who really wants to know.

Strunk and White can shove it, anyway, but then I am English. Plain language has enormous value in officialdom, insurance, law and finance, and it should be the goal, hence Crystal Mark etc.

But great writing is often audacious, and sometimes that means being ornate.

[Barrin92]

does anyone need to get the 'rest of the world' to pay attention? That's already a crowded market of questionable characters.

There's something ironic and self-defeating in trying to write to the whole world while also having such a low opinion of the whole world that a writer thinks they can't express themselves the way they want to or lose their audience.

As DBH says at the end of the essay, don't write down to what you presume to be the level of your readers, that's insulting to both you and your readers.

[GCA10]

Can we roll back the debate a little? If I'd said "wider audience" instead of "rest of the world," we could explore the question of scope more amicably.

I've been at two memorial services in the past six months where Mary Oliver's poetry has brought consolation and closure to people who needed it. Her choice of words is deceptively simple. A public-school 10th grader can follow along.

Could she go deeper with a much richer vocabulary? Perhaps. Is she most effective -- and surprisingly subtle -- with the words she chooses? You bet. And what's true for Mary Oliver also is true for highly admired (and read!) historians, technical writers, etc. For me, at least, there's great power in simplicity.

[breezybottom]

Well that's terrible advice. Of course you have to make assumptions about your readers. Highlights Magazine has a different readership than The New Yorker.

[jpfromlondon]

When I see what passes for modern writing, be it genre fiction, non-fic for the general audience, or even the literary, I'm not sure I want to appeal to, convince, or share knowledge with them.

Like casting pearls before swine.

[paulluuk]

Your reply reads very similar to what Hart wrote:

> True, some readers become indignant at their own inability to follow prose of any complexity or to recognize words any more obscure than those they are accustomed to using when talking to their dogs.

I do think that there is value in using precise, obscure words to convey precise, obscure knowledge (as with Hart's pogonotrophy example).

However, if all critique is dismissed as the indignation of swine, then how will anyone holding that position ever be able to tell whether they are just a bad writer?

Hart suggests that they should critique themselves, or rely on the critiques of those who write in the same way as they do. I am a programmer though, not an author. But I know that only accepting reviews from those I consider accomplished enough, and ignoring reviews by others as if they were indignant at their own inability to comprehend my code, is a very dangerous path to walk.

[jpfromlondon]

I don't think I would dismiss all critique as the indignation of swine. Previously valid criticism came in the form of review, be it from peers or the establishment, and while there might be a broader conversation to be had regarding the current state of literary review some voices probably have merit, I'm not familiar enough to know which, but would welcome recommendations from anyone that happens to read this.

I suspect most are drowned out by indignant squealing.

Re: code. I want to address you twice.

1. "ignoring reviews by others as if they were indignant at their own inability to comprehend my code", yes because doing so means ignoring your manager (hah).

2. Code review is very difficult to get right, the question I ask myself is whether I trust the individual to approach the repo without prejudice to the method or the author, I would think the ignorant would be reluctant to post a review lest their ignorance be broadcast to the team.

[paulluuk]

> yes because doing so means ignoring your manager Oh luckily I've been blessed with managers who don't code or do code reviews, so I lucked out there, haha.

But I'll admit that code review is actually not the best comparison, as my PRs don't get reviews from thousands of people from the public - only from other engineers. So I suppose that's actually an argument in favor of Hart.

[arduanika]

Kept out of sight in this dismissive comment is the pressing question: What year is it?

Up until four years ago, your notion of "what's necessary" was the law of the land. Starting from sometime around Hemingway, we produced a century's worth of flattened, easy-reading slop, and much knowledge was shared very widely. There was a certain art to the blandness. (One notable master of that art is pg, the creator of this website.)

Then we fed that slop into a giant machine that makes it trivial for anyone and everyone to produce that sort of generic writing. If you want to change minds and differentiate yourself now, you can't just do the old flat style anymore. You have to set yourself apart somehow, and you can start by loving the craft of writing again.

The people who matter will read it and love it. Everybody else can take what you wrote, dump it into the slop machine, and rearrange it into something they find easier to read.

[djray]

One would hope that you change minds and differentiate yourself through the strength of your argument, rather than the anfractuosity of your prose or a propensity for sesquipedalian verbiage.

Clarity does not equate to genericity. I am regularly struck by clear writing that is both lucid and powerful without resorting to ten-dollar words or tortured syntax.

The fact that AI text is often so easily spotted is a clear sign that so-called 'slop' is not the same as a writing style focused on brevity and understanding over florid meanderings.

[hydrox24]

I agree that it has been left to the reader to infer, but then again this is not really a how-to guide!

And he gestures at the need for this at least once.

  To be able to balance expressiveness and reticence, or to know when to cast that balance away, requires tact and ingenuity and taste on the part of writers

[starkshift]

Ultracrepidarian!

[omeysalvi]

That is the exact line where I stopped reading the article