[HN Gopher] E. B. White's "Plain Style" at 75
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E. B. White's "Plain Style" at 75
Author : silt
Score : 52 points
Date : 2020-10-18 21:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.publicbooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.publicbooks.org)
| msla wrote:
| > Strunk's likes and dislikes, explains White, "were almost as
| whimsical as the choice of a necktie," yet he had an uncanny
| ability to make his preferences "seem convincing."
|
| This is an important point: Learners need to have preferences fed
| to them, as they have none of their own, but the next step in
| learning is making your own preferences, not blindly following
| the ones given to you.
|
| Also, a point of humor I rarely find anyone mention:
|
| > "Omit needless words!"
|
| Ha! And triple ha! How superfluous that is. Why does it need to
| specify "needless" at all? Are we going to omit essentials? Of
| course not! And it explicitly says "words" right there. Right
| _there_ , mind you! What else are we to omit, lemons? Obviously,
| the dictum must be "Omit!" and it must never be repeated.
| Superfluity, in this case, _does_ vitiate.
| marklanders wrote:
| Sadly, in Python Strunk & White are now viewed as "relics of
| white supremacy":
|
| https://github.com/python/peps/pull/1470
| klodolph wrote:
| I don't see any reference to "white supremacy" in that link.
|
| > Instead of requiring that comments be written in Strunk &
| White Standard English, require instead that English-language
| comments be clear and easily understandable by other English
| speakers. This accomplishes the same goal without alienating or
| putting up barriers for people (especially people of color)
| whose native dialect of English is not Standard English.
|
| I think we can all get behind this. The idea is that if you
| speak Indian English and refer to the contents of a written
| program as "codes" rather than "code", that is completely fine,
| since it is clear and easily understandable by other English
| speakers. Strunk & White is kind of a trainwreck of a style
| manual anyway (the linked article articulates many of my
| complaints, but I have others). Maybe its popularity was
| deserved in earlier decades, I don't know, I'm not a historian.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > I don't see any reference to "white supremacy" in that
| link.
|
| It's a reference to these threads on the Python-dev mailing
| list:
|
| https://www.prettyfwd.com/t/bvCo9Zp3SMeuyZy7qynl0Q/
|
| https://www.prettyfwd.com/t/Ci1fgOGUQHa7znO03M3apQ/
| klodolph wrote:
| I think it's fine and good that people hash these things
| out in the mailing list. I see no point in digging through
| mailing lists and making attributions to "Python
| Developers" as a whole, based on something _at the very
| least_ they decided they wanted to remove from commit
| messages.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Indeed they are, as is much of the Western canon. They are the
| products of a period and locale in which white supremacy was
| more or less unquestioned by a large proportion of the English-
| speaking population.
|
| "The Elements of Style" is still useful and interesting, but
| its limitations and origins must be acknowledged. Among them is
| that it is a collection of usage patterns chiefly used by and
| intended for a specific class of English speakers. That class
| was not inclusive or representative of all the ways English is
| written or spoken, nor necessarily even of the "best." The book
| should be one source among many for those who hope to
| communicate clearly and concisely.
| Veen wrote:
| > They are the products of a period and locale in which white
| supremacy was more or less unquestioned by a large proportion
| of the English-speaking population.
|
| By that standard, James Baldwin's writing is a relic of white
| supremacy and homophobia because he wrote when both were more
| or less unquestioned.
|
| Or, by a more sensible standard, you have carelessly
| besmirched a writer's reputation by associating him with
| white supremacy via a vague claim about historical attitudes
| and no reference to his beliefs or the content of his work.
|
| As a strategy, I suppose it has the benefit of not requiring
| much thought or evidence.
| davidivadavid wrote:
| The vast majority of the Western canon isn't even written in
| English.
| devindotcom wrote:
| You're quite right, I should have written something along
| the lines of "conventionally important works in English" or
| the like. Of course the western canon is much more diverse.
| devindotcom wrote:
| It seems clear that White (though Strunk seems to have been
| rather more serious about it) intended his usage guidance to be
| just that - guidance. Certainly I've found it useful to know the
| rules well in order to understand when and why they should be
| bent or broken.
| munchbunny wrote:
| _Certainly I 've found it useful to know the rules well in
| order to understand when and why they should be bent or
| broken._
|
| I think this is a key point. In my favorite writing course in
| college, the professor chose to teach composition from the
| perspective of legal argumentation. We wrote 4-8 pages per week
| in the most economical and intentional way possible, poring
| over every word, every sentence, and every paragraph to make
| the language easy to understand and to make every word do work.
|
| The professor never pretended that this was the _best_ way to
| write and never claimed the result would be beautiful, though
| he did claim that the result would be easy to understand, which
| it was. Peer editing in that class was the smoothest experience
| I 've ever had in a writing class. But he accomplished
| something that no other writing instructor did for me before
| this class: he taught how to make grammar, diction, rhythm, and
| even connotation an intentional thought process. He also taught
| how to think clearly about the point you wanted to get across.
|
| That wasn't going to teach any of us beautiful prose or how to
| craft good plots, but it got us very quickly to the point where
| our writing style became deliberate.
| content_sesh wrote:
| I've found following Strunk's "make every word count" dictum
| causes me to take much more time when composing. So 4-8 pages
| per week sounds like it would take an awful lot of time
| indeed
| munchbunny wrote:
| It absolutely did, but it was focused practice, so it gave
| you back what you put into it. I got better over time, so
| by the end of the class I was much faster at the process of
| putting the words down and then making multiple passes to
| clean it up.
| mwcremer wrote:
| Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas
| eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. --B.Pascal
|
| _(I have made this longer than usual because I have not
| had time to make it shorter.)_
| njarboe wrote:
| This was especially true when everything was written out
| by hand. Editing on a computer changes the time to
| rewrite something by at least a factor of 10, maybe 100.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Based on writing I read professionally, I'm not sure that
| people are regularly re-reading what they've re-written.
| throwaway_pdp09 wrote:
| It's something I aspire to[0] and as elsewhere pointed out,
| it takes extra time. As your expected audience grows, the
| value of your time invested grows because it benefits
| proportionately more people.
|
| I've learned to explain in terms almost stupidly simple
| because another's interpretation can be so extraordinarily
| far from your intent you wonder how they even got there.
| Then they explain how it reads to them, and inside you
| groan a little because yes, it could be seen to mean _that_
| and you had no idea. One needs to user test one 's writings
| just as much as one's software, I've discovered.
|
| [0] WIP
| bsder wrote:
| > That wasn't going to teach any of us beautiful prose or how
| to craft good plots, but it got us very quickly to the point
| where our writing style became deliberate.
|
| I would argue precisely the opposite.
|
| You can't build beautiful woodworking until you can do a
| joint reliably and repeatedly. You can't play jazz on your
| musical instrument until you can play scales reliably and
| repeatedly.
|
| You had a really excellent writing professor. He completely
| anchored the fundamentals that you needed. Now you can
| actually proceed to actually _write_.
| worker767424 wrote:
| My mind was slightly blown when I realized "Charlotte's Web" was
| halfway written (I guess he revised it and added a chapter) by
| the same guy as "The Elements of Style." There are incredibly few
| authors that you read multiple books from in a K-12 education,
| and I'd never put that one together because a style guide is so
| different from a children's book.
| Veen wrote:
| You have that backwards. White wrote all of "Charlotte's Web"
| and much of "Elements of Style".
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in
| engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to
| write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to
| you long after the hot framework of the moment has become
| obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill.
|
| Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to
| put in context. But it's 75 years old, and it has its problems
| (as the article discusses). I wouldn't really recommend it
| anymore. Instead, have a look at:
|
| Williams and Bizup, _Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace_
|
| And, for everything you ever wanted to know about standard
| American English _usage_ (and how it's shifting over time!),
| there is _Garner's Modern English Usage_ , which sounds dry but
| is actually fascinating (and inspired this brilliantly
| controversial review by David Foster Wallace:
| http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...).
| clockwork-dev wrote:
| Nothing has impacted my writing more than that book. There are
| several versions now, the one I have is titled "Style: The
| Basics of Clarity and Grace".
|
| I chose it over White's book because of this passage from
| _Clear and Simple as the Truth_ :
|
| > _The best-known teachers of practical style are Strunk and
| White, in their ubiquitous Elements of Style. The best teachers
| of practical style are Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb, in
| Williams's Style: Toward Clarity and Grace and a series of
| academic articles and technical reports._ _Williams and Colomb
| present an incomparably deeper and more orderly treatment of
| practical style. The style they present is consistent and
| mature; it makes decisions about all the major questions that
| define a style, and is fully developed._
|
| I almost can't overstate how much it's changed how I read and
| write. Before that book, some writing just felt "clear" and
| other writing didn't, but I couldn't explain why. Now it's much
| easier to see how that sense of clarity is created. Even though
| I don't write for a living and mainly do technical write ups,
| it was easily worth the time investment.
|
| This video is also good. It has a ton of interesting points,
| but the part about creating instability in your writing I found
| particularly useful.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM&ab_channel=UChic...
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill.
|
| Probably because it is, as you said, quite literally
| undervalued.
|
| Coding is just a writing job, so if you don't think that
| someone would get hired as a staff writer for The New Yorker
| then I don't see why you'd hire them to write in your codebase.
| But most companies don't think like that, much less put any
| actual weight on writing skills during the hiring process.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Occasionally it is appropriately valued. A good tech writer,
| one who reaches out to engineers and figures out the hard
| stuff and plans an information architecture and documents
| your hardware product or your service's external APIs and
| tells people exactly how they work in a clear and systematic
| manner, can do fairly well at a company that needs this.
|
| (But they're hard to find, and many shops are just YOLO about
| that sort of thing.)
| hcrisp wrote:
| If you like that kind of thing, also check out "Revising
| Business Prose" by Lanham. Avoid passive-voice sentences with
| long prepositional phrases, and instead use action verbs. For
| example: _"The history of the new regulatory provisions is that
| there is generally an immediate resistance to them."_ becomes
| _"People usually resist new regulations."_
| sokoloff wrote:
| My ability to write English has almost surely had more
| influence on my career after age 35 than my ability to write
| code.
|
| I wish I could go back and apologize to my English teachers
| along the way for how little effort and respect I offered to
| them/their courses.
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