[HN Gopher] The Problem with Writing-Style Advice ___________________________________________________________________ The Problem with Writing-Style Advice Author : CrocodileStreet Score : 14 points Date : 2021-01-18 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (metaphorhacker.net) (TXT) w3m dump (metaphorhacker.net) | [deleted] | npilk wrote: | Ironically, it's hard for me to take this manifesto seriously | because of the author's poor grammar. I found the awkward and/or | incorrect structure of many sentences distracting and ultimately | gave up after the second or third section. This doesn't | invalidate the author's ideas, but it does suggest that writing | style matters to at least some degree. | GavinMcG wrote: | The author might not like Pinker's writing, but this hardly | speaks against Pinker's advice. I have a feeling he read the | first chapter of _The Sense of Style_ and decided the whole thing | is bullshit _because_ it 's about style and not substance. | | But the author clearly _accepts_ the need for some level of | style. The blog theme they use has a readable column-width, a | table of contents, etc. And the advice they give fits with Pinker | 's. For example, "Rich outlines" is relevant to chapter 5 of | Pinker, "Arcs of Coherence." | | > I want to get some information from them and I want to get | examples and counterexamples for the points they make. I want | them to get to the point. | | Pinker's book is fairly dense on the advice front, and _chock | full_ of examples. Including ones about academic writing that | involve shorter sentences _and_ more clarity, like rewording | "Participants read assertions whose veracity was either affirmed | or denied by the subsequent presentation of an assessment word" | into "We presented participants with a sentence, followed by the | word 'true' or 'false'." | | > The first advice you need to give to an academic writer is not | to read a book on stylish writing but rather to read how people | in their field are writing. Because those are their potential | readers.... | | Sure, but they don't have to be the _only_ readers, and jargon | and bad style make a community insular. And beside, even for | those readers, the point (particularly _beyond_ chapter 1) is | that conveying meaning efficiently requires sound structure. | | One gets the feeling that the author likes jargon and density for | its own sake, or because it makes the author feel like a member | of the community. They seem to assume that better-styled writing | will necessarily be less scrupulous: | | > clear explicit structure and moderately shorter sentences. No | stories, no metaphors, no flourishes. No avoidance of passives or | reduction of adverbs. No worries about technical language. Just | these two. They will not only make the academic writing easier to | read, they will also make it more scrupulous. | | Okay, maybe _stories_ aren 't appropriate in academic papers, nor | inexact metaphors, but so what? That's not a matter of style. | | And why _just_ these two? Would the author 's thesis be better | stated as "worry about structure and concision _first_ "? Because | I don't think Pinker's book would disagree with that. | [deleted] | ashton314 wrote: | I feel like the author homogenizes all of academic writing. The | needs of the English department are different than the needs of | the computer science department. While there are a few universal | virtues that all writing should strive for to be good, I think | the domain of discourse is an indispensable factor in determining | your style. | Veen wrote: | I find it hard to reconcile what the author says in this article | and what they say in an earlier article entitled "How to actually | write a sentence", which is an explanation of how cohesion and | coherence contribute to well-formed sentences, a topic Pinker | spends a couple of chapters on in Sense of Style. | | https://metaphorhacker.net/2020/02/how-to-actually-write-a-s... | ajarmst wrote: | I don't accept the premise that you must choose between stylish | and informative writing, but the argument fails at the outset. | Complaining that Pinker (one assumes especially in his _A Sense | of Style_ , which I recommend without reservation) writes poorly | for academics by focusing on his writing for a non-academic | audience. If you desire a more "academic" style, Pinker is quite | capable of providing it, if you look at his journal articles (the | abstract to his _Formal Models of Abstract Learning_ at | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002... | should provide sufficient evidence of his familiarity with the | norms). One important aspect of a writer's style is how it is | directed toward the audience, and Pinker is frequently (and | Gladwell is always) not writing for an academic audience. This | post also has a fundamental begging-the-question problem: the | academic writing it describes is not notable for an absence of | style, but for a very specific terse style that is difficult to | do well. | dan-robertson wrote: | I think I agree. I also think it's weird to laud academic | writing as it is often quite bad, having a tendency to go on | and on with some pointless complexity (do you feel like a real | academic when you write "not unreasonable"? I claim that | ordinarily the only nuance between this and "reasonable" is | that writing one makes you feel clever). | | Historically academic writing has been constrained by page | limits (compare papers written by Euler to Gauss). But as | publishing has moved online and expensive this has become less | of an issue. And if you wrote a book there were far fewer | constraints on length. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-18 23:00 UTC)