[HN Gopher] How to Be Clear ___________________________________________________________________ How to Be Clear Author : hypomnemata Score : 115 points Date : 2021-01-28 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (gilest.org) (TXT) w3m dump (gilest.org) | murgaan wrote: | This makes me sad. Instead of educating ourselves, we're supposed | to give up and write for the lowest common denominator, whose | reading skills continue to erode. I don't need my technical | documents to read like DFW, but let's not take all the fun out of | it. | hackerbob wrote: | It shouldn't. Everyone's time should be respected. Clarity and | conciseness in writing or in speech is a great way to show | that. | coldtea wrote: | I think those are two separate matters: | | Indeed the average reading skills seem to continue to erode | (or, at least, attention spans have been shown to decline, the | Flynn effect has stalled, and functional iliteracacy of | supposedly educated people is at an all times high) | | ... but we still should strive for clarity, whether we're | addressing the average Joe or DFW (perhaps you've meant EWD?). | [deleted] | jcun4128 wrote: | I did notice it's easy to mislead/derail people trying to help | you by not being clear... I always feel awkward when that | happens. | | (context of debugging) | tzmudzin wrote: | ,,Clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought. So think | what you want to say, then say it as simply as possible." (from: | The Economist Style Guide) | | I recommend the whole Guide wholeheartedly. | FPGAhacker wrote: | Not really commenting on the guide, but for me, clarity of | thought follows writing. Not the reverse. | munificent wrote: | Yup. For me the process is something like: | | 1. Think that I know something. | | 2. Write about it. Realize I didn't know it anywhere near as | well as I thought. | | 3. Reflect on and actually understand thing. | | 4. Edit writing now that I actually know what the hell I'm | talking about. | munchbunny wrote: | Same, I usually end up writing anything important twice | because the first draft is when I realize all of the things I | hadn't thought through. | throwawayboise wrote: | Related to this topic, from 2017 | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14808374 | 11thEarlOfMar wrote: | Tangentially, this is obviously targeting business or team | communication and it's a great collection of practical advice. | | It made me wonder what the corollary rule set would be when | writing fiction. The advice: "Always start by thinking about what | you want an audience to understand, know, or do after they've | seen a piece of communication," could be expanded to include | 'feel' or 'envision' or 'wonder'. In some ways, it would call for | de-tuning the precision and intentionally introducing vagueness, | demotic or evocative language. | cambalache wrote: | "Resist the urge to appear smart" | pattisapu wrote: | "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of | that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like | it put more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be | otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you | were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had | been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'" -- Lewis | Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" | 50 wrote: | Clarity in (argumentative, essay, etc) writing is taking upmost | care of your reader: you want to _hold the hand of the reader_ | and guide them towards a new understanding with little to no | strain. | gjvc wrote: | "Think about what your readers might already know." | | This alone is an excellent starting point. You know the feeling | of dismay when someone starts talking beneath your level of | understanding and you fear they'll never go above it? Thinking | about what your audience (written or spoken) might already know | is the intelligent, considerate, and efficacious thing to do. | brundolf wrote: | And the opposite is exceedingly frustrating: when someone | starts explaining something in terms of base concepts you've | never even heard of, and you have to stop them every few | seconds to fill in the blanks (and then some of those | explanations have holes of their own, etc). In some cases you | may be so new to a topic that you don't even know which | questions to ask, so it's impossible for you to shepherd them | into telling you what you need to know. | sylvainr65 wrote: | Excellent post. I should add that text formating is almost as | important as what you want to say. | | 11 short sentences addressing 4 points packed in a single | paragraph is really painfull to read. | | Use paragraphs, new lines and bullet points as much as you can. | | Let the reader breath. | ape4 wrote: | For the sharps bin a diagram or icon would be useful. | munificent wrote: | I'm personally not a fan of the author's writing style. You can | fetishize minimalism and clarity to the point that it undermines | your goal. But the content here is good. In TODO list form, I | suggest anyone writing something think through: | | 1. Who are you writing to? | | 2. Why are you writing to them? | | 3. What do you want them to know? | | 4. What do they already know? | | 5. What style of writing is most effective for this audience and | intention? | | What remains is to use 5 to describe the difference between 4 and | 3 in order to accomplish 2. The primary challenge is that 1 is | often not a single person and the wider the audience you choose, | the fuzzier all of the subsequent answers become. The single best | thing you can do to become a stronger writer is to be courageous | about selecting a narrow audience. | wombatmobile wrote: | Your list is a much easier read, and consequently a far more | effective communication than the article. | | The last two sentences are not required and could be omitted | for clarity, or at least truncated beyond the conjunction "and" | in sentence two of your last paragraph. | wtetzner wrote: | > 4. What do they already know? | | Yeah, I've found that this is what's most commonly overlooked | when communicated with people at work. They either spend too | much time explaining things you already know, or assume context | you don't have. | Ma8ee wrote: | I very much prefer when they explain too much than too | little. Yeah, it might be boring to listen to or you might | have to skim a big part of the text, but that is much better | than being lost. | layer8 wrote: | It's not always easy though to get a good idea of where | people currently are on a potentially decades-long | multidimensional learning curve. You need a back-and-forth | dialog to home in on the right level. | wtetzner wrote: | It may not be easy, but I think it's the area that needs | the most focus, at least at my company. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | > I'm personally not a fan of the author's writing style. | | Agreed. The paragraphs are too short and are not as | freestanding as they should be. For instance the following | should have been folded into the preceding paragraph, which | provided the vital context: | | > _But that's often the cause of the failure._ | | I also find it jarring to read a sentence beginning with _and_ | or _but_ , although not everyone agrees with me that it's poor | style. | jfengel wrote: | I find myself beginning sentences with conjunctions. I try to | edit it out most of the time, but I'm not fanatical about it. | I think it reads more clearly to the original writer than it | does to a reader. | | You're absolutely correct about the paragraphs. A paragraph | is a tool for organizing your document. If you have only one | sentence per paragraph, you're sacrificing that tool. You | already have the period to separate sentences, so you should | use paragraph separators to group sentences into a coherent | thought. | | The rule of thumb is 3-5 sentences per paragraph. It's not | ironclad, but if you find yourself breaking it often, you're | probably doing something wrong. | hinkley wrote: | There is a specific case where you start a sentence with | 'but': when you want to give someone time to accept the | previous statement before demolishing it. This is what we all | know, and we all agree that we see it. But what we know is | not right, and here's why. | | If a person is using And and But equally, they just like the | mental pause between their statements. The period is more of | an ellipsis. If your reader needs a mental pause before an | And, before a second piece of information, maybe your | information is too dense and you should free the new | information to stand alone. Possibly in a new paragraph. | | As in, "The other thing that's cool about this process is | that it also does blah. Which is useful for these reasons..." | | I don't know how other people develop a theory of a system, | but if you want to change mine, if _I_ want to change mine, I | have to 'walk into it' see what's wrong with it, deconstruct | it and put it back together the new way. If you don't bring | me through this, I'm going to make you stop talking, back up, | and walk me through it anyway. Otherwise your next best | outcome is that later than night when I'm brushing my teeth I | realize you're right and we pick it back up tomorrow. If it's | in writing, I can only make you back up by skipping back a | few paragraphs, or writing a response that you may or may | see. If your proposal is too woo, I'll just be writing you | off entirely. | glacials wrote: | The MIT OpenCourseWare talk _How to Speak_ by Patrick Winston is | a great lecture on this subject: https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY | drewcoo wrote: | This advice is for getting people to understand without much | thinking. That's not always the goal. | foobarbecue wrote: | Is "PLEASE REMEMBER TO PARTIALLY CLOSE THE SHARPS BIN" supposed | to be an example of doing this correctly, or incorrectly? I find | the notice unclear, but it's also unclear what point the author | is trying to make by using this image. | MauranKilom wrote: | The fun part is that this depends entirely on the audience. Not | only the demographic, but also what prior instructions they | received. | | Seeing that sign without further context, I assume this is a | bin full of sharpies (could be wrong), and that it is supposed | to be left slightly open. How closed "partially" closed is I | would have to guess. | | But if this is for a group of students in an art class that | have all been clearly instructed how to handle this bin (see | "remember to"), it might be the perfect reminder. Meaning | "Close it to the degree you've been shown in the first lesson". | FPGAhacker wrote: | I know this is beside the point... It's a bin for medical | waste in the form of things that can break the skin. Used | needles etc. It's a special bin that once completely closed | is intentionally quite difficult to open again. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-28 23:01 UTC)