[HN Gopher] How to write more clearly, think more clearly, and l...
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How to write more clearly, think more clearly, and learn complex
material [pdf]
Author : Secrethus
Score : 433 points
Date : 2022-04-17 12:23 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.covingtoninnovations.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.covingtoninnovations.com)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| This stuck out for me;
|
| > "Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are not a layer of added
| decoration. They help express the meaning. If you let a computer
| "correct" them, you may not get what you intend."
|
| The stilted formulations of Grammarly powered student essays is
| getting obvious to me. Does anyone else feel that assisted
| writing has every drop of personality wrung out of it?
| rg111 wrote:
| Make it Clear by Patrick Henry Winston [0] is slightly related to
| this. I learned a lot of things from it.
|
| I first got to know about him through his now famous video- _How
| to Speak_ [1].
|
| [0]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/make-it-clear
|
| [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY
| jgerrish wrote:
| I don't have a good space to learn in.
| westcort wrote:
| Key takeaways:
|
| 1. One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how
| to cut out words that are not necessary
|
| 2. Stuffy writing is bad writing! It lowers the power of your
| brain and mine!
|
| 3. What words should you never use in writing? Words whose exact
| meanings you don't know! Never use a word unless you know EXACTLY
| what it means
|
| 4. If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense
| too!
|
| 5. To keep things clear and readable: Put the main point of each
| paragraph in its first sentence
|
| 6. Pretend you're writing a textbook! That's how I ended up
| writing so many books...Organizing knowledge Learning is a lot
| like writing a book
|
| 7. I often write the introduction last, after I know what it will
| introduce!
|
| 8. Never draw the reader's eye to anything that is not the main
| point
| stevenally wrote:
| What books have you written?
| westcort wrote:
| I just wanted to clarify that these are the main points
| extracted from the PowerPoint linked. I actually do write for
| a living, but most of what I write is proprietary for closed
| distribution.
| k__ wrote:
| 1. is not obvious.
|
| For example, if you want to tell a story or go for specific
| emotions.
| westcort wrote:
| To be clear, this is just a simple summary of the source. I
| agree with your statement, though. In fact, as Rudolf Flesch
| said in his book, How To Write Speak And Think More
| Effectively, "So here we have the secret of plain
| conversational talk: it is not difficult ideas expressed in
| easy language, it is rather abstractions embedded in small
| talk. It is heavy stuff packed with excelsior. If you want to
| be better understood you don't have to leave out or change
| your important ideas; you just use more excelsior. It's as
| simple as that." The point his is making that the few clear
| simple points can be packed with some excelsior to improve
| clarity.
| billylo wrote:
| Very useful for learners of all ages.
|
| I haven't read a 125-page deck completely for a while.
| criddell wrote:
| It seems a little strange that the author uses a slide deck to
| explain how to write more clearly, but then I only read the
| first dozen slides. Maybe later he makes a convincing case that
| an outline is the ultimate form of clear writing?
| suyash wrote:
| To those like me who are more interested in thinking clearly and
| use writing as a thinking tool may find this book more helpful
| https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Paper-V-Howard/dp/0688077587
| gfodor wrote:
| Wow, I am so surprised to see this - I came upon an earlier
| version of this deck 10+ years ago, and it's one of a very small
| number of things I've held onto and made a point to re-read every
| couple of years. Very cool to see there's an updated version of
| it!
| tchalla wrote:
| In addition to the comments about writing (and title), I would
| also encourage everyone to read the Epistemology part of the
| slide deck. It gives a nice framework to form beliefs, opinions
| and test them.
| ghoshbishakh wrote:
| I learnt this during my PhD. I think that is what we are supposed
| to learn whole doing PhD. How to think clearly.
| beloch wrote:
| For those interested in these slides, I strongly recommend "The
| Elements of Style" by Strunk and White[1].
|
| It's not a new book, but it holds up astonishingly well. This is
| a book about making words count in which _every_ word counts.
| There will be appropriate times to deviate from this book 's
| advice, but you will annoy readers and harm your own cause if you
| do so without good reason.
|
| It's short and brilliant. You will learn from it whether you're
| an experienced writer or new to the language.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
| photochemsyn wrote:
| One useful first step in becoming a better writer - in particular
| if your subject is complex - is to to delete your Twitter account
| and never look at another Twitter thread. Character limits kill
| creativity and complexity.
|
| The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement
| for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of
| reading. If you're going to write about a complex scientific or
| technical subject, you should have some examples in mind of great
| texts that you've read. What did other writers do that you liked
| or that stuck with you? Equally true, what are some really bad
| examples, some things to avoid?
|
| For example, here's what I think is an excellent popular history
| book, and if I ever wrote something with a historical bent, I'd
| flip though it first: "By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of
| Eurasia" by Barry Cunliffe
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/...
|
| The point about Twitter is really this: you have to develop the
| skill of composing a paragraph as a coherent entity in order to
| become a decent writer, and Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs,
| just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have
| an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being
| presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs
| together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of
| constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole
| essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for
| complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of
| points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader
| feel smart.
|
| Of course that's just advice for non-fiction writing; if you're
| doing fiction or poetry basically anything goes. The public might
| like it or hate it, but the literary critics can safely be
| ignored.
| izzygonzalez wrote:
| Limitations and bounds generally allow me to explore a smaller
| creative space without tangents. I think this is a generally
| accepted trope in creative domains.
|
| There's also the fact that a swath of the world stopped reading
| after high school. If accessibility and reach are a goal of a
| piece of writing, Twitter sort of forces a writer to compress
| an idea and move on.
|
| Who knows how many people I lost even with just this short
| comment. I guess it's about end goals.
| kepler1 wrote:
| I agree very much. The whole document in the OP reads like
| someone who lost his Twitter account and is trying to
| communicate in PPT.
| gfodor wrote:
| On the contrary, a person skilled at Twitter could have
| compressed the essence of what you wrote into 280 characters.
|
| I've found the best books and essays are similarly
| compressible, with the rest of the information being about
| bolstering it as being worthy of the precious few slots in your
| L1 cache.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| "Brevity is the soul of wit", and saying what you have to say
| with as few and simple words as possible is essential for a
| good writer.
|
| It is, however, far from the _only_ important thing!
| rfrey wrote:
| The essence, perhaps... with none of the nuance or shading.
| If one thinks that is unnecessary, dispensable fluff, Twitter
| is no doubt sufficient for most writing.
|
| And a rhyming dictionary contains all poetry in many fewer
| pages.
| jolux wrote:
| Nuance and shading is not entirely unselfish. Too much
| nuance indicates a lack of trust in your reader.
| otterley wrote:
| Given the nature and quality of replies I've seen even on
| HN -- where there are no such character limits and the
| level of education its members have is higher on average
| -- it seems to me that trust has yet to be earned.
| gfodor wrote:
| I explicitly said that it's necessary, but generally it's
| not for the primary purpose of encoding the core point one
| is trying to make. Nuance to me is more about convincing
| the unpersuaded reader the idea has merit and is important
| or useful. Which is why Twitter allows reasonable idea
| propagation but does a terrible job of persuading people
| who disagree.
| laszlojamf wrote:
| Before twitter it was called aphorisms and Nietzsche was
| doing it before it was cool.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| > The essence, perhaps... with none of the nuance or
| shading
|
| Precisely why the worlds problems are all solvable on
| Twitter.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Yep, I do remember the many problems Twitter solved.
| Without Twitter, we would be centuries away from
| enlightened world peace and mutual understanding.
| scroot wrote:
| Barry Cunliffe is a great scholar. Europe Between the Oceans is
| another great example.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| See also "First, You Write a Sentence" by Joe Moran.
| pc86 wrote:
| "Never look at another Twitter thread" is pretty great advice
| no matter what the question is.
| stakkur wrote:
| This seems to just be a pastiche of 'how to write well' advice
| that you'll find most anywhere. That doesn't mean it's not
| useful, but it's not saying anything that hasn't been said
| before, and often more clearly.
| ultra_nick wrote:
| It's significantly better than k-12 or the first page of
| Google.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&q=how+to+...
| hbarka wrote:
| Refreshing ideas. Thank you for sharing.
| kepler1 wrote:
| For someone who advocates clear writing and communication, it's
| pretty amusing that he puts this advice into the worst kind of
| information-sparse 125-page Powerpoint, and thinks that it needs
| to be protected with a copyright.
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| I find pg's essay on writing[1] to be one of the best on this
| topic.
|
| [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Something that's coming to mind while reading this is how much
| company communication these days happens almost exclusively on
| Slack, and how antithetical that format can be to writing and
| thinking clearly.
| tayo42 wrote:
| We dont use slack like that really, but google doc comments are
| similarly limiting. Atleast most thoughts happen in a google
| doc
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I've suggested creating a company forum at a few different
| places, but it's always received like a strange idea that
| nobody will actually engage with or give any thought to.
|
| Email, Slack, etc, none of them create a good long term record
| that outsiders and newcomers can consume. Some companies have a
| wiki, but I've never seen them used. Forums are good for long
| form communication, people can put in more effort knowing that
| their effort will be available to all going forward.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Our team has begun using GitHub Discussions for this purpose,
| and it's actually pretty good. I've been actively trying to
| push conversations there from Slack, but some people still
| seem really hesitant to use it. Or even worse, some people
| seem to try to use it like a chat application, sending a
| bunch of short and quick replies, rather than letting the
| conversation evolve slowly and async.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I've heard 90+% of people will not participate in online
| discussions. It makes me wonder what people would do if you
| forced them to do so as part of a job. How many people can
| participate in a forum and make coherent multi-paragraph
| arguments? We HN participants can, but we're a biased
| group. A lot of people are accustomed to conversational-
| style communication as found in Slack or social media, and
| they may not have written a formal argument since high
| school.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I think you're spot-on. If anything, it's closer to 99%.
| I've run/managed various forums over the years, and the
| disparity between the active participants and the passive
| readers was always wider than you'd think.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Oh yeah, good point. A lot of people these days have
| never used a communication medium like that. It would be
| interesting to work at a company that really prioritized
| people who prefer that communication style, over the non
| stop stream of consciousness that Slack turns into.
| egman_ekki wrote:
| Actually, Automattic, the distributed company behind
| WordPress uses blogs (called p2s after the WP theme) for
| this. Each team has their own 'blog' and you can link them,
| comment, etc. Then there are company wide blogs with
| different topics, watercooler blogs, etc.
|
| Really useful to revisit past decisions and as a company wide
| knowledgebase. They even created a product out of it:
| https://wordpress.com/p2/
|
| Disclaimer: I work there, but on a different product.
| pfranz wrote:
| At a previous job we had certain email lists that were
| archived and searchable. But I think today everyone would
| just use Slack.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Forums are preferable to email lists, in my opinion.
| mellavora wrote:
| Yes, I'm still smarting from this default behavoir that
| pressing "return" sends the message instead of starting a new
| paragraph. My thoughts usually run to more than one paragraph,
| and I like to edit before I send.
|
| I supposes that's not "chat", but then again written is not
| oral.
|
| (side note-- again, two paragraphs, plus self-commentary)
| tveyben wrote:
| I hate that as well - but finally learned that you can
| actually change the RETURN behavior in Slack's preferences.
|
| I wonder why they decided that a different behavior was
| needed depending on you being in a code block (RETURN -> new
| line) than normal writing (RETURN -> submit). That's bad UX!
|
| I'm so old school that I want an e-mail so I can file it (as
| a file) in whatever folder I find logical - that's not
| possible in Slack (which is good for non-worthy-of-being-
| saved chit-chat kind of communications)
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| You can use SHIFT-RETURN in Slack/Discord to insert a
| newline. Maybe not great for RSI, but it's muscle memory now.
| iworshipfaangs2 wrote:
| I don't understand. Slack is written communication. How could
| that be antithetical to writing? Every time you use it is an
| opportunity to practice.
| icu wrote:
| The key to Plain English writing can be found in the book,
| "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams (Chicago
| Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing).
|
| It gives you the ability to take simple ideas, and write in a
| simple way, as well as take complex ideas and write in a simple
| way.
|
| Highly recommended skills for anyone wanting to compel others to
| action.
| oytis wrote:
| I miss the time when writers didn't follow these rules, it was so
| much more fun to read, and ideas expressed were more complex and
| interesting too.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Good news, your time is still now.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| These are pretty simple rules of information delivery (at least
| up to page 43 of this 125 page power point). They've been
| around for a while but they're most useful for mid-level
| corporate communication and things resembling that.
|
| Fiction writers and writers trying to convey more sophisticated
| ideas haven't used them (or haven't only them) in the past and
| generally don't at present.
| ta988 wrote:
| Yes there is an obvious advantage to fuzzyness in writing as it
| lets the readers make their own path in a story. But not
| everybody likes that, lots of readers enjoy being taken for a
| guided tour.
| oytis wrote:
| For me it is rather that this style doesn't encourage my own
| thinking. The idea is kind of the opposite, that is that
| simple writing should free mental capacity, but in my case it
| just puts my mind in a relaxed state where it can only
| consume information, while more sophisticated style kindles
| creativity and interaction with what's written rather than
| pure consumption
| WhateverHappns wrote:
| Yes! I've had this _exact_ thought while reading "Sell Like
| Crazy". Such a badly written book in this sense. Tons of
| ideas and methods but it doesn't truly stick in my mind if
| everything is ELI5'd to infinity. I'd rather read fiction
| (e.g. Murakami) where I have to close the book and think
| before I continue.
| [deleted]
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I found it embarrassing that I actually do not know much material
| that worth to be written. My gut feeling is that one month of
| intensive research/work/study can be summarized in a long blog
| post. But in my post-student life I have, unfortunately, avoided
| so many of those intensive experience because they are difficult.
| I even switch job every 2-3 years so that I never get much deep
| understanding of pretty much anything and fortunately not many
| jobs actually need one.
|
| This might be something I can start working on for my second half
| of life.
| drakonka wrote:
| I resonated with the "Why"s so much:
|
| > * Clear writing leads to clear thinking.
|
| > * You don't know what you know until you try to express it.
|
| > * If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense
| too
|
| This is the main reason I've kept blogging over the years.
| vga805 wrote:
| This resonated with me as well. I taught university philosophy
| courses and programming courses at a bootcamp. Trying to
| explain stuff like this to oneself or to others was for me the
| quickest and most thorough way to truly understand the
| complexities of these subjects.
| [deleted]
| jll29 wrote:
| The first 1/3 is sort of useful, I'd say stop reading the deck
| when it says "There are invisible, undetectable elves all over
| this room" is a meaningless stence (it is not meaningless, the
| sentence may be false but everyone can understand what it takes
| for it to become true, namely 1. you see elves in this room OR 2.
| you detect elves in this room OR 3. both.).
|
| Also, I'd suggest epistemiology is not so much about finding out
| what's true or false but what is knowable and not knowable in
| principle - i.e., to establish the frontier of the knowable
| (which does not change, whereas the frontier of the present
| knowledge shifts).
| inimino wrote:
| No, your 1, 2 or 3 don't help at all. If you see the elves or
| detect them, then they are not "invisible, undetectable elves",
| and your observation has no bearing on the truth of the
| sentence. So the sentence absolutely cannot ever be tested,
| cannot be said to be true or false, and therefore is in some
| sense outside the domain of logic.
|
| You can have a separate argument about whether an untestable
| statement is necessarily "meaningless" (maybe the way it makes
| you feel is the meaning) but I believe the only point the
| author is trying to get across here is that some statements
| make predictions about the world, and some don't, and it's
| worth being aware of the difference.
| yeetsfromhellL2 wrote:
| I like this. I'm diving into the zettlekasten thing after reading
| _How to Take Smart Notes_ , and stopping to think about how I
| write so that it's as simple and clear as possible, while still
| being informative enough for my future self is what flexes my
| head muscle the most. This complements it nicely.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| How to Take Smart Notes is hands down one of my favorite books
| and I incorporate a lot of the lessons learned in both my
| personal and professional life.
| madiator wrote:
| Yeah I think that book is actually a great read. Too bad the
| name is that way --- it is a lot more than about taking
| notes.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Just bought this book, thanks. I've heard about it before, but
| this post was the critical "okay, I've now heard about this N
| times, time to look into it" moment.
| alostpuppy wrote:
| Would this be decent as an audiobook? Or should I go with a
| hard copy?
| yeetsfromhellL2 wrote:
| You could audio book it, there's only a couple of diagrams in
| it, none of which are strictly necessary, and the book itself
| is fairly engaging. It's more about imparting general
| principles than giving you a flowchart or checklist for
| studying.
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Mind describing the value you gained from _How to Take Smart
| Notes_? Sounds interesting to me, as someone wanting to catalog
| all "information" i take in
| yeetsfromhellL2 wrote:
| I bought it on a whim after somebody mentioned it and was
| very pleasantly surprised. Ahrens makes a convincing case for
| use of the zettlekasten, but the book is mostly about how to
| acquire understanding of something. You could read it without
| having any interest in making a zettlekasten and still get a
| lot out of it.
|
| Having read about zettlekasten online I thought they were one
| thing, but after having read this I feel that I have a deeper
| understanding of them, and how to approach using them. The
| goal isn't necessarily to archive all your knowledge, it's to
| facilitate insights and new ideas. In a way, having your
| knowledge and ideas cross referenced is just a nice side
| effect. Prior to reading this, I would have taken an approach
| that would have just been a database of things I learned,
| which takes a lot of time to create and doesn't do much for
| you in the end.
|
| It's a short, easy read at around 150 (small) pages and the
| author keeps it pretty interesting. I plan on rereading it
| pretty soon.
|
| edit: I forgot to add that a lot of the book goes over study
| methodsmost people are taught growing up, and _why_ they don
| 't really work that well. I thought this was pretty
| interesting as well.
| TuringTest wrote:
| If you haven't already, you may take a look at _networked
| thinking_ applications, like the open source logseq[1] or all
| the similar proprietary outliner alternatives out there.
|
| There is a growing ecosystem based on a modern note-taking
| style heavily based on bi-directional links for organizing
| your knowledge with a bottom-up strategy, and a friendly
| community sharing advice while discovering the possibilities
| of these tools.
|
| Plus, you can do zettlekasten or GTD on these tools if you
| have already built a habit on these techniques. The outliner
| will accomodate that habit, and let you grow it long-term
| into a personal knowledge database providing opportunistic
| insights.
|
| [1] https://logseq.com/
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Those appear to be nice points. Anything similar for speaking?
| dcsommer wrote:
| I think a lot of this applies to spoken communication, too. For
| instance, if you can't say it clearly and succinctly, you may
| be lacking clarity yourself and need to do more reflection
| before talking about it. Also, I like the perspective of
| communicating while believing your audience is the important
| one, not yourself.
| Secrethus wrote:
| Agreed. You can apply most of it.
|
| - Speaking = Power - You influence people by speaking for
| them to listen. - Knowledge = Expressing it - Non-sense speak
| = Non-sense thoughts - You speak because they are important.
| oleh wrote:
| I highly recommend this lecture: https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| People who dig this deck may dig this book:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Simple-Truth-Writing-Classic/dp...
|
| The best single book I've ever read on writing well. Had a big
| impact on me outside of writing, too.
| V__ wrote:
| Looks interesting. May I ask what would be the most valuable
| lesson you got out of it?
| heinrichhartman wrote:
| Forgive me for bringing up my own material here, but I wrote a
| piece that is highly relevant in this context only two days ago:
|
| Writing for Engineers -
| https://www.heinrichhartmann.com/posts/writing/
|
| This text is particularly geared towards Software Engineers and
| focuses more on the psychology of getting started with writing.
| Lot's of overlap with the content in this post (which has much
| more depth on the "how to write well" part).
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| I hereby forgive you.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Thank you for posting and for having a site that is easy to
| save for later.
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