[HN Gopher] Seven Sins of Writing
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Seven Sins of Writing
Author : paint
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-08-27 21:05 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hamilton.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hamilton.edu)
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I don't understand Sin Seven.
| kens wrote:
| Number seven is miscellaneous issues; you need to click through
| to see them.
|
| One of the complaints is "treating data as singular". My view
| is that "data" is obviously a mass noun and treating it as
| plural is pointlessly pedantic.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Should be called The 6 Deadly Sins and a Myriad of Minor
| Mistakes.
| kazinator wrote:
| [delayed]
| grahamlee wrote:
| "Avoid the passive voice" is a rule that annoys me. Sometimes,
| the rule that's annoying is more important than the person that's
| being annoyed.
| screamingninja wrote:
| > a rule that annoys me
|
| None of these are meant to be "rules" in my understanding. The
| post starts with "In most instances", so it leaves plenty of
| room for "exceptions" to the list based on what you intend to
| convey.
| enkid wrote:
| The problem is that most people who say this don't know what
| the passive voice means. What they want to say is make the most
| important noun in the sentence the subject and keep the subject
| near the beginning of the sentence. That concept is only
| tangentially related to the grammatical voice being used.
| jetrink wrote:
| Over the years, LanguageLog has collected many examples of
| people with new and different* ideas about what passive voice
| is. There is such a gulf between what the general public
| means when it talks about passive voice and what people who
| study grammar mean that the blog declared the term dead in
| 2009.
|
| https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=passive+vo.
| ..
|
| * or if you're a prescriptivist, wrong
| version_five wrote:
| There should be an (n+1)th rule for these lists that's break
| the rules when you want, just know you're breaking them and do
| it because you like the result better, not out of sloppiness.
| smilespray wrote:
| My teachers told me this is true for almost all lists of
| rules. YMMV.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Rules (which don't involve courts & prisons) are just
| shorthand for _reasons_.
|
| The better you understand the reasons behind the rules, the
| easier it will be to know when to break them.
|
| Or, in an artistic sense, how best to dramatically or
| subtly break them in service to some creative perspective.
|
| Any of them! All of them!
| Gunax wrote:
| My disappointment in my education is how much these rules were
| emphasized over content.
|
| The hard part of writing is content--not syntax.
|
| Just like programming is about logic, and syntax is a minor
| nitpick one needs to know.
|
| But I think the real reason these rules were emphasized so much
| is that they are easy to grade and explain.
| mistercheph wrote:
| I agree with this, people seriously underestimate the degree to
| which minimum viable effort is the guiding principle of the
| education stack. Making students engaged in writing critically
| and creatively and communicatively is a much more difficult and
| poorly defined task than inventing or choosing at random (from
| style guides that have never been used by any impactful writers
| ever) rules of English grammar and style and then
| mechanistically applying them. This generates an exceedingly
| great amount of profit for the textbook writers and
| professional development folks that reinvent and retrain
| teachers in ad-hoc ineffective techniques every two years.
| Teachers, administrators, curriculum, textbook authors, school
| boards, edtech, local politicians, and students all conspiring
| to make education as mechanistic and unimpactful as possible
| because it satisfies the requirements of the world external to
| education while demanding the least possible effort and
| interest from all who participate. There are many, many
| exceptions of course, especially among the two classes that
| have a primary existence instead of a rent-seeking one
| (teachers and students), but this is the rule in the United
| States today.
| msla wrote:
| Be clear about what the passive voice is:
|
| https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922
|
| > It is clear that some people think _The bus blew up_ is in the
| passive; that _The case took on racial overtones_ is in the
| passive; that _Dr. Reuben deeply regrets that this happened_ is
| in the passive; and so on.
|
| (Needless to say, none of those are in the passive voice. Of
| course, some people think questions are in the passive voice, so
| perhaps this education is a lost cause.)
|
| Moving on:
|
| > Concise writing is key to clear communication. Wordiness
| obscures your ideas and frustrates your reader. Make your points
| succinctly.
|
| The funny thing is, they wrote this without intending to be
| ironic.
|
| Finally:
|
| > Each student must meet with their advisor.
|
| They mark this as incorrect, which it is not, and which marks
| them as being innovative and ignorant. Innovative, in that
| they're trying to invent new rules for English to follow, and
| ignorant, in that they think they're being traditionalists.
|
| Cites:
|
| https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/singular-they-history
|
| > The plural they originated around the 13th century, and it
| didn't take long for its singular form to emerge. As professor
| and linguist Dennis Baron writes in a post at the Oxford English
| Dictionary, the earliest known instance of the singular they can
| be found in the medieval poem William and the Werewolf from 1375.
| A section translated from the Middle English to modern English
| reads, "Each man hurried [. . .] till they drew near [. . .]
| where William and his darling were lying together." Because most
| language changes develop orally before they're written down, this
| form of they likely had been in use for years by this point.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200121102050/https://www.nytim...
|
| https://archive.ph/jnODV
|
| > For the still unpersuaded, he points out that singular "they"
| is older than singular "you." Only in the 1600s did singular
| "you" start pushing out "thou" and "thee."
|
| Finally, this:
|
| > Each student must meet his or her advisor.
|
| Is marked as correct, but it isn't. Some people don't identify as
| "He" or "She" and trying to "Grammar" them into submission is
| simply idiotic.
| cebert wrote:
| I've always seen recommendations to avoid passive voice in
| writing. However, when I encounter passive voice it doesn't
| bother me. It also is one of my more frequent writing mistakes.
| Is this still considered bad practice?
| creata wrote:
| Yes. Some people (especially when they're trying to sound
| formal or impartial) use the passive voice _way_ too much.
| thfuran wrote:
| As a general rule, yes.
| martinjacobd wrote:
| I wish I understood what "wordiness" means. Perhaps it's
| restating the same simple point three times in as many loose
| sentences.
|
| People who harp on this point usually point to the writing of
| Hemingway and similar writers (Carver comes to mind). All of
| these men are better writers than I am, but I still prefer to
| read Nabokov. Could Nabokov have "made his point" in fewer words?
| Almost certainly, but I wouldn't have enjoyed them any more.
| grey-area wrote:
| These rules are for students writing essays, not Nabokov.
| matwood wrote:
| I recently read Smart Brevity and it had a number of tips to
| deal with wordiness.
|
| Use simple words and be direct.
| JackFr wrote:
| The problem is most people aren't Nabokov.
|
| (And Nabakov as a poet, translator of poems and expert on
| prosody was very, very good at writing fluidly - he could
| afford to be wordy.)
| fasterik wrote:
| It's a lot more obvious in academic writing and other non-
| fiction. Using a lot of words to make a simple point is often a
| sign that the writer is trying to signal intelligence rather
| than convey information.
|
| In literature the goals are different, but I still think the
| rule applies in most cases. Nabokov is the exception that
| proves the rule. Great writers have earned the right to be
| wordy. When an average writer tries write like Nabokov, we call
| it purple prose.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Wordiness, in the fantasticly useful advice I am quite
| frequently accustomed to receiving in the rare and unusual (I
| cannot go so far as to say unique though that is nearly as a
| tick to a dog true) circumstances that have led me to receiving
| others thoughts on my quite elegant prose might be
| characterized as inserting too many brilliantly (to the astute
| author) descriptive adverbs and adjectives that somehow impede
| the understanding normal dull attention deprived reader.
|
| Also: using more words that fewer
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Literary wordiness is conscious use of language for poetic
| effect. It's fine in certain kinds of fiction if you can make
| it work. (Harder than it looks.)
|
| Outside of literature, wordiness is usually an attempt to
| appear formal, archaic, and authoritative. It tries to
| introduces a difference in distance and status, and often comes
| across as pompous.
|
| Simple examples: "utilise" for "use" "refrain from [doing the
| thing]" for "not [do the thing]", "I am minded to" for "I
| will/might."
|
| A lot of business writing, some tech writing, and many
| scientific papers are unnecessarily wordy.
|
| "Whether adults with obesity can achieve weight loss with once-
| weekly semaglutide at a dose of 2.4 mg as an adjunct to
| lifestyle intervention has not been confirmed."
|
| Which really just says "We gave our volunteers this dose of
| this drug but nothing much happened."
|
| That's a little exaggerated, and papers without the wordiness
| probably wouldn't pass peer review.
|
| But still.
| kshacker wrote:
| Hmmm, let's demonstrate wordiness :)
|
| > I wish I understood what "wordiness" means. Perhaps it's
| restating the same simple point three times in as many loose
| sentences.
|
| Does wordiness mean restating the same simple point three times
| in as many loose sentences?
|
| > People who harp on this point usually point to the writing of
| Hemingway and similar writers (Carver comes to mind). All of
| these men are better writers than I am, but I still prefer to
| read Nabokov. Could Nabokov have "made his point" in fewer
| words? Almost certainly, but I wouldn't have enjoyed them any
| more.
|
| People who complain about wordiness point to Hemingway and
| Carver. I personally find it a joy to read Nabokov despite his
| wordiness, and I do not think my reading enjoyment is related
| to being wordy.
|
| * Sorry about this, thought I will have some fun. This is not
| chatGPT, just my own effort, and both your para and my para
| does not call out whether Hemingway is wordy or concise !!
| raincole wrote:
| Tell ChatGPT to rewrite your article. See why it's output is
| longer than the original text. That's wordiness.
| [deleted]
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Don't read much Stephen King, do you?
|
| I jest. But seriously...
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(page generated 2023-08-27 23:00 UTC)