[HN Gopher] Write More, but Shorter
___________________________________________________________________
Write More, but Shorter
Author : defaulty
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-09-10 16:16 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.kewah.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.kewah.com)
| paulpauper wrote:
| This advice is effective only if you are already famous or
| established. The most successful online writers who built their
| own brands without outside help began by writing huge, long
| articles that appealed to readers with high iqs and high
| attention spans. Short, concise articles are a dime a dozen and
| forgettable. You need to write looong essays to stand out and get
| content viral even if the articles are seldom read to thier
| entirety. An example is waitbutwhy.
| smoyer wrote:
| The article cited by this post is at -
| https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-l...
| [deleted]
| wenc wrote:
| I like terse writing but I've also learned two things about it.
| The first is that minimalist narrative writing linearizes
| nonlinear thought. The linearity is often--correctly or
| incorrectly--perceived as clarity but it really is just
| linearity. In some cases preserving nonlinearity is actually
| helpful (for instance, a conversation with interjections and
| meanderings). Second, terseness is not appreciated by all.
| Fillers and repetitions are sometimes necessary for politeness
| and to soften language. This is why you should strive to write
| more rather than less when what you're about the say is liable to
| be misunderstood or if you want to emphasize something.
| andai wrote:
| Just this morning my dyslexic friend said he loves to write in
| bullet points, because reading is very labor-intensive for him.
| He wished that articles would just give you the meat in bullet
| points instead of spreading the actual information out over
| several pages of fluff.
|
| That made me realize, keeping dyslexic people in mind when
| writing is one of those things that improves accessibility for
| everyone.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I'll bite: I think your friend has a point, I take handwritten
| notes purely in nested bullets if the topic isn't an active
| conversation.
|
| That said, this only works up to a point, and I wonder whether
| most articles could be written in bullets and retain all the
| "value" of their prose form. Bullets don't cut it if the
| subject requires the author to address human emotions or impart
| meaning into their text. This is loosely in opposition to
| facts, spec sheets, and technical information that does lend
| itself to hierarchical structures in a way that adds value.
|
| I recognize you might not disagree with any of this, by the
| way.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Many of the pieces of information we attempt to communicate
| have low semantic complexity and information density. They
| translate very nicely into an outline or a list of lists.
|
| Other things are very difficult to convey, type systems,
| multiple levels of interpretation, multiple levels of VMs and
| runtimes, and things that are spread out over time or inter-
| related in complex ways.
|
| One thing your dyslexic friend may have is a lack of context
| and bullet points are the fastest way to a) build context and
| b) provide roots to be able to hang more information off of.
|
| tl;dr both.
| akvadrako wrote:
| A few news sites do that, like Business Insider, and I think
| it's a great idea. They should also give tables of data in a
| standard format instead of saying _4 /13ths of people agreed
| that is was likely or very likely, but only 20 disagreed._
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Not dyslexic, but I actively have to fight myself from writing
| in bullet points - both in personal and work contexts, and even
| on HN!
|
| I found that when trying to communicate actual information,
| prose just gets in the way. Trees (aka. nested bullet points)
| map much better. Alas, most people are used to reading prose,
| so I'm forced to degrade the message to accommodate.
| kendru wrote:
| I love how the post is a demonstration of the practice it
| describes.
| tyingq wrote:
| The linked original source in the article has a more clear
| phrasing... _" Write more often, but make each thing you write
| shorter."_
|
| https://critter.blog/2020/10/02/write-5x-more-but-write-5x-l...
| mcbishop wrote:
| > Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don't write, "He was
| very happy" when you can write "He was happy." You think the word
| "very" adds something. It doesn't. Prune your sentences.
|
| Scott Adams
| https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...
| posterboy wrote:
| This is poor advise.
|
| It's a good rule of thumb to KISS (keep it short and simple),
| but it doesn't translate from one short and simplified example
| to each sentence of a longer text, because sentences aren't
| wholly individual. Sentences need to work together, in
| conjunction, because the information content requires a
| reasonable amount of structural complexity to support the
| content. Adverbs are _very_ good at that.
|
| I am absoluty not familiar with typed syntax theories or
| anything really, but I dare say the adverb in the previous
| sentence modifies _at that_. At least the parameter is
| bracketed nicely. Were I to say otherwise that _Adverbs are
| good_ , it would not be any better now would it? Because the
| adverb introduces an adverbial clause that modifies the whole
| preceding text, that is referenced by "at that" in a manner of,
| err, a fix-point y-combinator!?
|
| On the other hand I am a foreign speaker without good
| judgement. Consider that _good_ (or _happy_ ) itself may be
| adverbial, _Adverbs well support the support._
|
| Good to know: Repition and redundancy can be quite beneficial,
| and sometimes it's impossible to avoid.
|
| Anyway, kitchen philosophy says that _early optimization is the
| source of all evil_ (Hoare apud Knuth).
|
| Edit: Another problem of structural support is punctuation
| bserge wrote:
| Why not "He happy". Language complicated. Return to simple.
| Save energy.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It works with code too.
|
| In fact it looks like the process for writing good articles and
| writing good code is not so different.
|
| Each word should be meaningful and precise. Text has to be short
| but without resorting to obscure abbreviations and references. Of
| course spelling, syntax and formatting has to be correct.
| redkidster wrote:
| "Like Shakespeare said, "brevity is the soul of wit", which just
| means: "Don't waste my fucking time"" - Mr. Plinkett
| bserge wrote:
| The guy who was inventing words for stuff that didn't have one?
| :D
| jyriand wrote:
| Writer shorter, yes. Write like a robot, no.
| mcrittenden wrote:
| Oh hey, I'm the person mentioned in the first sentence of this
| post. I was wondering why my stats went up today!
|
| I've published a blog post every weekday for over a year now
| (today's was #280). It's been life changing for me. It's now my
| go-to method for figuring out what I think about something and
| for crystallizing those thoughts and finding links between them.
|
| - I figured out that I wanted a new job while writing a blog post
| (and I started that new job 9 months ago).
|
| - I learned that I'm not an introvert, but rather a shy
| extrovert, while writing a blog post.
|
| - That led into me realizing I have social anxiety while writing
| a blog post.
|
| There are lots more examples of that. I'm often surprised to find
| that I don't actually believe what I thought I believed when I
| started writing that blog post.
|
| Journaling never stuck for me because it felt like work, but
| making it public made it exciting and fulfilling enough to become
| a habit that I look forward to each day.
|
| Since the author mentioned Zettelkasten, I'll add this:
| https://critter.blog/2021/02/10/blogging-as-a-zettelkasten/
| rckrd wrote:
| This has been working for me. Before, I struggled to finish blog
| posts between working on other things. Now, for the last 100
| days, I've been writing a short blog post every day.
| hirundo wrote:
| The ultimate exaggeration of this would be a grand unified theory
| of everything. Maybe Stephen Wolfram will write it someday in the
| form of a cellular automata rule set.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Wolfram is working on another idea, based on graph rewriting.
| Which is perhaps like a cellular automata whose rules can
| create more cells instead of working on a fixed grid, but, at
| this point it's not "cellular" anymore.
|
| Wolfram has an.. issue in that he focuses on qualitative
| results (he runs simulations, eyeball it and tell something
| about it), but, I'm pretty excited by this development.
|
| https://www.wolframphysics.org/
|
| https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-phys...
|
| https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...
| [deleted]
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| The underlying problem is the clarity of one's writing. For
| inexperienced writers it's highly likely that the longer their
| writing the more rambling and incoherent it is. Therefore it's a
| good rule of thumb for an inexperienced writer to write shorter.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| If for no other reason, I can see the point of righting shorter
| because people are losing their ability to read anything longer.
|
| I've decided to do all business correspondence as haiku from here
| on.
|
| --------
|
| Regarding your code
|
| I would replace all the tabs
|
| With happy faces
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah, dumb people buy more, so it's great to pander to them.
| bserge wrote:
| Imo, write less, but longer. It allows you to better articulate
| your thoughts and create content that is in-depth, helpful and
| often timeless.
|
| If you can't connect the beginning, middle and end of a single
| 3000 word article, why do you think you can do it with 5x 600
| word ones? Same for video and audio.
|
| Plus, "more and shorter" brought us the cancer that is Twitter,
| Facebook, Imgur and TikTok.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| I once heard "when talking to senior leadership, say as much as
| you can in as few words as possible".
|
| Interestingly, I heard it from some actor being interviewed on
| the Howard Stern show.
| tombert wrote:
| That's still a skill I'm trying to get used to. For work
| emails, I've for some reason trained myself to add a bunch of
| fluff at the beginning and ending of emails.
|
| For last ~year or so, I've been trying to get more into the
| habit of keeping my emails _extremely_ utilitarian, e.g.
| bullets of my questions, bullets of what I need, and maybe the
| best way to get ahold of me.
| allenu wrote:
| I used to do the fluff thing more early in my career,
| thinking I was being polite and comprehensive in my
| communication, then over time I realized people are more
| likely to respond if you're concise and clear in what your
| request is.
|
| Nowadays I try to get to the point about what I want from the
| other person, while giving just enough context at the start
| to frame the request. It has definitely helped in getting a
| response or action.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That reminds me of "No Hello": https://www.nohello.com .
| Politeness is very context sensitive. If I'm writing a letter
| to my mom, I'll let it meander and squeeze in funny little
| tidbits because she likes to hear me talk. My coworkers don't
| necessarily like to hear me talk, and they want me to get to
| the point so they can get back to work. For Mom, all the
| fluff is polite. For my coworkers, brevity is appreciated.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Seemed like the blog post was more about note taking, but this
| ethos is why I like Twitter.
|
| I realized that I have always enjoyed blogging. A medium that
| encourages terseness, has minimal friction to post, and provides
| a decently-sized audience lets me talk about my life in a way
| that makes me choose words more carefully.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Nice post, how do you like your Zettelcloud so far? I'm always
| interested to hear.
|
| Looking at Mike's article:
|
| > Because the shorter it is, the more people will read it.
|
| What.
|
| > Because of the Pareto principle: 80% of the value is in 20% of
| the length (hence "5x shorter").
|
| WHAT.
|
| I guess a lot of us write so that other people will read...I
| guess.
|
| But also, a lot of us write to exorcise our
| informational/emotional demons (to use a metaphor). It's taking
| care of oneself. And a lot of the time that looks like piles of
| words. Especially given a nice amount of intuition-stimulant like
| caffeine.
|
| Writing/blogging has headed more this way for me personally, the
| longer I've been writing & blogging. But I also don't blog for
| leads or income anymore, and don't care as much about my audience
| dynamics. Is that where the cutoff is?
|
| If somebody really wants the short version I find that they'll
| email me and probably get a disappointing reply...
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _But also, a lot of us write to exorcise our informational
| /emotional demons (to use a metaphor). It's taking care of
| oneself. And a lot of the time that looks like piles of words._
|
| I find in my old age that I have little patience for people who
| publicly write for themselves and not for others. If you want
| to masturbate, cool, I love it, do it in private. If you want
| to enrich others, the less you waste their time the more people
| you'll be able to reach.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| How would you know which type you are currently reading?
| andai wrote:
| I think that type of writing is more like digestion... the
| author is enriched by the process, but the product is not fit
| for consumption.
|
| I think most journaling falls under this category -- there is
| a reason it is called a "brain dump", heh.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| It depends where you do your writing. I don't think there
| should be any expectation that a personal blog is anything
| other than "writing for yourself."
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| One of the requirements of achieving the top levels within
| the analytics team at my company is to be considered a
| thought leader and evangelist. This is accomplished by
| blogging, tweeting, LinkedIn posts, and speaking at
| conferences.
|
| It's very obvious when it comes up in my feeds that people
| are doing it to appeal to their managers and review
| committee.
|
| We are in no way a leader in analytics, so I feel bad for
| those who consume this content, which is put out by people
| with 3-6 months of professional experience who are trying
| to pass it off as authoritative and universal.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| Do your analysts help with causality? Top companies have
| some people that talk a lot and others listen to. So if
| we have our employees talk more and get people to listen
| to them, we'll be a top company. Brilliant! Could there
| be a confound? No way!
| munificent wrote:
| I think your comment presumes a well-defined difference
| between "public" and "private" that doesn't really exist.
|
| It's not like web pages spontaneously run into your home and
| throw themselves in your face. Simply publishing a blog to
| the web for those who happen to seek it out lets the audience
| themselves decide what is public what is private.
|
| The audience still has complete control over the use of their
| own time.
| afarrell wrote:
| Web pages which are accessible without a login are public.
|
| So are advertisements posted on the street outside your
| house.
| janto wrote:
| When I write "to myself" I try to be clear and concise. It
| actually helps me more to encapsulate my experience than free
| association writing does.
| cpeterso wrote:
| There's a reason "tl;dr" is a saying. As the meme says: _" I
| ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that
| happened."_
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-aint-reading-all-that
| GordonS wrote:
| A while back I got in trouble at work because I was perceived as
| being too direct in emails. IMO my mails were fine, and I varied
| the level of directness depending on the target audience - but
| others felt differently, so I started padding them out with fluff
| and niceties, and unfortunately it became a habit that I've found
| difficult to break.
|
| And inevitably, some people have since said that my mails should
| come with a TL;DR! Sure enough, I feel like I used to be
| succinct, and now I'm just _overly_ verbose, with redundant
| sentences, and sometimes seemingly rambling.
|
| Hell, if you made it this far through this rambling comment, well
| done ;)
| tombert wrote:
| I don't remember the original source, but in Leslie Lamport's
| Specifying Systems book, he quoted someone saying "Writing is
| nature's way of telling you how sloppy your thinking is."
|
| Generally, if you're writing long, rambling posts, there's a good
| chance that your understanding of the subject that you're writing
| about is sloppy (not to say you don't understand it, just that
| your thoughts are all over the place). If you can express what
| you're writing in a fairly short amount of time, you probably
| have a relatively good mental model of what it is you're tying to
| say, and this is a learnable (and useful) skill.
|
| I've found that getting into the practice of writing "notes that
| I will actually read in the future" has helped a lot with this.
| powersnail wrote:
| There's some truth to the idea. At the same time, I've met
| plenty of experts who are competent and productive in their
| work, but incapable of concise communication.
|
| If you sieve through their rambling, you'll notice that they
| _do_ have a mental model. The problem is that the model is very
| foreign to other minds, and they do a poor job describing it.
|
| This might be the reason that some people are more comfortable
| communicating with formulas than verbal descriptions. They are
| eloquent when they don't have to come up with their own words.
| seph-reed wrote:
| I'll talk to my friends about "my day" every once in a while.
| Invariably it involves programming and the act of trying to
| describe what I'm doing is like off-roading: you constantly
| have to go long ways around things to avoid crossings the
| conversation can't handle, it's rough and bumpy the whole
| way, and some destinations simply can not be reached.
|
| In short: I agree that rambling may have more to do with the
| difficulty of translation than the internal understanding.
| toxik wrote:
| I find that you can often use analogies or describe very
| vaguely to at least make some sense. It does take nuance
| out of the thing you're describing but maybe that's
| helpful. I've had multiple times that I explain in simpler
| terms, and I come to realize what my idea actually looks
| like to other people.
| Swizec wrote:
| To brag a little, my favorite feedback on the newsletters I
| send is "Thanks! Short and sweet, loved it!" to a 1000 word
| email.
|
| It's okay to write long. But it needs to _feel_ short by being
| concise.
|
| You can always tell when someone squeezes a 1000 page book into
| 200 pages. It feels short and insightful. But when they expand
| a 20 page book into 200 pages, it feels like fluff. You can
| tell when that happens too.
|
| A good pattern to observe is an author's first and second best
| seller.
|
| The first is often amazing. A decade of lessons and insights
| squeezed into a book. The fast followup is usually fluff. 2
| years of add-ons expanded into a full book.
| tombert wrote:
| Yep yep, I totally agree with that.
|
| Obviously there are subjects where it would be extremely
| difficult (if not impossible) to express in a short format,
| and obviously if it requires it, then take the amount of
| space that you need. I think the goal should be "aim for
| brevity, but be clear."
|
| One of my favorite examples of this are Ron Pressler's "TLA+
| in Practice and Theory" posts. It's four extremely long blog
| posts, but it contains what feels like _multiple textbooks '_
| worth of information in there. By comparison to how long it
| _could_ be, I think it 's incredible how concise it is.
|
| [1] https://pron.github.io/tlaplus
| reidjs wrote:
| Yes! Long writing versus short writing has nothing to do with
| the absolute number of words used. It has more to do with
| context and topic.
|
| Comprehensive analysis of World War 2? Tens of thousands of
| words would be too short.
|
| Explaining to a friend why you didn't like the movie you just
| watched? Keep it under a paragraph.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > You can always tell when someone squeezes a 1000 page book
| into 200 pages. It feels short and insightful.
|
| I disagree with this argument. You can most certainly tell
| when someone is trying to squeeze too much into a too small
| of a space. The sentences are dense and the information
| density prohibits actually gleaning anything.
| Swizec wrote:
| You are right there are limits where too much summarizing
| drops important details. Generally though I prefer writing
| where the author had to aggressively kill the unimportant
| because they ran out of space to the writing that fluffs up
| to fill more space than it needs.
| dilap wrote:
| I think this part of the reason why long tweet threads are so
| popular. It encourages a writing style that makes things feel
| concise.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Twitter threads that are an expert deep dive into some
| historical event/story, a law, a court case, a mathematical
| theory, etc are some of my favorite kinds of writing to
| read.
|
| Each tweet in the thread is often accompanied by a link
| and/or screen shot of a refernce article or book so I can
| dive into more source material if I wish... just perfect
| sfg wrote:
| https://www.azquotes.com/author/86806-Dick_Guindon
| tombert wrote:
| Thanks!
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I've noticed what often causes rambling is writing a sentence
| that I'm only 50% sure conveys the idea. I'll keep writing
| variations of the same core sentence in the hope that one of
| them will work for the reader.
|
| The thought is clear in my head, but doesn't seem clear on
| paper. So I just throw a bunch of word spaghetti at the wall
| and hope something sticks. It's better to tighten up one really
| clear sentence, and accept any complex thought will probably go
| over the heads of some percent of the readers.
| burlesona wrote:
| This is very insightful. I tend to do this verbally as well,
| when I'm trying to explain something to people and I can see
| they don't get it. In that context I'm trying to learn to
| stop and say "does that make sense" instead of rephrasing.
| watwut wrote:
| I think that no. Writing is separate skill. It has nothing to
| do how you internal thinking os nor whether it is sloppy.
|
| It has a lot tondonwith whether you tried to learn writing,
| found good teachers or other resources. Learning to write won't
| make your thinking different, but you will be able to express
| things.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| If you can't encode it with your neocortex, your neocortex
| doesn't understand it well enough. You might understand it,
| but your high level reasoning center does not. Give it a
| writing hand and pull it out of the tarpit.
|
| I am sure he didn't originate the sentiment but
|
| "Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly.
| That's why it's so hard." -- David McCullough
|
| (Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities,
| July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)"
| watwut wrote:
| > Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly.
| That's why it's so hard.
|
| This is precisely what I strongly disagree with.
|
| You don't have to write to think and trying to is often
| detrimental. You can use writing to think, in situations
| where it helps or if you want to.
|
| But it is not necessary and don't necessary improves your
| thinking.
| coder-3 wrote:
| I do agree that writing is not _necessary_ to improve
| your thinking. However, I think that writing about a
| topic will often if not always improve your understanding
| of that topic as well as your ability to communicate it.
| I think that's because when writing about something you
| have to be slower, more deliberate and more structured
| than thinking about something in your head which helps
| you identify gaps in your understanding which you can
| easily miss when the idea is in your head.
|
| I think the better way overall though is just to try
| different methods of thinking and do what works for you.
| I also think more than one method is almost always better
| than just using one.
| auggierose wrote:
| There are people who are visual thinkers, and people who
| are more language based. For language based thinkers,
| writing always helps. For visual thinkers, maybe not
| always, although I think that combining visual and
| language thinking is very powerful.
| watwut wrote:
| I am 100% not visual thinker. Writing still does not help
| one bit.
|
| And writing for you to understand is different then
| writing for others.
| tombert wrote:
| Granted, I'm speaking with no neuroscience or psychological
| background, but anecdotally I think I completely disagree.
|
| I'm not saying that you should be the next Robert Penn Warren
| or James Joyce if you're writing about an endofunctor or
| something, but I genuinely do think that learning how to
| write fairly well has actually made me understand mathematics
| and computer science better, in addition to becoming better
| at explaining it. My thoughts can be all over the place, and
| even if I know every single "fact" about a subject, I feel
| like writing about it (and in particular trying to write
| _well_ about it) helps me fully realize how these facts
| actually relate to each other, and building a bigger mental
| picture that I might not otherwise have.
|
| To be clear, I don't think writing is the _only_ way of doing
| this. I think, for example, getting good at data
| visualization or learning formal mathematics can also have
| similar effects in regards to most forms of engineering. I
| just think that getting good at writing about a subject is a
| one of many really useful tools for developing an
| understanding of a subject.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You are saying something different. Writing about something
| or teaching somebody something can be excellent ways of
| improving your own understanding of a topic.
|
| Forcing yourself to interact with concepts in different
| ways improves understanding, definitely.
|
| This doesn't say that being able to teach or write well
| about a topic correlates with understanding. Understanding
| is an effect of writing not the other way around.
| watwut wrote:
| Writing well primary involves being able to understand
| audience. You talk about you, but that is not enough for
| good writing.
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