[HN Gopher] Cormac McCarthy's tips on how to write a great scien...
___________________________________________________________________
Cormac McCarthy's tips on how to write a great science paper (2019)
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 125 points
Date : 2022-03-09 07:26 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| zeec123 wrote:
| I like the notes on Knuth lecture "Mathematical Writing"
| https://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-papers/knuth_mathematic...
| teddyh wrote:
| I vastly prefer Larry McEnerney's lecture _The Craft of Writing
| Effectively_ :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM
| setgree wrote:
| I am a big fan of McCarhty's and I think Blood Meridian is
| absolutely transcendent.
|
| The advice in this article seems apt if you are writing a 'great'
| paper, in the sense of 'going to be a classic in your field.' But
| it doesn't seem like very good advice for writing a 'good' paper,
| meaning one that advances the state of knowledge in one
| particular direction.
|
| True classics in the fields I know best (political science and
| economics) tend to be written very memorably, meaning the
| author's perspective is obvious. But not everyone is Gary Becker
| [0] or Kenneth Waltz [1], and if everyone tried to write like
| them, we'd have a lot less dialogue between papers -- a lot of
| the stuff people find boring in academic research is authors'
| trying very hard to situate their contributions within the
| broader literature -- and more people trying to strike out as
| stylistically distinct iconoclasts.
|
| Another comment here [2] makes this point well about the
| repetition of words. Repeating a technical term might make for a
| boring read, and if you are writing a paper that's going to
| revolutionize your field, perhaps you don't need to repeat
| yourself much because your main point can (should?) be made in a
| few different of ways. But if you're writing a typical science
| paper, which makes a narrow point about a new finding, then yes,
| you should repeat yourself as much as you need to create precise
| buttressing around that new finding.
|
| [0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1807222
|
| [1] https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-
| abstract/18/2/44/11449/T...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30616522
| coastflow wrote:
| > Don't slow the reader down. Avoid footnotes because they break
| the flow of thoughts and send your eyes darting back and forth
| while your hands are turning pages or clicking on links.
|
| This sounds reasonable for technical writing, though it's
| interesting to read McCarthy's recommendation after considering
| David Foster Wallace's work, where there is a very frequent usage
| of footnotes.
|
| In his non-fictional essays essays--often in the role of a
| reporter like in his well-known "Consider the Lobster" for
| Gourmet magazine [0]--Wallace uses extensive footnotes. This
| isn't technical writing, though the quality of Wallace's
| convinced me that footnotes can have a useful place in fictional
| writing.
|
| > And don't worry too much about readers who want to find a way
| to argue about every tangential point and list all possible
| qualifications for every statement. Just enjoy writing.
|
| From Hacker News discussions (and also speaking to a colleague
| who competed at a high level on a debate team in high school), I
| learned the opposite lesson. If there is a weakness in an
| argument, it's likely it will be pointed out. I've found it
| important to consider weaknesses in logic and try to anticipate
| counter-arguments whenever possible, when writing for readers
| from more technical problems.
|
| [0] [PDF] http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
| jcranberry wrote:
| I think the footnotes emphasize the meandering and exhaustive
| aspects of his informationally dense style of writing. I think
| its a stylistic choice which emphasizes his unique voice.
|
| I don't think hacker news is representative of the type of
| communication that papers communicate. A lot of times the
| communication on this website can default to adversarial, which
| I think is not the default for academic discourse. Plus I
| imagine there are other forums in academia aside from published
| _studies_ (I think there are published discussion journals, and
| you also have blogs and such) that are suitable for that type
| of communication.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| > Avoid placing equations in the middle of sentences
|
| This is strange advice.
|
| In many fields, following this suggestion can make it harder for
| the reader to understand the message.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I disagree with the advice on not using transition words such as
| 'however'. These can be a useful signpost that e.g. the approach
| described in the previous sentence has a drawback and/or to build
| tension when describing a problem. Or maybe I'm just not a good
| enough writer to do it in some other way...
| tomlue wrote:
| I read science papers to learn. Concise prose presented in a
| logical order is the best for this. Transition words often add
| unnecessary subjectivity and filler.
| dagw wrote:
| The subjectivity is be important to make the uncertainties
| clear. Papers and research results aren't always clear and
| objective. We did a thing, however it might not have been the
| best approach. We got some results which might be relevant,
| however there are these confounding factors that might mean
| they aren't. At the end of the project we realised that we
| probably should have started with doing X, however we didn't
| and I don't know if it would have made a difference or not.
|
| If you want information presented in a clear, unambiguous and
| logical order, it's best to wait for the textbook.
| karaterobot wrote:
| If you can split it into two separate, simpler sentences, it's
| usually easier for me to read. I appreciate clarity in academic
| writing much more than I appreciate any dramatic flourishes the
| author may attempt to make.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I'm not saying you can't split the sentence into two, just
| that e.g. the second sentence might start 'However,...' to
| emphasize the contrast with the preceding sentence.
| auxym wrote:
| Words like however and similar are often useful in the
| introduction of a paper to expose the context, current state of
| the art, and problem that your research is attacking. I'm in
| engineering though, so most research and papers follow the
| theme of "there exists this problem, current solutions are this
| and this, _however_ they are not ideal because X, therefore we
| present this novel solution which is really great ".
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Yes exactly the kind of structure I'm talking about.
| dagw wrote:
| therefore we present this novel solution which is really
| great...however we didn't take any of these things into
| consideration, so it might not be.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, however the author suggested
| minimizing. Not eliminating.
| gbjw wrote:
| Somewhat tangential, but McCarthy is publishing two new novels
| (after a 16 year break):
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/books/cormac-mccarthy-new....
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| So exciting. I cant wait. I love how he is willing to explore
| new genres. These books are going to be really interesting.
| pklausler wrote:
| Oh, that's such good news. Thanks!
| guyomes wrote:
| For further reading, this list [0] of resources on how to write
| scientific articles includes notably this excellent set of slides
| [1]. The author notably presents full fledge examples of
| rewritten sentences and paragraphs that are enlightening.
|
| [0]: https://people.csail.mit.edu/fredo/student.html
|
| [1]: http://www.principiae.be/pdfs/UGent-X-003-slideshow.pdf
| palindrome818 wrote:
| The economist Richard Thaler is quite good at writing papers that
| don't make you want to off yourself.
|
| Are there any other examples of good academic writing?
| diarrhea wrote:
| You are really onto something here. I am in plain-old
| mechanical engineering. As a student, for the first years, I
| was simply intimidated. "These papers are so hard to read!".
| You have to read between the lines so much, fill in so many
| gaps, correct so many mental and grammatical knots.
|
| 10 years later and 2 years into a PhD, I think I am ready to
| admit that most papers are _terrible_. Most people are not
| native speakers. It makes a huge difference. Filler words,
| synonyms, long sentences, grammar errors... the list goes on.
| The only thing not on it are typos, because those are caught by
| software and are an easy fix. The rest takes genuine work and
| effort.
|
| Papers are so hard to read, they can be headache-inducing and I
| am often completely exhausted from them.
|
| And that's only touching on the stylistic part. Nowadays,
| everything is either all code or (strongly) relies on it
| (experimental work still needs collecting, evaluation,
| plotting, ...). But good luck finding actual, published source
| code (and if it's public, the sad-but-true adage of horrific
| academic coding takes effect). Methods are obscured and
| unclear. Sometimes, people can't even cite a single source
| properly almost verbatim -- fundamental reading comprehension
| seems to be lacking. Often, private data is used in private or
| public but unusable code, making papers entirely
| irreproducible. It's mental and frustrating. Coming across good
| papers in between the cruft really stands out, but happens at a
| low rate (10-20%?).
| abcc8 wrote:
| I found the 'Hallmarks of Cancer' papers by Weinberg and
| Vogelstein to be very well written. While those are reviews,
| their research articles are well written as well.
| palindrome818 wrote:
| cool will check it out usually good academic writing is an
| oxymoron
| abcc8 wrote:
| Given that attitude, your mileage may vary with these
| suggestions.
|
| I utilize primary research all day every day for my job and
| my definition of good academic writing is clear, concise
| writing that enables me to answer the specific questions I
| am seeking to answers for quickly and in a manner that
| allows me to confidently cite the work (assuming the
| relevant information is present within the manuscript).
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Most papers from before the 80s or so IME. After that, it seems
| like scientific papers became similar to patents: not written
| to elucidate, but to obscure and waste the time of readers.
| Readers are the competition in a big rat race, after all.
| mabub24 wrote:
| I find, in general, that philosophy tends to have the best
| overall quality of writing in academic writing. There are still
| examples of bad writing, but when it's good, the writing is
| crystal clear and a joy to read.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Simon Peyton Jones's papers are really clear and
| understandable. He actually did a talk on how to write papers:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/wr...
| pklausler wrote:
| His writing is extremely clear and worthy of emulation, but
| his presentations are always in Comic Sans.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> And don't use the same word repeatedly -- it's boring.
|
| This is the worst possible advice to give about technical
| writing! What you should absolutely do if you want your readers
| to know what you're talking about is a) define your terminology
| before you use it and b) stick to the terminology you defined
| throughout the entire paper. Don't call a thing "red noppertock"
| the first time you mention it and then "crimson nopper with a
| tock" the next time. Call the same object, the same concept, the
| same method by the same name, always. Otherwise, you will only
| create confusion and make your reader tired and impatient.
|
| "Boring" is not a flaw, in technical writing. The purpose of
| technical writing is not to entertain, but to explain and
| clarify. Creative writing is a completely different thing. The
| worst mistake you can ever make is confuse the two and treat a
| paper like a short story, or such.
|
| Trust me, I know. What McCarthy advises above is exactly the
| mistake I made in my first research papers and they all got
| rejected with frustrated comments by confused reviewers who
| pointed out they had no idea what I meant when I used a
| particular term. I had to take a course with an academic writing
| expert at my university, to realise what I was doing wrong: I was
| trying to add variety to my writing, just like in literary,
| creative writing. I stopped that as soon as I realised how wrong
| it was and now I actually get reviewer comments about the clarity
| and quality of the writing in my papers. And as _writing_ goes,
| it's boring as all hell, but it gets the point across without
| doubt. That's its purpose.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Boring makes for poor comprehension, though.
| diarrhea wrote:
| Grading theses, this is a very common trap. Students believe
| they have to be creative, change it up and use a Thesaurus.
| Because that is in fact what everyone is taught in school!
|
| Yet, technical writing doesn't work that way. Synonyms are
| almost always wrong. We have the luxury of precision, where
| most often one term means one concept or thing. A 1:1 mapping
| with little ambiguity. Deviating from that is almost always the
| wrong decision.
|
| Also notice the style I am writing this comment in. Short,
| concise, to-the-point sentences. Sparing use of filler words
| (thus, however, ...). I wish all technical writing was more
| like that (and I find that good technical writing either is, or
| is on such a high level that they can get away with longer
| sentences). I believe it a boon: you get a style of "Statement.
| Statement. Idea. Question. Idea. Statement. Solution.
| Conclusion.", if that makes sense, allowing easier mental
| access and partitioning. Technical topics are hard, and writing
| should accommodate the reader, making it as easy as possible.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| There is a lot here I agree with. But:
|
| > We have the luxury of precision, where most often one term
| means one concept or thing. A 1:1 mapping with little
| ambiguity. Deviating from that is almost always the wrong
| decision.
|
| This is true of some words in a piece of technical writing,
| but not most of them. Don't allow yourself to be fooled into
| thinking that every word in your paper has a single clear
| meaning. At the same time, you're right that a writer
| shouldn't reach too far to find synonyms just to mix things
| up.
|
| > Short, concise, to-the-point sentences. Sparing use of
| filler words (thus, however, ...).
|
| "Thus" and "however" are not just filler words! Yes, they may
| be overused. But they also signal the conceptual relationship
| between one thought and the one that follows it in a clear
| way, at the beginning of the sentence. This allows the reader
| to understand how a sentence relates to the previous one
| before they have fully parsed and understood it.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Yes! My intuition about writing is that technical writing
| should leave every reader with the same understanding of the
| same ides, whereas creative writing should leave each reader
| with different emotions, images, thoughts- the ones in the
| reader themself. My favourite example- H. P. Lovecraft's
| vague descriptions of Mythos horrors, that contrive to be
| genuinely disturbing because they leave all the work to the
| reader's imagination. For me, that's good creative writing
| technique: allude, evoke, suggest, don't ever, ever show or
| tell directly. Exactly the opposite of what should go into a
| thesis, say (like the one I'm writing currently...)!
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > "don't use the same word repeatedly" is the worst possible
| advice to give
|
| Agreed, this is often described as the error of "Said Bookism"
|
| > People are so used to the word "said" that they can mentally
| skip over it when reading; when the word changes over and over
| again, it becomes a distraction.
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SaidBookism
| iiv wrote:
| Have you read anything by McCarthy? His writing style is as
| far from "Said Bookism" as you can come.
| krrrh wrote:
| I was surprised to learn how much more this is considered a
| mark of good writing in English than in other languages.
| Because English has a larger vocabulary with cognates from both
| Germanic and Romance languages it's much easier to vary the
| words used. In Spanish writing it's much more acceptable and
| common to repeat the same word sentence to sentence.
| dekhn wrote:
| any time I use the same word twice in any sentence, I always
| rewrite it to avoid any repetition
| l33tbro wrote:
| I think you may be misinterpreting him. Didn't he say don't re-
| use words in the context of unnecessary jargon and buzzwords,
| as it gets boring reading the same superfluous words?
| hammock wrote:
| _> This is the worst possible advice to give about technical
| writing! What you should absolutely do if you want your readers
| to know what you're talking about is a) define your terminology
| before you use it and b) stick to the terminology you defined
| throughout the entire paper. Don't call a thing "red
| noppertock" the first time you mention it and then "crimson
| nopper with a tock" the next time. Call the same object, the
| same concept, the same method by the same name, always.
| Otherwise, you will only create confusion and make your reader
| tired and impatient._
|
| What you are saying and what McCarthy is saying can both be
| true.
|
| Using the same word repeatedly is boring, technical writing or
| not.
|
| If you find yourself using the same word repeatedly, don't - as
| you seem to be assuming McCarthy is suggesting - pluck an
| alternate word out of a thesaurus; rather, take a step back and
| rethink if there is a different way to express your idea
| without using the word at all, or by using it less frequently.
| borroka wrote:
| "Using the same word repeatedly is boring, technical writing
| or not." -- A technical or scientific paper does not need to
| be entertaining. I mean, it can be, but it adds zero to the
| value of the discovery made or methods developed. I know it
| is intriguing to think in terms of "fun", "creativity",
| "entertainment", but the scientific or technical paper needs
| to be as clear as possible, which is more often than not in
| contrast with a desire to make a paper "engaging". Nobody
| cares if a surgical operation is "entertaining".
|
| I don't remember having thought, when reading a paper, that
| it was boring, or "not fun", but I remember many times to
| have thought, "man, I have no clue what's going on here", "so
| many unnecessary details".
| hammock wrote:
| Nowhere did I say that clarity ought to be compromised. You
| seem to believe there's a tradeoff where I see none. If a
| paper is clear and also easy to read, entertaining or
| otherwise not boring, it stands to reason that it will be
| more readily comprehended, remembered and shared by the
| reader.
| borroka wrote:
| When you talk about "soft science" paper, maybe (because
| the content does not stand on its own), but no "hard
| science" paper has been remembered or noticed for the
| creative and original writing.
|
| I am not speaking from a a position of any authority, but
| I have worked as a scientist in academia for 15 years and
| neither nor any of my many colleagues has ever remembered
| or noticed a paper for its flair. I notice papers that
| are brilliant, wrong, novel, impressive, not any
| particularly creative writing. Boring? You typically need
| to read a paper 10+ times to understand it, after the
| first read nobody outside the non-professional (who read
| papers like they are "investigations") cares about any
| ornate or rich language.
| kragen wrote:
| I agree about consistent terminology, but I don't agree with
| your view that it is a virtue for technical writing to be
| boring.
|
| Explaining and clarifying are not in conflict with being
| interesting, except in a few marginal cases like this one. And
| repetition of terminology is not _inherently_ boring--the guy
| who wrote "komoontas Akhaious" 26 times and "glaukopis Athene"
| 32 times would certainly dissent from that, and the Tipitaka or
| any Beatles song is far more repetitive still--it's just that
| terminological variation is one possible way to add interest. A
| bad one, in this context.
|
| When I read scientific papers from a hundred years ago, before
| the institution of peer review, I'm constantly struck by how
| much better written they are than current papers. They talk
| about things that surprised them and disappointments that
| happened during the experiment, and their choice of words is
| much more lyrical and even metaphorical than the current
| literature. Consequently they are much clearer and explain much
| better. The universal complaint about the modern literature is
| that nobody reads it, even when they cite it, and that is only
| a slight exaggeration; one reason for this is that reading it
| is so painful, so people devote less time to it than they would
| were it more pleasant.
|
| So, I agree with you that current academic writing norms
| prohibit publishing well-written, interesting prose; where we
| differ is that _I think that is bad_.
|
| For context, my experience publishing peer-reviewed research is
| not quite zero, but you have much more than I do. I haven't
| read your papers yet (though they look interesting), so I'm not
| attacking _your_ papers as dull or badly written. It 's
| possible I've _read_ more research than you have just as a
| result of being much older.
|
| On the other hand, it's _also_ true that many of those old
| papers included fatal ambiguities which the modern process
| would have weeded out. Still, we can have good-quality,
| interesting writing without ambiguity.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> I agree about consistent terminology, but I don't agree
| with your view that it is a virtue for technical writing to
| be boring.
|
| I don't agree either, I think it's _not a flaw_, not a
| virtue! Anyway, all I talk about is the _writing style_, not
| the content of a scientific paper. That's a different thing.
| But you can't really teach how to make exciting research
| contributions.
|
| I agree also that repetition is not a flaw in and of itself.
| Minimalism is a thing, after all.
|
| As to older papers, I kind of agree that they are often more
| pleasant to read, but the problem is that the more people
| work on a subject, the more new, subtle aspects of the
| subject become apparent that have to be made clear in
| writing.
|
| Also, this is very unfortunate but terms can become
| overloaded with time as people use them in different ways.
| Sometimes I read older papers that seem to take some term for
| granted, but I find myself being utterly confused about what,
| exactly, they mean, among many different meanings of the
| term. For example, some of the reviewers I note above were
| frustrated with my work complained about my use of the word
| "predicate", which I was certain at the time can't be
| misunderstood... but is in fact used in different ways by
| different communities.
|
| Thanks for the interest in my work. My second Machine
| Learning Journal paper is the much better written one,
| although it's rather a bit thick with formalisms and proofs
| etc. and won't be easy to read without a background in logic
| programming.
| kragen wrote:
| Well, I at least agree that being boring is not a fatal
| flaw in technical writing, where it would be in a novel. So
| I suppose we don't disagree as much as it seemed at first.
|
| I've also run into the same terminological overloading
| problem. In CS it's especially bad; papers from the 01980s
| would be already difficult to read for someone who'd only
| read the recent literature. The worst is when the different
| meanings are almost, but not quite, the same. For example,
| I was reading one of Steinmetz's first papers from the
| 01890s, and he uses the term "inductance" where now we
| would use "inductive reactance"; at a given frequency these
| quantities are proportional but the second one varies by
| frequency.
|
| My knowledge of logic programming is not literally zero in
| that I've written Prolog code a few times and ported
| mKanren to OCaml in order to understand it, but it's also
| far from a deep understanding. Still, I'm optimistic about
| my ability to understand things.
| [deleted]
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| I'd encourage you to take McCarthy's advice a bit more
| seriously. He isn't saying you should just use different words
| willy nilly, throwing their technical meaning out the window.
| He's just saying that you shouldn't excessively repeat words.
|
| Avoiding repetition can also mean structuring your writing in a
| way that allows you to rely on pronouns and other linguistic
| tools to avoid using the same word repeatedly while preserving
| clarity.
|
| And I often find that technical writers don't do a good job of
| evaluating which terms _need_ to be treated as rigidly defined
| technical terms and which ones do not, resulting in writing
| that it more stilted and jargon laden than necessary to
| communicate clearly. One benefit of taking McCarthy 's advice
| seriously is that it will encourage you to scrutinize your
| decisions about when to rely on jargon and defined terms and
| help you identify where you're using them as a crutch to avoid
| harder decisions about how to write clearly.
|
| The goal is not to be "entertaining." Rather, it is simply to
| should be to hold the reader's attention so you're not making
| huge claims on their ability to focus. I wouldn't be so quick
| to give up on this and embrace the "papers should be boring"
| mindset. The basic problem is that an extremely tedious paper
| does _not_ "get your point across without doubt." It may not
| even get your point across at all because it pains readers to
| read it.
|
| Of course, none of this should be construed to mean that people
| should use "thesaurus words"--i.e., words that are overly
| obscure or a poor fit for the situation, just for the sake of
| mixing it up.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> I wouldn't be so quick to give up on this and embrace the
| "papers should be boring" mindset
|
| I never said, nor meant, that "papers should be boring", or
| even that technical writing should be boring. What I said,
| exactly, was:
|
| _" Boring" is not a flaw, in technical writing_.
|
| I think it's interesting how not only your comment, but those
| of others, misread that part of my comment and made a jump
| from "boring is not a flaw" to "papers should be boring".
|
| The reason I think it is interesting is because it reveals
| the amount of work that must go into a technical text to
| avoid such misunderstandings. For every single statement that
| matters, for every single point that is made, in a paper,
| there is a number of ways to misunderstand it, of varying
| degrees of obvious-ness. As a paper author, you have to try
| to think of each and every one of them, try to predict how
| likely it is that different kinds of readers will commit
| those kinds of misundestanding, and then try to defend your
| text against the most likely ones, at the very least. Since
| some of your readers are going to be reviewers, doing this
| well is the difference between getting your paper published,
| getting it rejected, or having it accepted with "minor"
| revisions (which are only so "minor" as the possibility for
| misunderstandings, so usually, not that much). So this
| anticipation of potential misunderstandings is a vital,
| essential skill that you develop as a paper writer.
|
| Er. I mean "scientist", of course.
|
| For this (oops) reason, I disagree with the use of pronouns
| etc. I actively try to avoid sentences like "This suggests"
| or "That means" or "It is an efficient way to" etc. just
| because I'm sure that "this", "that", "it", and their
| friends, will only serve to misdirect the reader's attention.
| Because when you write "it", you're thinking of X, but when
| the reader reads "it", they are actually thinking of Y, just
| because they're more interested in Y, so "it" is just a point
| of confusion. And that (oops) will _always_ happen because
| the author of a paper and the paper's readers will have
| different interests and tend to focus on different parts of a
| paper.
|
| The way I think about the use of pronouns is a little bit
| like loops in assembly: you want to "unroll" them to improve
| efficiency. Similarly, I always "dereference" pointer-words
| like pronouns etc, to remove ambiguity.
| tptacek wrote:
| The article points out in its introduction that McCarthy
| has spent 20 years copyediting journal articles for
| scientists at the Santa Fe Institute. This isn't an
| impedance mismatch between fiction writers and journal
| article authors; you should consider taking it seriously.
| It seems clear to me that McCarthy isn't asking you to
| shuffle up technical terms so as to enliven your article.
| brudgers wrote:
| For context, McCarthy has been at the Santa Fe Institute since
| 2014 [1], and so in residence among accomplished scientists
| conducting serious research. For nearly a decade, McCarthy's
| day job has been writer among scientists.
|
| Which is to say, McCarthy doesn't merely have an opinion.
| McCarthy has _an informed_ opinion. He 's spent more time among
| better scientists than most people in the sciences. And of
| course, he's a better writer than just about anyone giving
| advice about science writing (and writing in general).
|
| Most writing advice targets poor writers. McCarthy essay
| targets good writers. Maybe because good writers are good not
| just for technique but for having interesting things to say.
| Maybe because something not worth writing in an engaging way
| probably isn't worth writing.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Institute
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Yes, yes, I get it. Who am I to challegne an authority in
| scientific writing, that has so many scientist friends to
| boot. And what do I know about writing anyway, I don't even
| have a single best-seller under my belt.
|
| Clearly, challenging authorities is not the way of a true
| scientist.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Seriously! Reminds me of the famous story of an undergrad
| who used a text by Richard Feynman as a source for a
| college paper, and was graded down by her professor. She
| then contacted Feynman to obtain justification, but Feynman
| replied:
|
| "Your instructor was right not to give you any points, for
| your answer was wrong, as he demonstrated using Gauss' law.
| You should, in science, believe logic and arguments,
| carefully drawn, and not authorities."
|
| https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2020/feynmans-advice-to-
| wm-s...
| brudgers wrote:
| My point is that McCarthy has an _expert_ opinion and is
| writing for people who are not struggling toward a first
| scientific journal publication.
|
| The advice that makes a poor writer acceptable differs from
| what makes a good writer better.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> My point is that McCarthy has an expert opinion and is
| writing for people who are not struggling toward a first
| scientific journal publication.
|
| I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean that in the
| context of the article? Are you saying that the article
| above is aimed at people with some experience of writing?
|
| By the way, your original comment came across as a
| haughty attempt at a put-down by an appeal to authority,
| hence my reaction to it. My apologies if I misunderstood
| your intent.
| openknot wrote:
| Though I see your point (that it's good practice to assess
| logical arguments independent of an author's credentials),
| brudgers's comment was still quite useful.
|
| I skimmed the comments before deciding to reading the
| article, and likely would have skipped on this submission
| if I didn't know about his work at Santa Fe (which was also
| mentioned in the article itself), as I associate McCarthy
| with his literary work. I had no previous awareness he has
| been working with scientists on technical writing.
| aerovistae wrote:
| Side note but I am so excited for his new books later this year.
| It's been so long since he wrote a new book, and statistically
| these are almost certain to be his final novels given his age
| (88).
|
| I found the prose of _Blood Meridian_ and _The Road_ absolutely
| extraordinary, so I 'm eager for more of it. I haven't read his
| other past novels yet, don't ask why. Maybe because I saw the
| movie of _No Country For Old Men_ , and I wasn't sure if the
| horses trilogy would interest me.
| savanaly wrote:
| Don't forget to give a watch to The Counselor. It had dreadful
| reviews because as a movie it's a total failure. But taken as a
| Cormac Mccarthy novel narrated by skilled actors and visually
| imagined by Ridley Scott it's a success, in my opinion.
| Arkadin wrote:
| Love The Counselor. The screenplay was also published in book
| form and is worth reading with or without having seen the
| movie.
| dointheatl wrote:
| Highly recommend _The Border Trilogy_ as well as _No Country
| for Old Men_. The Coen Brothers did a fantastic job adapting
| the latter, but it just can 't compare to the book.
| driggs wrote:
| Punctuation is our best defense against the peculiar ambiguities
| of the English language. Cormac McCarthy's abhorrence to using
| punctuation is the worst facet of his writing, and made the
| dialog in `Blood Meridian` practically unfollowable.
|
| I kindly urge writers to use his subjective opinion here as an
| argument FOR rather than against the precision application of
| punctuation!
| newsclues wrote:
| I would have echoed your criticism after the first read but I
| was able to try again and really get into the flow and it's a
| great work in part because of the lack of punctuation
| bmitc wrote:
| Where does he advocate his novel writing style for science
| writing? His use, or rather lack thereof, of punctuation in his
| fiction writing is an artistic choice. As far as I know, Cormac
| McCarthy is the only writer who is a member of the Santa Fe
| Institute, so apparently the scientists there appreciate his
| perspectives.
| adolph wrote:
| Eats, Shoots & Leaves would be a great line in BM
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/06/28/bad-comma
| mellosouls wrote:
| _Cormac McCarthy 's abhorrence to using punctuation is the
| worst facet of his writing, and made the dialog in `Blood
| Meridian` practically unfollowable._
|
| No. His (lack of) use of punctuation in his work is mesmerising
| and beautiful, and part of what made _Blood Meridian_ one of
| the greatest novels of the last century.
|
| Obviously that technique is less likely to be constructive in
| science writing.
| lazyjeff wrote:
| Technical writing has swayed too much in the direction of
| over relying on punctuation, rather than writing good simple
| sentences. Trying to read a scientific paper is now a chore
| because of all the footnotes, parentheses, definitions and
| abbreviations, dashes and subclauses. They read more like
| legal documents than something you can actually read from
| start to end to understand a point.
| pp19dd wrote:
| Someone made a plot of just the punctuations from Blood
| Meridian: https://medium.com/@neuroecology/punctuation-in-
| novels-8f316...
| gilleain wrote:
| Nice. Reminds me of 'Code Signatures':
|
| http://c2.com/doc/SignatureSurvey/
| jschrf wrote:
| Agree. The lack of punctuation in Blood Meridian is an
| artistic decision and aids the flowing, biblical narration
| and the terrifying yet beautiful aesthetic of the novel. It's
| intended to be trance-like, feverish and flowing, and I think
| the lack of punctuation aids in this. Blood Meridian reads
| like a terrifying, beautiful nightmare, rooted in fact and
| history, and the writing style is perfect IMO.
|
| The description of the Commanche attack near the beginning of
| the novel, where they suddenly appear out of nowhere and
| attack the soldiers has an amazing run-on sentence:
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328033-a-legion-of-
| horrible...
| scop wrote:
| I likewise agree. When I read both Melville and McCarthy,
| I'll often find myself mid-run-on-sentence and think to
| myself, "welp, he's gone too far this time" only to find,
| by golly, they pull it off in the end. What would otherwise
| be complete pretension and chaos is, when wrought by true
| literature artists, simply breathtaking. There are times
| when I'm reading McCarthy and I literally, _out loud_ ,
| utter "Lord have mercy" for the beauty/fullness/meaning
| that man can lay upon us.
| tmountain wrote:
| He's probably my favorite author. Full tangent, but
| anyone who likes western novels should also check out
| Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry) and Paradise Sky (Joe
| Lansdale). Both are extremely moving and beautiful
| stories about the Wild West.
| scop wrote:
| This quote from _Blood Meridian_ is one of my favorite in
| all of literature and I think capture McCarthy 's magic.
| He has such great talent to describe simultaneously with
| vivid details yet inexact clarity/meaning.
|
| > It was the judge and the imbecile. They were both of
| them naked and they neared through the desert dawn like
| beings of a mode little more than tangential to the world
| at large, their figures now quick with clarity and now
| fugitive in the strangeness of that same light. Like
| things so charged with meaning that their forms are
| dimmed.
| brudgers wrote:
| McCarthy was my gateway to McMurtry and it was McMurtry
| who hooked me on Texas...McCarthy is from Knoxville after
| all so his Texas is as an outsider who never risks
| killing Pecos Bill by design and _Blood Meridian_ wanders
| into the further west beyond El Paso.
|
| Anyway, I am on another McMurtry kick since the new year
| that began rereading _Texasville_ and then a first
| reading of _Custer_ ...For me, McMurtry is a triple
| threat of fiction, nonfiction, and essays: I enjoy
| everything he wrote.
| rspeele wrote:
| When I read _The Road_ I found the lack of punctuation
| _distracting_ rather than mesmerizing. I was using an
| e-reader and my initial thought was, "Is this right? Maybe
| they OCRed this and only glanced at the output." I had heard
| that the book was good from a few different sources, but none
| mentioned the unusual style. I Googled it to find out that
| this was, in fact, how it was supposed to be, and continued.
|
| I am used to reading text with punctuation marks. When I
| enjoy a book, I forget that I am reading words on a page, and
| it feels like I'm seeing the story play out in my mind. The
| syntax of _The Road_ constantly took me out of that feeling.
| It served only to remind me that I was reading a book by a
| dude who thinks adhering to the conventions of written
| English is beneath him.
|
| The book was fine. I would have liked it a little more if it
| was punctuated normally, but of course, different strokes for
| different folks.
|
| I would compare it to adjective order. You might say that the
| Goodyear Blimp is a big old blue polyester balloon. Never
| that it's a polyester old blue big balloon. It sounds wrong
| the second way. If I were a novelist searching for a gimmick,
| I could intentionally disregard standard adjective order and
| arrange the adjectives in another order every time I
| described something. It would give my writing a unique
| flavor. But it wouldn't make me any more descriptive, just
| annoying to read, because every time you hit a description
| your brain would throw an exception and then catch it going
| "oh, he's doing _this_ again... "
| driggs wrote:
| `Blood Meridian` is a great novel _in spite of_ , not because
| of his lack of punctuation.
|
| Do you not see the irony in _his own_ use of four commas and
| a colon while telling us to minimize our punctuation use in
| this article?
|
| > While you are writing, ask yourself: is it possible to
| preserve my original message without that punctuation mark,
| that word, that sentence, that paragraph or that section?
| Remove extra words or commas whenever you can.
|
| Perhaps he merely considered the "Oxford comma" unnecessary!
| sritchie wrote:
| Don't you think he does too, and is winking at you with
| that sentence? Especially given the spare "Remove extra
| words or commas whenever you can."
| Wistar wrote:
| "The following are more of McCarthy's words of wisdom, as
| told by Savage and Yeh."
| driggs wrote:
| _Mea culpa!_
|
| I focused on reading "Cormac McCarthy's tips" and missed
| that they'd been regurgitated by others. Sort of
| diminishes the whole point of reading it!
|
| Thank you!
| jcranberry wrote:
| I don't really remember him abhorring punctuation. In fact I
| remember most of the novel being short sentences something like
| 3-10 words long. I found it very easy to follow.
| Adraghast wrote:
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| I think your odd use of the exclamation mark is a great
| counter-example to your comment! After a long sentence with
| zero commas, here we have a punctuation mark! It doesn't
| exclaim, as in "Watch Out!" or "This is amazing!"! It's a
| questionable choice, it makes the reader think: why is this
| here? Is this writer casually throwing out punctuation that
| isn't needed?
|
| That cognitive interruption, which I've kindly added multiple
| times to my first paragraph, is precisely what McCarthy says
| not to do in the very first bullet point of the article:
|
| "Use minimalism to achieve clarity. While you are writing, ask
| yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message
| without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that
| paragraph or that section? Remove extra words or commas
| whenever you can."
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I don't know, I think the exclamation mark above changes the
| tone of the paragraph from being a snarky comment to
| something less aggressive...
| driggs wrote:
| Is English your first language? Have you read Cormac
| McCarthy?
|
| Neither McCarthy nor anyone else in this conversation is
| referring to the punctuation _at the end of a sentence_.
|
| And, for the record, I was _exclaiming_ that the takeaway is
| exactly the _opposite_ of what the author suggests. That is,
| in fact, the precise meaning of an exclamation point.
|
| I've kindly included some _actual_ cognitive interruptions
| for you, to aid in your understanding of this discussion.
| brudgers wrote:
| Now I am wondering _is italics a substitute for '"..."'_?
| brudgers wrote:
| The first time I read _Blood Meridian_ , I didn't notice the
| absence of quotation punctuation for some pages. And then my
| thought was "that's kinda interesting" and completely forgot
| about it.
|
| Until, after giving my copy to my brother, he had the same
| response as you. At the time, twenty five years ago, I was
| surprised but now I accept everything isn't for everyone and
| hence all books are not for all readers.
|
| My brother and I had different reading experiences and
| developed different tastes. I couldn't get through the Carl
| Hiassen paperback I got in exchange. There wasn't anything I
| cared about there.
|
| "Properly punctuated" is not a blurb to captivate my attention.
| YMMV.
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