[HN Gopher] How I learned to stop worrying and structure all wri...
___________________________________________________________________
How I learned to stop worrying and structure all writing as a list
Author : Naac
Score : 439 points
Date : 2022-03-18 18:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dynomight.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net)
| DFHippie wrote:
| I'm going to pull out the last paragraph, because I feel the
| comments up to this point haven't given it enough love:
|
| > So, say you've written something that feels ranty and
| disorganized. It's often useful to retrospectively turn it into a
| list. If this takes a lot of reorganization, that's good--it
| means you're untangling your ideas. And you don't need to write a
| "pure" list--use other sections if you need them. If you still
| feel lame after all this, just give the piece a non-list title
| and leave the list items unnumbered. No one will even notice what
| you've done.
| andreshb wrote:
| Lists make writing easier
|
| 1. I write ideas without worrying about transitions
|
| 2. I can quickly review if I'm missing any important point
|
| 3. Forces me to simplify what I try to communicate with less
| words and more meaning
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| If you're making a list, you still need to pay attention to the
| order of your list and how things flow from item to item.
| You're still doing transitions.
| gowld wrote:
| Next step, multiple/nested lists:
|
| * Pros: * starts as a list * gradual
| enhancement
|
| * Cons: \* interior items lead to excessive
| depth * loses horizontal space *
| crashes space shuttles
|
| * each transition type needs another list
|
| Interesting:
|
| * This is a metalist.
| jbmny wrote:
| I really am starting to feel like any writing I do that is not
| intended to be read by others should be in list form. When
| writing prose, I often catch myself worrying about "meta"
| things that have nothing to do with the ideas I'm trying to
| convey: phrasing, rhythm, vocabulary, etc. I feel it's just
| impossible to write prose without worrying about this stuff.
| It's like I'm always trying to impress someone with my writing.
| I think there's a time and place for that, but not when the
| only audience is me.
| jerf wrote:
| I absolutely agree that any writing much past one normal
| monitor's worth of writing could use more structure than just a
| pile of paragraphs. (Though a pile of paragraphs is still much
| better than a pile of sentences!)
|
| But it is a strange leap from "Too much writing without more
| structure is hard to read" to "You should use lists
| specifically". It's perfectly valid to use, you know, headers.
| Subheaders. Actual lists, bulleted and ordered. Horizontal rules
| if you're feeling feisty and/or old school. Essayist does try to
| give motivations but I feel like there was significant cheating
| by comparing lists to unstructured essays. Lists vs. structured
| essays are a much more give & take situation, where lists only
| triumph in certain limited ways.
| anamax wrote:
| I always use numbered lists when sending questions to customer
| support because otherwise they respond with some irrelevant quote
| from the documentation.
| morninglight wrote:
| Perhaps the best example is a free instructional document
| developed by the US government at an enormous cost over nearly 90
| years. Adopting this writing style allows even the most complex
| subjects to be mastered by any high school graduate. The
| downloadable free style guide for conveying technical information
| in a clear and concise manner can be found here:
| https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf
| feoren wrote:
| LOL government bad. Taxes, amiright? Guys? Guys?
| yodon wrote:
| If you're leaning towards stripping all your writing down to list
| form, you may want to read Tufte's analysis on the role
| PowerPoint (aka writing everything in the form of bulleted lists)
| played in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster [0]. I used to
| write exclusively in bulleted list/outline format until spending
| time with Tufte's analysis. Now I get that the connective tissue
| of the document is vitally important to the reader even if it's
| not important to the writer. If you don't put in the connective
| tissue, your reader has to do it for you and they'll probably do
| it incorrectly (leading to, for example, the failure to prevent
| the Challenger disaster).
|
| [0]https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/pi/2016_2017/phil/..
| .
| kqr wrote:
| There is one important difference between written lists and
| PowerPoint presented lists. IIRC Tufte emphasises this
| difference too.
|
| A written list can be read in any order. You can go back and
| re-read previous items, and then go into the future and see
| what the conclusions from the current items are, and so on.
| This free-form temporal flow of any writing (including lists)
| is a very powerful tool of reasoning. Arguably, this property
| of writing is what leads to an intellectual explosion once a
| people learns how to write.
|
| In a PowerPoint presentation, the temporal order is fixed. And
| humans have a tendency to infer causality based on order. So
| with a PowerPoint presentation, you can (more easily) convince
| someone of invalid conclusions of logic because you control the
| post hoc ergo propter hoc.
|
| So, I guess, all of this to say: writing lists good.
| PowerPointing lists bad.
| skybrian wrote:
| A bulleted list, particularly in a slide presentation, is all
| headings, no content.
|
| Sometimes the presenter talks about each item, giving
| meaningful detail while the structure is there on the screen.
| But it means that someone reading the slides alone misses the
| detail. Someone not listening carefully misses it too.
|
| In written work, the headings are just headings. The
| paragraphs under the headings are the content. You can write
| transitions, too.
| kqr wrote:
| While this is a valid concern, I think its importance is
| over stated.
|
| Much like some people tune out the speaker and just read
| the bullet points, I have known people who read just the
| headings or just the first sentence of paragraphs and then
| take action based on what they perceived of the document.
|
| There is an argument still, of course, that the PowerPoint
| situation is worse because (if presented badly) the reading
| competes with the listening. I would still be hesitant to
| judge a medium based on bad execution, no matter how
| widespread. I'm willing to admit that might be unpragmatic
| of me.
| delusional wrote:
| Hmm. Tufte does note that one of PPs specific ailments is the
| linear nature of the presentation, but he also goes directly
| for bulleted lists. He pretty clearly takes down deeply
| indented bulleted lists as the internal structure of "The
| Software Bureaucracy" leaking out through the software.
|
| I think the salient argument is his argument that the CONTENT
| should drive the presentation style. Lists are good for some
| stuff, but not everything.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Order matters, and will create bias or cognitive
| prioritization, regardless of whether something is a bullet
| point.
|
| Take the famous Napoleanic map - top left Carrie's similar
| weight as the first bullet item. It may not be linear (1d)
| since it's 2D, but the same problems exist: the first items
| we are exposed to will create a stronger reaction due to an
| artifact of arrangement rather than importance.
| rattray wrote:
| That's a good argument against one-sentence lists, but the
| author seems to be arguing in favor of numbered headlines (with
| paragraphs in between).
| bckr wrote:
| The thing is, this article doesn't really advocate for
| stripping everything down to bullet points.
|
| All of the examples are clearly written in paragraph form, but
| there are nice, big section headers that would clearly
| delineate the subtopics within the example.
|
| In other words, the title is misleading. A more accurate title
| might be: "I learned to stop worrying and give all my essays
| clear sub-headings".
| unobatbayar wrote:
| What does worrying have to do with writing structures?
|
| To further improve the title: "The advantages of list
| structure on most writings".
| pengaru wrote:
| > you may want to read Tufte's analysis on the role PowerPoint
| (aka writing everything in the form of bulleted lists) played
| in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster [0].
|
| Nit: PowerPoint didn't even exist when Challenger exploded
| (o-ring failure), you must be referring to Columbia (heat-
| shield failure).
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Harvard Graphics Forever
| tveyben wrote:
| Ha - i used that, both v2 and v3 IIRC ;-) Nice to be
| reminded about that product ;-)
| gowld wrote:
| From the link:
|
| > Richard Feynman had also experienced the bullet-outline
| format style of NASA in his service on the commission that
| investigated the first shuttle accident, the Challenger in
| 1986. Feynman wrote:
|
| >> Then we learned about "bullets"--little black circles in
| front of phrases that were supposed to summarize things.
| There was one after another of these little goddamn bullets
| in our briefing books and on slides.
|
| but Columbia is discussed in much more depth.
|
| And to be clear, re lists/bullets, Tufte's complaint was
| about 4+ levels of nested bullets:
|
| > At the same time, lower-level NASA engineers were writing
| about the possible danger to the Columbia in several hundred
| e-mails (with the Boeing reports in PP format sometimes
| attached). The text of 90% of these e-mails simply used
| paragraphs and sentences; 10% used bullet lists with 2 or 3
| levels. That is, the engineers were able to reason about the
| issues without employing the multi-level hierarchical
| outlines of the original PP pitches.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| So much of my career's low points have been due to this
| _engineers unable to convey information to management for
| various reasons_ issue. When you add too many layers of
| managment it becomes a Sisyphean task almost. If anyone has
| any tips we all could probably use them.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Bad presentations are eternal
| afarrell wrote:
| However, if you are a person struggling to get into a habit of
| writing, it is okay if you do not yet have aerospace-grade
| writing. You can stop worrying and structure all your writing
| as lists.
|
| You don't need to weigh yourself down with the responsibility
| to prevent a catastrophic misunderstanding among rocket
| scientists.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| That it caused a catastrophe and the participants were rocket
| scientists doesn't mean the problem was anything more than
| poor communication. The information on the slide in question
| wasn't hard to understand; it was arranged in a way that
| distorted its meaning.
| afarrell wrote:
| I agree that this is likely not appropriate to a context
| where you've got lives and millions of dollars on the line.
| That's not my point. My points are that:
|
| 1. The audience for the article is not program managers at
| NASA but instead random people thinking about how to learn
| to write.
|
| 2. If someone is starting their learning journey then it is
| unhelpful to catastrophize the consequences of imperfect
| effort.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Arguably that (and I think it might be Columbia you're thinking
| of) represents a misuse of lists though, because in my mind all
| the things on a list are supposed to be of roughly the same
| importance or size or magnitude. I would say that's part of the
| "contract," as this author puts it, that a list represents.
| (Although he doesn't mention that specifically.) On the
| PowerPoint slide in question, there are a bunch of good-news
| points and then the bad news is at the bottom in a smaller
| font. It's either incompetent or deliberately deceptive to set
| it up that way, and actually come to think of it, under those
| circumstances I kind of doubt the incompetent or deceptive
| author would've done a good job with paragraphs either.
|
| Anyway here's where this battle is really raging right now: on
| my resume. For years I've been distilling things down to
| action-oriented bullet points with dots, because I heard the
| Deputy likes dots.[0] Then I got an eyeful of someone else's
| resume that instead had articulate paragraphs intended to be
| read by, you know, a calm human being with some dignity and
| self-respect, and immediately felt like that was way better.
| But I dunno.....
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUYuGNpOk5U
| yodon wrote:
| The typical screener in the hiring process spends 8 seconds
| or less making a decision to discard or advance a resume to
| the next stage.
|
| In the GP comment I advocated reading Tufte's critique of
| bulleted lists, but resumes are definitely a place where they
| significantly increase the odds the initial screeners can
| spot the things they want to see to advance your resume. A
| well structured list written using parallel construction
| (similar grammatical structure from one bullet to the next)
| is far far faster for a reader to parse. Once you've been
| told they want to interview you, you're generally free to
| submit an "updated" resume if you want to, which can be in
| prose format if you think that's best (but again not all
| interviewers will look at your resume more than a few seconds
| before they jump into the zoom session with you).
| EnKopVand wrote:
| > The typical screener in the hiring process spends 8
| seconds or less making a decision to discard or advance a
| resume to the next stage.
|
| I've been involved in hiring several people and this has
| never been the case. So I'm curious as to where you got
| those 8 seconds.
|
| Hell, it usually takes the damn HR onboarding systems more
| than 8 seconds to load each page.
| a1445c8b wrote:
| I'm curious about how you do it. Could you share your
| process?
|
| (I'm currently looking, so knowing about concrete
| examples might help me)
| EnKopVand wrote:
| I'm Danish so that may have an impact, but basically
| every company I've been with has had some sort of HR
| onboarding system where applicants submit their cv and
| letter of application to.
|
| A typical process is that you or your manager sets down a
| group to hire. This group fills out a HR form of what
| sort of responsibilities, challenges and opportunities
| the applicant will meet as well as the requirements and
| wanted level of experience. Then HR puts up the position
| in various places and people apply online.
|
| Once the period closes (sometimes while it's running) the
| hiring group logs in and rates all applicants 1-5/7/10
| (depending on the system) and then the system
| automatically moves the best x to the final group.
|
| How people handle the first step variates and this is
| probably where the person I was replying to got the 8
| seconds. But around here, people read the letter and look
| over the CV and often spend the most time on this step
| because it's where you "grade" everyone.
|
| The next step is group discussion about the top x where
| the people we want to talk to are selected. Then come the
| interviews and possible HR personality tests like DISC
| profiling and the occasional technical interview/test if
| there is doubt as to the applicants ability.
|
| Here in Denmark the most important part of getting an
| interview is the letter you write. If it's generic people
| will grade you lower. Your CV is sort of important, but
| only in the sense that "I know this skill, and these
| people recommend me" - LinkedIn style. In fact, people
| with good LinkedIn profiles might as well be submitting
| those as their CV as far as I am concerned (but still
| make a pretty one yourself because not everyone agrees
| with me).
|
| Unless you've done some extraordinary work that actually
| sees real world use, nobody is going to look at your
| GitHub. Even if you have, write about it and how it makes
| you a good applicant instead of linking to it, because
| 99% or the time nobody is going to look at your stuff.
| This isn't because hiring groups aren't interested, it's
| because it takes a lot of time and the process is already
| resource demanding.
|
| Once people get to the interview, here in Denmark, it's
| 95% about finding the person you think will fit into your
| team the best. Sometimes people will fall through because
| they've "hacked" their way and aren't as capable
| technically as we thought, but that's not often.
|
| There are no rights and wrongs here, but I personally
| like applicants who seem to be "grading" us. As though
| they're figuring out whether or not the job we're selling
| is something, they, will want. Even if it's a junior
| straight out of an education I like this, even when
| everyone knows they will kill for the opportunity it's
| good to see people actually be curious.
|
| It's obviously a situation where the power dimension is
| insanely tipped to one side, but it's important to
| remember that good teams are shopping as much as you are.
| We want the right match, because the most expensive
| mistake any manager or hiring group (at our level) will
| ever make is hiring the wrong person.
|
| So be honest, be yourself and hope you're seen as a good
| fit. And train your interviewing skills by applying for
| jobs that aren't "as" important to you so that you're not
| a completely nervous wreck when you apply to that one
| dream job. (This isn't advice for new people), I
| recommend everyone doing a few interviews every 2-3
| years.
| yodon wrote:
| I've read that number many places and more importantly
| heard it from many folks who do front line resume
| screening. If you've ever had a stack of 50 new resumes
| hitting your inbox every day and the task of finding the
| 3-5 people people to interview for the role among the
| hundreds that are submitted, you'll realize what a
| radically different experience that is from being one of
| the folks tasked with interviewing the 3-5 who made it
| through that sieve (and yes the HR software for reading
| through large numbers of resumes is surprisingly
| horrible)
| maccard wrote:
| I've been in the unfortunate situation of sifting through
| those resumes before. That 10 second look isn't for me to
| determine whether or not you're in the interview
| category, it's literally "person has applied for
| programming job, have they degree/experience/projects" or
| do they just want a job and have no relevant experience.
|
| Terrifyingly when I was doing this that filtered out
| about 75% of the candidates (applying for senior/lead
| roles with only office admin experience was _really_
| common). Once you get past that point you're probably
| going to get 5 minutes to see what's what.
| crdrost wrote:
| So if I'm reading your resume, I am personally trying to get
| a quick scan of you as a person before I meet you. Do you
| have an education? Or are you self-taught? Neither one is
| bad. Do you have an education in a completely different
| field, and is it interesting to me, could we bond over it?
| How long have you been in the industry for, was it at one
| place or a bunch of places, was that place dedicated to tech
| or was it a small tech team adjoined to a larger company
| doing other stuff. If I am diving into those it is because I
| want to know more about the level of responsibility you took
| on at that job. I wouldn't put it into bullet points because
| it shouldn't be long enough that you need bullet points, I
| need to know were you leading the team, mentoring others
| (more dev experience vs more leadership qualities--neither is
| bad), or were you a solid engineer, or were you transitioning
| from say security work to development. Just give me one or
| two sentences about who you were at that job.
|
| Basically, reading is much faster than listening, so I would
| like to not waste your time in the interview getting to know
| things that you already told me through a faster,
| asynchronous medium.
|
| BUT. But. A bunch of places that I have worked at also have a
| process by which a non-technical person pre-processes your
| resume before handing it to me. They are looking to see
| whether you have checked the boxes. IDK what boxes, it
| depends on what those folks are taking out of the posting. It
| probably helps if you have a section of buzzwords so that
| they can say "they say they have React experience, I can
| check the React box!" For me most of those criteria are
| fungible, but you have to put something for the HR folks to
| screen out half the applications.
|
| Now, the interview is where it gets a bit trickier. I used to
| have a great approach to this, when I worked at smaller
| companies and had more say in the hiring process. That was
| just, "your resume is a claim that you are a certain sort of
| person, my interview just tests whether you are who you say
| you are, are you faking it or are you selling yourself
| short?" In other words if you say you managed your coworkers
| I want to devote 15 minutes to see what sort of manager you
| are, even for a non-management role.
|
| But, now I work at a Big Tech company and I don't really have
| that freedom... Now when I am interviewing you, I have
| usually been asked to either assess culture fit or technical
| chops... If technical chops, I am usually not tailoring my
| questions too closely to your resume, but to the forms that I
| have to fill out after the interview. The actual programming
| exercise will usually be amorphous, the actual work will be
| simple but the scope will be unbounded relative to the
| interview length--and so I am not expecting you to complete
| it so much as to parcel it up into smaller workable chunks
| and execute on one or two of those. Based on how you do this
| I can usually give decent feedback on my forms without
| feeling like I have fed you a trick question.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| In the Challenger case, the bad information has been
| deliberately hidden within the structure. They could just as
| well have pulled it up in the structure.
|
| It's like saying variable font sizes are inherently bad because
| due to them, contracts can have small print sections.
| sedatk wrote:
| What an insighftul analysis. I haven't noticed how vague my
| writing was until I started writing my book. Editors had to
| constantly correct me on missing information in my sentences
| which I didn't notice beforehand even once. They were always
| right. The whole writing experience has been truly eye-opening
| for me about how teaching is an entirely different skill set
| than writing.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| This is why it's valuable to proof read your work. After you
| write it, come back the next day and see if you still like it
| or it makes sense.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| Not just proof read it, but read every word out loud.
| You'll pick up mistakes, awkward sentence structure, poor
| word choices that you never would by reading it silently.
| Reading alound means you don't skim.
| makapuf wrote:
| Yes for superficial structure, I might skip things
| reading silently. However I struggle to think about the
| meaning of what I read when I read aloud, different
| focuses maybe. So that's complimentary.
| [deleted]
| codyb wrote:
| Precision and brevity are my guides for code comments after a
| careful ux analysis of comment encounters in code.
|
| Anything that makes me pause while reading code or a comment
| is something I'll strive in a timeboxed manner to simplify.
|
| It's not always possible, but my code doesn't get a lot of
| style comments or comments about readability anymore so seems
| to be working.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| The difference may be that you are not getting feedback on
| the quality of your teaching.
| DougMellon wrote:
| I'll also add to this. From my experience in the military,
| there were often times when the PowerPoint presentations fell
| victim to over-simplification as individuals omitted important
| details that were difficult to break down -- instead leaning on
| the talking points that were easier to list.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Found this account recently emphasizing how bonkers military
| PowerPoint slides can be
|
| https://twitter.com/DefenseCharts
| Infernal wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it
| whalesalad wrote:
| My dad was at the Skunk Works and then at Northrop Grumman.
| I've seen wicked PowerPoint slides that animate like a
| Pixar film. Poor guy was so engrained in the way that he
| used to send me screenshots via .ppt file (print screen,
| paste).
| drc500free wrote:
| My personal experience was as comms flows up a military org,
| the summarization process at every level is to mechanically
| convert each slide into a single bullet in the more senior
| deck. Everything became diluted, and there was no way for a
| key point to survive from the tactical level up to the flag
| level.
| FredPret wrote:
| But that is inherent in cognition.
|
| We see an incredibly detailed universe, and we simplify it
| into objects and personalities.
|
| Then we make it more abstract and talk about personalities
| doing things to objects, and so on up the chain, until we
| get to "army 1 did this to army 2".
| unixhero wrote:
| And add a satellite to any on the ground architecture.
| [deleted]
| tomcat27 wrote:
| Literally every scientific paper has sections and subsections.
| Aka Lists.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Has. Not "is entirely".
| jacobolus wrote:
| The problem is not the existence of structure or lists. The
| problem is the presentation of complex material as
| hierarchical short bullet points.
|
| You can see some of Tufte's recommendations for formatting
| lists here https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
| msg?msg_id=...
| kovek wrote:
| I don't understand what's being explained. Should people
| use lists alongside paragraphs?
| yodon wrote:
| Tufte's article probably answers your question better
| than a once sentence answer here can.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| If you're a NASA manager and send people to their death because
| you can't be assed to properly read all the words on the
| screen, you should be tried for murder. There's no way the
| management was unaware, they just wanted to save money and hope
| for the best and not lose face, same as last disaster.
| themadturk wrote:
| I think the connective tissue in such a list-article (I
| hesitate to use "listicle" because it sounds so trivial) is in
| the introduction and conclusion. The intro is the classic "tell
| them what you're going to tell them," the list itself is the
| "tell them," and the conclusion is the "tell them what you told
| them." And items within the list can refer to other items,
| still letting the reader start anywhere while potentially
| guiding the reader to earlier points and tying the overall
| piece together.
| mwattsun wrote:
| A starting point for exploring Wikipedia is "List of lists of
| lists"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists
| joeman1000 wrote:
| Lists and outlines are great! Org-mode is built on this idea. It
| is an outliner at its core. It allows you to treat a whole
| document like a list. As a result I tend to add a skeleton to my
| documents before doing the bulk of the writing. If anyone is
| interested by what's in this article, please check out org-mode!
| totetsu wrote:
| Things I learned how to do:
|
| - Stop worrying
|
| - Structure ALL writing as list.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| The all-knowing Maddox wrote about the list format 10 years ago,
| in what is (imo) one of his best articles. [1]
|
| [1] http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ranker_sucks
| wrs wrote:
| Maybe I'm dating myself, but I was taught to start writing by
| coming up with an _outline_ , which helps you organize your ideas
| into a coherent sequence. A list article basically makes its
| outline visible. The outline is also easily turned into an
| _introduction_ that can address the non-list structure problem at
| the end of this article.
| [deleted]
| LichenStone wrote:
| I tend to write in a very non-linear fashion, I'll often write
| individual sentences and paragraphs in a different order to the
| final product, as I think of them. Then I fill in the gaps,
| move things around until the writing forms a linear grammatical
| representation of the pure thought structure of the idea that
| existed in my brain.
| novosel wrote:
| I agree with you. That is also my personal mode of operation.
| I see the value in the outline approach, but it is, in my
| opinion, limited to a certain kind of writing. Where the work
| of thinking about the subject is already there. But there is
| also times when writing IS the thinking. There is a work
| being done when writing, not simply reporting.
|
| And, I also think this is not an either_or situation, text
| can be locally structured by outline method, and then at
| other places marked by nonlinear growth, or progressing by
| lists. And these domains can overlap, and be of different
| sizes. Nor do I think there are only these three methods.
| Text can accommodate vastly different approaches.
| hammock wrote:
| > Maybe I'm dating myself, but I was taught to start writing by
| coming up with an outline, which helps you organize your ideas
| into a coherent sequence. A list article basically makes its
| outline visible.
|
| In that sense, listicles (as they are known) are a
| suboptimal/locally optimal solution to the lack of trust
| readers have, which was engendered by too much bad writing out
| there. Readers have learned to mistrust long articles that
| aren't obvious at a glance about the value they will provide.
| codyb wrote:
| Outlines are fantastic! I generally do a map of ideas I'd like
| to touch on, then organize into a sequential list which flows
| well, then expand out into a document.
| spccdt wrote:
| What tool(s) do you use to do that?
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Agreed. I've written thousands of articles and won a couple of
| writing awards. Productivity and quality really clicked for me
| when I started doing my outlines as lists.
|
| I would do them in a text editor, one thought per line. The
| beauty of using a text editor is the shortcut keys that make it
| easy to move items up/down in the list. This is really nice as
| the outline develops and you build the plot and connecting
| tissue that ties the ideas together -- it's easy to play with
| different narratives in a text editor.
|
| I showed this method to a friend who is a NYT best selling
| author. He doesn't know a lick of code, but uses a text editor
| in his process now too.
|
| I actually do all of my writing in a text editor that doesn't
| have any spelling or grammar checking. This helps me stay
| focused on the ideas and think about editing later. My very
| last step of editing is moving the text into a word processor
| to catch spelling and grammatical errors that I may have
| missed.
|
| Anyway, I share this in case anyone else finds it useful. If
| someone has a process that works really well for them, I'd love
| to hear about it too!
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Not thousands published for me, but hundreds published
| definitely. There isn't a modern software development trade
| or software industry magazine I haven't gotten a published
| article in to, in some form. And my article always starts as
| an outline of the subject I wish to talk about. One brief
| thought per line. Typed up in OneNote with any kind of spell
| check switched off, or a basic text editor like yourself,
| with no formatting or styling or care for grammar or
| punctuation or spelling. No annoying squiggly red lines to
| distract me from my train of thought. Short cut keys to move
| things around.
| darkteflon wrote:
| That's really interesting. I've recently been thrown into a
| role that requires lots of structured writing.
|
| Could you elaborate on your process for outlining? What level
| of detail do you go into? Do you nest bullets or stick to one
| top-level list? Do you try to lay out the substance of your
| argument?
|
| I'd be interested in reading anything you'd recommend on the
| subject, too. Always appreciate hearing from people who do
| this on the daily.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > Could you elaborate on your process for outlining? What
| level of detail do you go into?
|
| It depends on how developed the idea is. When I have give a
| lot of thought to something, especially the very moving and
| important points, I often know exactly how I want to phrase
| something poignant. In that case, I may write a full
| sentence, and if a great idea strikes me at this moment I
| might continue writing a full paragraph, but I ONLY do this
| if the inspiration is flowing and I don't want to lose it.
| Whenever possible, I will channel that flow into additional
| bullet points and work on the phrasing later.
|
| > Do you nest bullets or stick to one top-level list?
|
| I don't usually nest with formatting, unless the order of
| the sub points are really important; I usually list related
| ideas below each other. I do this because when I'm playing
| with the plot, sometimes I'll move those related points to
| come earlier in the story, even though they happened later
| in chronological time -- especially if I'm trying to pull
| in the reader during the first or second paragraph with
| something that is interesting, but is not an important
| event in the story.
|
| > Do you try to lay out the substance of your argument?
|
| The main points are usually the first items in the list and
| then I insert the connecting ideas and points in between.
| In terms of how substantive those list items are, I try to
| keep them short and stay high level in the
| brainstorming/outlining mode.
|
| Other suggestions on process:
|
| I delete a lot at the end. I scrub every word and phrase
| that isn't absolutely necessary.
|
| The last paragraph I write is the first paragraph of the
| article/essay -- it's so much more natural to create a map
| of where you're going after you've already been there. This
| also takes the pressure off of getting started because you
| can start anywhere, and it makes writing the introductory
| paragraph so easy it feels like cheating.
|
| The last thing I write is the title.
| evanmoran wrote:
| This sounds really helpful! Can you share an example or two
| with both the outline and then the final writing? I'd love to
| see how the ideas become the final manuscript.
| humanistbot wrote:
| Agreed. There are a lot of people in tech (and in university CS
| programs) who like to sneer at the humanities, English majors,
| liberal arts, and the like. This is basic essay writing that
| everyone should know.
| a9h74j wrote:
| Could "inverted pyramid" also apply to supplying _technical_
| "connective tissue"?
|
| The traditional humanities teach appreciation of their own
| form of connective tissue, so to speak. Business writing
| arguably can be learned more quickly and emphasizes getting
| to the point.
| munchbunny wrote:
| What do you mean by traditional humanities? If you mean
| literature and skills like scripting out plots for
| characters and artful language in prose/poetry, then sure,
| it's not essential to business writing. However, if you're
| talking about essay writing, persuasive writing, clear
| language, laying out complex arguments, etc. then it's
| very, very relevant to business writing. Both categories
| are part of traditional humanities.
|
| Getting to the point on nuanced issues like strategy or
| design is actually quite difficult because you have to both
| understand your point well enough to distill it and you
| have to be good at putting the words down. I'd argue that
| the "understanding" part is harder because, from my
| personal experience, someone who is thinking clearly and
| just not fluent in English still organizes the writing
| clearly, but someone who isn't thinking clearly will
| produce great syntax but the reasoning is hard to follow.
|
| I see much more of the latter than the former in my day to
| day.
| mxuribe wrote:
| Same with me; I recall being taught to start things off with an
| outline, as you described. For work - where I get less chances
| to craft essays/long-form writing, it seems that lists prevail.
| It is more about "getting things done"/conveying actions/todos
| as fast/efficient as possible vs longer-form writing where
| there is opportunity to enjoy the "trip", or at least gradually
| dive into a particular topic. For me, essays - at least
| nowadays - are like slowly wading into the ocean deeper and
| deeper for enjoyment...While crafting lists is like taking a
| shower; a fast, practical way to get clean. ;-)
| tjr wrote:
| I enjoy Dave Winer's outlining tools. I'm not fond of the
| often-used Twitter authentication (just personal preference;
| no technical reason), but the overall concept and work flow
| of the tools themselves is really nice.
| runjake wrote:
| Link for others curious:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=dave+winer+outlining
|
| If anyone has a better, more specific link, please reply,
| I'm curious.
| tjr wrote:
| http://docserver.scripting.com/drummer/about.opml
| gowld wrote:
| Are there current tools? http://outliners.scripting.com is
| stuff from the 1980s, last updated in 1999
|
| Today's premium Mac offering is OmniOutliner ($20 barebones
| or $100 full-featured)
| https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner/
| spccdt wrote:
| Here are a few outliners to consider:
|
| * Workflowy * Roam Research * RemNote * Zavala
| antiframe wrote:
| Emacs has a wonderful outline mode and even more
| featurful org-mode. Easy to navigate, restructure,
| filter, etc.
| tjr wrote:
| Drummer is his current project:
|
| http://scripting.com/2021/04/03/133021.html?title=theMaki
| ngO...
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| I receive his daily blog post via email, so I have read a
| lot of his comments about "outliners" and how wonderful
| they are. It always leaves me scratching my head; I mean,
| doesn't MS Word (and MS Excel, for that matter) have
| outlining capabilities built-in? How many different ways
| are there to construct an outline?
| gowld wrote:
| https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner/features/
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Is it just me or does the list look more maintainable than the
| hypothetical essay? lol
| Ldorigo wrote:
| Related to his point on how mathematics can't fit into a list,
| but rather needs a graph representation - does anyone know if
| there are efforts to map out a large network of mathematics as a
| graph of dependencies? (Ideally as an acyclic directed graph so
| there's no instances of subjects being their own prerequisites
| but maybe that's illusory)
| solarkraft wrote:
| I structure most of my writing and (especially) notes as deeply
| nested, tree-formed lists. It works fabulously for keeping an
| overview.
| FpUser wrote:
| Goal for the next century: discover paragraphs, levels and table
| of content.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| I don't like lists.
|
| Written lists.
|
| Lists written out to try and impart knowledge and information to
| the reader.
|
| I do like being able to dip in to things, in an exploratory,
| unconnected fashion, but lists, especially in modern SEO writing
| for the web, have turned in to some bastardized version of useful
| information.
|
| My usual train of thought is "a list that isn't a list", e.g.
| https://justinlloyd.li/blog/3d-printer-purchase/ for a 3D printer
| purchase or my three year long train of thought on prime number
| research at https://justinlloyd.li/blog/prime-numbers/.
|
| On a side note, when I am writing a lengthy article, I usually
| assemble a list of bullet points first, the outline, and then
| convert the bullet points into prose, and then re-order the
| prose, then edit the prose so that it flows.
|
| But I think lists are a terrible, terrible travesty of the modern
| web, because they are so abused.
|
| And bullet pointed lists in a presentation, I consider those
| kinds of things to be used by people who don't understand the
| subject, to teach people even less knowledgable about the
| subject, everything that they know. Which ain't much.
| iandanforth wrote:
| I find that slack has moved my writing towards lists more and
| more. Specifically anything up for a group discussion that _can_
| be broken down into a series of points I do, and I use a
| different "line" to do so. This way each statement can spawn a
| thread for further discussion. I don't always use numbered lists
| or even bulleted lists, but I write for a _series of items_
| rather than a block of interwoven information.
|
| This is similar to some academic writing I've done where the
| author of a section writes each sentence on a separate line so
| that it can be commented on more easily before all the sentences
| are rejoined into paragraph form.
| chociej wrote:
| > Are you drawn to the second? I am.
|
| I mean this with all sincerity, but dear god, no, I certainly am
| not. My conditioning tells me that the second option (the
| listicle) is probably going to be worthless and filled with
| terrible advertising.
| mbeex wrote:
| An example of digital dementia in my opinion. Just test which
| list entries you still remember after two hours (or in many
| cases, after 10 minutes)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| hmm, which of these two am I drawn to:
|
| >"Theory and practice of effective sleep"
|
| >"Seven insights about sleep"
|
| hmm, the first one sounds like an in-depth exhaustive text on the
| subject that if I have the time to read it I will definitely
| learn something from.
|
| The second sounds like SEO listicle crap at least 5 of which
| insights will be really obvious things that only an idiot would
| need explained to them, 1 of which will sound deep and insightful
| but if I read the first text will turn out to have been
| misinterpreted and actually mean almost the obvious of what is
| supposed, and 1 of which might be slightly helpful.
|
| I think I might want to read the first, but only if I really want
| to learn something about sleep, and I might read the second one
| for some reason at some point and immediately think why do I
| waste my time with this stuff.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| past the edit window, so "almost the obvious" is supposed to be
| almost the opposite, guessable from context. In my defence, was
| writing with very low light late at night and tired.
| verve_rat wrote:
| This seems like an argument for using headings. The "list" part
| seems irrelevant.
| timwis wrote:
| Exactly. See page structure on
| https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u...
| rahimiali wrote:
| The article explains why lists aren't just headings on top of
| paragraphs. For example, the list can be read in any order.
| There is no dependence between them.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| Yes, the form this article discusses is not what I would call a
| list.
|
| To me, a list consists of bullet points, each of which is no
| more than 1 sentence. It's not prose as such. I'd also assume
| that the list might be hierarchically nested.
|
| The article seems to be discussing listicles (or list
| articles): effectively a series of very short essays that
| parallel each other, making the same point from a different
| angle each time, or comparing and contrasting a series of
| subjects. It's a suitable form if that's the over-all point
| you're trying to make.
|
| Mainly the article extolls the virtues of organising prose into
| relatively-short sections, each with a clear heading. I agree
| this makes prose more readable, but I don't think that's an
| uncommon opinion.
| exolymph wrote:
| Myself, I tend toward flowery prose with copious clauses and
| parentheticals. But listing -- or building out a list into an
| essay -- is an incredibly effective communication tactic. I would
| rather have people write lists than write nothing, and for most
| writers, I would also rather read their boiled-down lists than
| their hilariously padded nonfiction books.
| [deleted]
| syngrog66 wrote:
| OA is a case of "everything old becomes new again, to younger
| generations"
|
| things we knew decades ago: bullet points nice; section & section
| headers nice; summaries nice
| krsdcbl wrote:
| I think one very crucial point is missing from the article that
| explains a lot of the appeal of lists:
|
| lists give me an idea, or at least the illusion of knowing
| content length beforehand or very early on.
|
| When i see the first list item and the title says "seven of
| those", i can gauge my time investment in consuming that content.
|
| It's important that this is abstract, as "500 words" has little
| intuitive meaning but "4 pieces of roughly this text block" is a
| very natural way of evaluating my time commitment,
| subconsciously.
| waprin wrote:
| The love of lists seems to explain the explosion of Twitter
| threads. Some of them are long form messages spliced up but most
| of them are some form of lists.
|
| I'm personally still partial to a good old blog posts with
| paragraphs, both for writing and reading, but like the author I
| can't help but notice that readers love lists.
| exolymph wrote:
| What drives Twitter threads is that there are a bunch of
| readers on Twitter, and it's easier to reach them there, where
| they already hang out, than to get them to visit a blog or
| whatever offsite. This is exacerbated by Twitter itself
| downranking links and upranking threads, because Twitter
| doesn't _want_ people to be directed offsite. Unless you have
| strong incentives to care about getting your readers offsite
| (e.g. to get them on an email list so you can reach them more
| reliably in the future so you can sell them something), it 's
| more efficient to just blog directly on Twitter.
| hintymad wrote:
| > It's because there ain't no way to re-write mathematical
| analysis as a "list". When you do write a list, you are promising
| that you've figured out a way to cover the subject in that way
| without losing essential detail.
|
| I'm not sure this works out for a math textbook, or any book at
| all. We build our understanding and knowledge by layering up
| abstractions, and the abstractions form a graph. A linear list to
| cover all the preqreq will be tedious and repetitive, to say the
| least.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I always felt math material would lend itself well to a
| directed acyclic graph of topics/information. It's something I
| tend to do informally - look at an equation I need to
| understand, then go backwards to the pre-requisites until
| things are explained in terms of things I'm already familiar
| with.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wish Wikipedia was acyclic for math topics.
| Torwald wrote:
| I think this warrants a re-link:
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html
| submeta wrote:
| I was an avid user of outliner apps myself (Netmanage's ECCO Pro
| some twenty years ago, later OmniOutliner on my Mac, and recently
| Emacs/Org or Roam Research), until I realized that trying to
| distill my ideas down to the core structure, the narrative of
| what I am trying to tell get's lost. This is something that Jeff
| Bezos laments about PowerPoint [1]:
|
| /quote/
|
| Anytime an Amazon worker has an idea to discuss, they're asked to
| structure their pitch in the form of a 4-6 page memo, which the
| company calls a "narrative."
|
| Well structured, narrative text is what we're after rather than
| just text. If someone builds a list of bullet points in word,
| that would be just as bad as powerpoint.
|
| The reason writing a 4 page memo is harder than "writing" a 20
| page powerpoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo
| forces better thought and better understanding of what's more
| important than what, and how things are related.
|
| Powerpoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss
| over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and
| ignore the innerconnectedness of ideas.
|
| /unquote/
|
| I value outliners a lot, but when I started writing down my ideas
| in full sentences, I was forced to create arguments more clearly
| and explicitly, and that helps me get clearer about my problem
| domain.
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/jeff-bezos-email-
| against-...
| jasfi wrote:
| Lists help writers get to the point.
| jzer0cool wrote:
| This is because we are living in a system built upon filtering
| out noise. Also, to filter out from sensory overflow.
| kpierce wrote:
| I feel like this article was written just for the last paragraph
| payoff.
| underwater wrote:
| Lists are great, but shouldn't be used for everything.
|
| This article is a perfect example. These items are all supporting
| a thesis that the visual nature of lists provides clear value to
| the reader. The author asserts lists "allow readers to quickly
| and easily get what they want". But the text doesn't take the
| time to properly establish why that is the most important
| property of writing.
|
| Because the author hasn't properly sold the core idea, the
| subsequent list items just come across as a shotgun approach. It
| seems as though the author thinks that it they throw out enough
| ideas one of them will stick, or that the reader will assume that
| the sheer volume of points means the idea is solid.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I don't think I have a problem with lists, just with the kinds of
| websites that use lists.
|
| Back in the day it was common for each item on the list to be its
| own page. These days, I'm guaranteed to have a popup to subscribe
| to a mailing list.
| zwieback wrote:
| Agree up to a point. When I see "37 x about y" I keep scrolling.
| It has to be a reasonable number of items.
|
| I love lists for emails - whenever I write an email that mentions
| more than one point I put everything in numbered paragraphs.
| Sometimes I also do 1) 2) 3) for information and a) b) c) for
| questions that refer back to the numbered list. Makes it a lot
| easier for followups to stay on track.
| [deleted]
| rahimiali wrote:
| The top comments aren't doing the article justice. The article is
| really about the kinds of subjects that can be covered in depth
| as small sections that do not have dependencies between them. It
| explains the value of topics that can be presented this way, then
| explains these articles need to publicize this fact by claiming
| to be lists. Seriously well argued position and I recommend
| reading the whole thing.
|
| Notability the article is not about hierarchical bulleted lists.
| jancsika wrote:
| > It's crazy how much more attractive the list is, even when
| there's zero content. Why?
|
| * it's funny-- the list example appeals to me for content like HN
| posts.
|
| * for something like a prose analysis of the first 33 measures of
| the first movement of Beethoven's Op. 101, the non-list version
| is more appealing. In fact, my prejudice is that the list version
| will be both a gloss and factually inaccurate.
|
| * if I were a prankster I'd name this phenomenon after a
| physicist friend and subtly spread it as a low-effort shorthand
| for critiquing the quality of HN posts.
|
| Edit: almost forgot-- my post should be formatted as a list
| swah wrote:
| - Lists are appealing - Lists promise value quickly
| - Lists promise different types of value - Lists promise
| limited complexity - Lists promise many entrance points
| - A list is a contract between the writer and reader - A
| list promises "list-tractability" - How to stop worrying
|
| Also: - I only had to read those headings and
| check the images to read this article in under a minute.
| - I'll never know if something was lost. - Youtube also
| has lists nowadays. - I'm a skimmer and I feel bad.
| - I opened a book yesterday and it was very relaxing.
| leokennis wrote:
| I at least make sure all my work mails are numbered lists:
|
| 1. Easy for replies to refer to a certain portion of my mail
| (just mention the number)
|
| 2. Lists result in shorter emails with less fluff - always an
| advantage for work related communication
|
| 3. Especially for people with less writing skills, lists make it
| clearer what the priorities are. "Item 4" is of more importance
| than "Item 2b". If you're only using words, you need mastery of
| language to convey that.
| voidfunc wrote:
| I was a Philosophy major, one of my fave philosophers is
| Aristotle primarily because most of his arguments are just a list
| propositions and then a conclusion. Its dressed up a little but
| compared to folks after him it's relatively straightforward.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| I believe the major advantage of lists is that they make it easy
| to block out all the chaff from the rest of the prose, allowing
| you to comfortably concentrate on the current item. That's the
| same advantage provided by _well-chosen_ taxonomies. Also I think
| the best UIs are defined by how well they help you identify the
| areas which you can ignore. I wish this were an explicit priority
| for designers.
| tempestn wrote:
| Was going to comment on the irony of this not being a list, then
| got to the excellent final line.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| The universe is implemented as a many dimensional linked list on
| a cheap Chromebook in base reality.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I don't think this article makes a good argument for this style
| because it reads like someone's powerpoint slides. It doesn't
| flow well visually and there isn't enough text for any kind of
| nuance.
|
| For a better example of this type of writing, I recommend looking
| at how Rails Guides are written:
| https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_validations.htm...
| smackeyacky wrote:
| In Microsoft Word, you can use "View->Outline".
|
| This displays something cut-down into the structure of the
| document, so the headings can be shrunk with their included text.
| I found it in the past to be a really useful way to build a
| document before it's formatted. i.e. put in all the headings you
| think you will need first, then gradually fill out the text under
| each heading. Once the document starts to flesh out, you will
| find bits that naturally fit together, so you can restructure and
| have something cohesive.
|
| After that, format away in the normal mode.
| atweiden wrote:
| Check out vim-journal [1] if you really want to take this to the
| next level.
|
| The plugin's kaleidoscopic colour functionality visually
| incentivizes writing in list format constantly. The colours are
| enjoyable to look at, and you get more of them on your screen
| each time you indent a list item. which
| - makes you organize your thoughts differently -
| because - the more colour, the better -
| e.g. - you'll want to write like this
|
| [1]: https://github.com/junegunn/vim-journal
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