[HN Gopher] Write Like You Talk (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
Write Like You Talk (2015)
Author : ivanvas
Score : 91 points
Date : 2022-10-23 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| legendofbrando wrote:
| This is all true and I think mercurial is an excellent word.
| Spoken and written.
| coyotespike wrote:
| Easy recent counterexamples include, say, Hilary Mantel,
| Christopher Hitchens, David Foster Wallace, Helen Dewitt.
|
| Each of these wrote brilliantly, in a style very different to how
| most people talk. Some of them (Hitchens) wrote deliberately in a
| "high style," successfully and delightfully. Others are, well,
| simply themselves - Mantel once noted, "You simply cannot run
| remedial classes for people on the page."
|
| The plain style often misses the joy of language deployed for its
| own sake, for play. It can be well done, but it's certainly not
| the only legitimate style.
|
| I will concede that for most people, writing for most practical
| purposes, the Strunk & White school which Graham is channelling
| is probably pretty good advice.
| nmilo wrote:
| I don't like this viewpoint at all. Spoken English and written
| English are different languages, full-stop. You can see this in
| effect when someone is giving a fully-scripted presentation or
| talk---it just doesn't sound like speaking, no matter how
| conversational the text is. This is in large part due to the
| issue of word choice: speakers must choose their words quickly,
| so they must transmit their idea using lots of small, common
| words, while writers have time to think about word choice and
| select the one that transmits the exact connotation the writer is
| going for. And that's not to mention the nonverbal cues which add
| a ton of richness to spoken English. Writing allows you to take
| time to look over your words which lets you re-gain that richness
| with poetic devices which really allow your words to flow in a
| way that would sound unnatural and forced in spoken language. I
| would go as far as to say that if your writing sounds good
| spoken, it is not very good writing at all.
| bennysonething wrote:
| "The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: "After Altamira, all is
| decadence." "
|
| Actually I could imagine Neil Oliver would say something like
| this in one of his documentaries.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The better than 95% of writers bit bugs me. It feels like looking
| at all of written history and saying everyone else was doing this
| wrong because they don't write simply enough.
| rongopo wrote:
| Having your voice in writing is a difficult milestone.
| agalunar wrote:
| Writing and speaking are such different media - for example, you
| can go back and reread a sentence, but you can't wind back time
| in a live conversation; you can signal how something should be
| interpreted,* give parsing hints, and add emotion using
| inflection and tone while speaking, but you can't do this in
| writing. So I think we should expect good writing to look
| different than good speaking.
|
| PG might have in mind then the strange affectations that seem to
| grip people sometimes when they write, but I can't think of any
| examples off the top of my head.
|
| *sarcasm, e.g.
| dcminter wrote:
| It's not, I think, quite what you mean, but when you refer to
| "strange affectations" of writers (nicely put) I was reminded
| of this:
|
| "Words resemble fish in that some specialist ones can survive
| only in a kind of reef, where their curious shapes and usages
| are protected from the hurly-burly of the open sea. 'Rumpus'
| and 'fracas' are found only in certain newspapers (in much the
| same way that 'beverages' are found only in certain menus).
| They are never used in normal conversation." - Terry Pratchett,
| 'The Truth'
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Anyone who has tried to dictate something instead of typing it
| knows how far off Graham is in this advice. Writing is a
| different medium than spoken language and reading is different
| than listening. Readers have different expectations than
| listeners. The cadence of sentence length is important, and the
| exact words you use count more. The pace of writing allows one to
| pick and choose more carefully - being more descriptive or
| precise as needed - and readers expect this.
|
| He may have meant "conversationally," but that depends on context
| and your audience. This comment has a completely different tone
| than I would use in a professional document. Bad writing is bad
| writing, whether it's an academic paper, a blog post or a legal
| brief. It doesn't have anything to do with writing like you talk.
|
| All that said, it is a good place to _start_ writing, especially
| if you are having trouble organizing your thoughts or getting
| started. Imagine sitting in front of someone and explaining to
| them what it is you want to convey. Write that all down as if you
| 're chatting. But then go back and edit. And that's a second good
| bit of advice: Writing is editing.
| mr_sturd wrote:
| Whey if a wrert like a taa'ked, a divn't think anyone would kna
| what a wa' gaan an aboot...
| chromatin wrote:
| What an absurd and pathetic characterization of Southern
| Mountain Speech and/or rural American dialect. It comes across
| as speaking more to your character than your polemic target.
| mr_sturd wrote:
| I meant it to read as if spoken by broad
| Northumbrian/Geordie.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Southern Mountain Speech and /or rural American dialect_
|
| Funny, I thought it was a phonetic transcription of
| _Scottish_ dialect (whence are derived many Appalachian
| speech patterns, of course).
| mr_sturd wrote:
| Touching on Scottish, but Northumbrian. I'm not that
| "broad" really, though.
| ant6n wrote:
| Like a who/what?
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| "like I talked"
| mr_sturd wrote:
| Yep, "like I talked".
| Liron wrote:
| Yet another pg classic.
|
| When I first read this essay, it made me go from writing 90%
| similar to the way I talk, to 100% - literally _only_ writing
| words and phrases I 'd realistically say in a conversation. And I
| think it's been a good improvement!
| l33tbro wrote:
| > But just imagine calling Picasso "the mercurial Spaniard" when
| talking to a friend. Even one sentence of this would raise
| eyebrows in conversation.
|
| Why does everything have to be "optimized" with Paul? I'll take
| verbose misfires any day over rigid plain-speak.
| biorach wrote:
| He wasn't advocating rigid plain speak
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| Ok, pretend you are Paul and then what should the author have
| written instead of mercurial?
| vlark wrote:
| Horrible advice. Most people don't talk well; they ramble, they
| stumble, they beat around the bush. Do not write in "simple
| language." Instead, write in plain language:
| https://www.plainlanguage.gov/media/FederalPLGuidelines.pdf
| cole-k wrote:
| A lot of this blog post reminded me of
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel....
| I am not well-read though, so maybe I just like to pattern match
| to the few essays I've read that have stuck with me.
| aasasd wrote:
| Personally I advocate that people at least try to see if the flow
| of the writing makes any sense when read out loud--if not, it's
| probably just poor writing, stemming from a braindump with little
| organization. And as the very minimum, it would be nice if people
| stopped putting long-winded parenthetical additions in the middle
| of unfinished sentences.
| asciimov wrote:
| > And in my experience, the harder the subject, the more
| informally experts speak.
|
| I guess I've been hanging out with different crowds. I typically
| find that the harder the subject the more exacting the language
| has to be to avoid miscommunication.
| rocketbop wrote:
| When I watch interviews of actors and other well known
| personalities in the 80s compared to now I can't help notice that
| the standard of spoken conversation seems to have dropped; lower
| vocabulary, shorter sentences, more interruptions.
|
| I think it would do a lot of good for people to try to speak more
| like they write, rather than the other way around.
| karmakaze wrote:
| There is a good message here if you don't get distracted by
| whatever may particlarly bother you about the presentation.
|
| > You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas.
| [...] Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.
|
| I interpret this as following my basic mode of operation: express
| everything as simply as I can, even if that makes my brilliant
| idea sound so obvious. The goal isn't to make myself seem smart,
| it's to get the idea across. With practice this is natural and
| you find yourself able to express more complex things than you
| thought you could. If I use complex ways of describing less
| complex things I'd be putting a lower limit on what I could
| express.
|
| Basically, how would Richard Feynman say it? He was a master of
| using the simplest descriptions of the most complex subjects.
|
| The same goes for coding style. There is a time where fancy
| metaprogramming will be needed to make something compact and
| manageable. But that isn't the first thing you should reach for
| in simpler cases.
| watwut wrote:
| But the way people talk naturally does not lead to simple
| sentences nor simple constructions. People talk in runabout
| ways, add unnecessary details, miss others and then go back to
| fill them in. Some people do in fact use complex words and
| others use too simple wrong words when they speak. People use
| tone of voice to add meaning and also gestures.
|
| Transcript of natural conversation is not a simple readable
| text. Instead, it requires a lot of editing to become one.
| dasil003 wrote:
| This is an unconvincing straw man argument. Bad writing is
| just... bad writing. You can just as easily point to bad speaking
| and say people should talk more like they write. The fact is,
| speaking and writing are different, and even within them there
| are different goals and styles.
|
| While PG's plain-spoken dialectical style attracted me early, and
| has been effective, I wouldn't call it the end-all-be-all
| approach to writing. One problem with keeping things
| conversational is that the substance of the argument can be
| obscured by flowing narrative that sounds good but doesn't
| necessarily add up. A dense, precise style might be harder to
| read--and less politically expedient--but ultimately more
| effective in establishing the merits of a novel idea.
| jesuscript wrote:
| Edit:
|
| I re-read your post. You and David Milch agree:
|
| https://youtu.be/SaE9cB6iHks
|
| It depends on what you are conveying. Different approaches for
| different situations.
| [deleted]
| samatman wrote:
| This is good advice if we ignore the headline completely.
|
| If you want to see what I mean, record yourself talking sometime,
| a few minutes is fine. Make a transcript, and read that. Ideally,
| if there's someone around who can do the favor, have that someone
| edit the errors in transcription and punctuation first, so that
| part isn't conflated.
|
| It's not going to look anything like good conversational writing.
|
| The flip side is that someone setting out to "write like they
| speak" will instead succeed in writing in a conversational style,
| if anything. When that's good is another question.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think the advice could easily be summed up as "write at an
| 8th grade reading level".
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I like a lot of what Graham writes, but I fundamentally disagree
| with him on this one. Spoken language is the JIT compiler of
| information transferral. It's spur-of-the-moment; it's stream-of-
| consciousness; it gets the job done by stripping away a lot of
| nuance and complexity.
|
| Written language is more subtle, more considered, more edited -
| he states himself that he writes then edits - in his case to make
| it more "spoken". By doing this he is removing complexity in the
| interests of simplicity, and this may well fit with _his_ goal
| for _this_ work. It is not a general panacea.
|
| I don't disagree that sometimes it is more useful to have a
| simple introduction, leading to a more complex and better
| understanding of a subject before layering on the exceptions and
| subtleties - there is certainly a place for simplified knowledge
| transfer, our entire system of education is based on this "lies
| to children" approach.
|
| What I do disagree with is that it's a useful go-to rule. The
| world is inherently complex, and we deal with complexity by
| introducing layers of abstraction (more of the "lies to children"
| approach, but this time to ourselves). Not everyone needs to
| understand the quantum mechanical physics of a positive charge in
| order to understand that balloons will stick to your hair if
| rubbed against certain materials, but if you're trying to
| _explain_ that, then you read the room and go with the layer of
| abstraction needed. Sometimes that abstraction is very thin, and
| the language used will reflect that; at other times, "it just
| does" is the way to go... party handbooks printed on balloon
| packets are different to undergraduate textbooks.
|
| So written language, with all its _capability_ for complexity,
| context, subtlety and nuance should be employed when that
| capability has a useful effect. That means understanding one's
| audience and tailoring to suit, not just a blindly-applied rule
| to "write as you speak".
| c0mptonFP wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head, mostly.
|
| > then you read the room and go with the layer of abstraction
| needed.
|
| Finding the right layer of abstraction is orthogonal to the
| write-speak axis. When speaking to my colleagues, I use
| technical jargon that no layman could understand. None of the
| topics are simple, or strongly abstracted. The issue of write
| vs. speak is more about the sentence structure, sentence
| length, and breadth of vocabulary.
|
| But I generally agree that carefully crafted written language
| can capture and transport thoughts much, MUCH more effectively.
| mediascreen wrote:
| Slightly off topic: What's with HN and the word "orthogonal"?
|
| I'm not a native English speaker, but I read a lot in English
| and it seems like the word is extremely common on HN compared
| to anywhere else.
|
| Isn't usually "unrelated" a more descriptive and even a more
| precise word in most HN discussions? (The parent comment here
| does seem to make a point using axes, so maybe it is more
| appropriate here?)
| auggierose wrote:
| I see what you did there, but I will bite:
|
| Orthogonal does not mean unrelated. Take two vectors in the
| plane. Them being orthogonal means that they have a 90
| degree angle between them, so if you know the direction of
| one of them, the direction of the other one is severely
| restricted to two choices. So these vectors are very much
| RELATED. It's just that they are related in a way that
| makes them maximally different in a certain sense.
|
| So if you want to say that two things are maximally
| different in a certain sense, you use orthogonal. If you
| want to say that one thing has no influence whatsoever on
| what the other thing is, and the other way around, you use
| unrelated.
|
| For example, if you randomly choose a point in the plane,
| then its x and y coordinates will be unrelated, but not
| orthogonal. The vectors [x 0] and [0 y] are not unrelated,
| but certainly orthogonal.
|
| Of course, this distinction is easily lost.
| mediascreen wrote:
| I understand that orthogonal and unrelated have different
| meanings. What I'm wondering is: Isn't "orthogonal" much
| more common on HN (18388 matches in search) than in other
| places?
|
| I suspect that "orthogonal" is a word programmers fall in
| love with during some CS class and then overuse because
| it sounds sciency.
| cole-k wrote:
| I don't see why what you're saying and what the blog post says
| are incompatible. I feel like Graham is not saying "simplify
| your thoughts," but rather "simplify your words." Think Up Goer
| 5 (https://xkcd.com/1133/) but maybe not as extreme.
|
| What I understood from your comment is that for complex topics
| (like quantum mechanics), complex language is necessary. This
| section of the post clarifies Graham's thoughts on the matter:
|
| > You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas.
| When specialists in some abstruse topic talk to one another
| about ideas in their field, they don't use sentences any more
| complex than they do when talking about what to have for lunch.
| They use different words, certainly. But even those they use no
| more than necessary.
|
| I kind of agree, although I don't know exactly whether I've
| studied things that y'all might consider "abstruse".
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| Up Goer 5 is a fantastic example of why complex language is
| necessary. Even in a short example, it already defines clumsy
| replacements for the words it's trying to use, like "Sky Bag
| Air" (Hydrogen), "Funny Voice Air" (Helium) and "Breathing
| Type Air" (Oxygen). Other artificially-simple language
| projects, like the Simple English Wikipedia* or Toki Pona
| generally end up in the same place. You get the linguistic
| equivalent of copy-and-paste coding.
|
| Sure, "don't use more complex language than necessary" sounds
| like advice, but anyone capable of working out the minimally
| complex language needed for any given topic likely doesn't
| need to be told this.
|
| *A quick skim also suggests that in many places, the SEW just
| gives up on simple vocabulary and uses phrases like "time-
| independent Schrodinger equation".
| cole-k wrote:
| Just so we're on the same page, I agree to the necessity
| for words like Hydrogen or Helium. And not gonna lie I get
| a kick out of using fancy words that in today's English-
| speaking world serve the dual purpose of implying that I'm
| part of the educated social elite (although I like to
| imagine this is not the reason why I like using them - I
| digress).
|
| > but anyone capable of working out the minimally complex
| language needed for any given topic likely doesn't need to
| be told this.
|
| This is where I (and I think Graham) disagree with you. In
| my opinion, this is very not easy. When I write -
| especially about complex topics - I feel more comfortable
| complicating my thoughts.
|
| If you don't mind the anecdote, in middle and high school I
| thought I was hot shit because my classmates would struggle
| to write enough to meet the page limit and I would struggle
| to not go over it. As it turns out, this is not because I
| had more to say. It's because I would use twice the number
| of words to say it. But it was certainly complex prose that
| used fancy language - sometimes, I'd argue, parts were even
| well-written.
|
| I do still think there is an aesthetic to language, but
| I've grown to believe that simple language possesses beauty
| too. I can appreciate now how famous writers like Hemingway
| could agonize for a day over a single sentence. Especially
| because I look at the four paragraphs I wrote in response
| and think to myself, "man I bet this is way more
| complicated and rambly than it needs to be."
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| > Think Up Goer 5 but maybe not as extreme.
|
| I don't think this proves the point you want it to. Up Goer 5
| loses a ton of information for the sake of its stylistic
| schtick, and is borderline incomprehensible to people who
| don't already know the information it's attempting to convey.
| That's not a problem when you're doing it for comedic effect
| or for its own sake; it's a big problem when you decide that
| a devotion to simplistic language should trump actual
| communication in scenarios where the message matters.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've outgrown a few bloggers. Spolsky still stings a bit. I
| really liked his early stuff and then my frowns got bigger and
| a lot more frequent.
|
| The problem I found with blogging is that I only have about two
| year's of things to say, and either I start scraping the bottom
| of the barrel or I had to take a long break and then circle
| back, reiterating 80% of what I already said but with new or
| better examples. If I was forced to have an audience for ten
| years I'd just be saying crazy shit all the time.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > I only have about two year's of things to say, and either I
| start scraping the bottom of the barrel or I had to take a
| long break and then circle back, reiterating 80% of what I
| already said but with new or better examples
|
| You sound like a Youtuber!
| jesuscript wrote:
| You are just circling the truth that ultimately we all really
| have one or two things to really say to the world. And that's
| okay.
|
| Refining the few themes that you have conviction for until
| the end of time is worthy. Hubris is if you think those few
| things now qualifies you for all things.
|
| It helps if your topic of interest has endless fodder.
| Misanthropes know what I mean.
| hinkley wrote:
| I always wonder if half the time other writers are trying
| to win arguments they lost somewhere else or if that's just
| me.
| kaashif wrote:
| > If I was forced to have an audience for ten years I'd just
| be saying crazy shit all the time.
|
| There is an alternative. Just blog without an audience. Don't
| keep any web server logs (or don't look at them). Delete the
| analytics.
|
| The fact that someone theoretically could be reading my blog
| is enough motivation to write something understandable
| (rather than just scrawling some gibberish in a notebook),
| but whether that audience actually exists or not doesn't
| matter to me.
|
| There's no inherent need to write regularly if you feel you
| have nothing new to say, is there?
| paulpauper wrote:
| _There is an alternative. Just blog without an audience.
| Don 't keep any web server logs (or don't look at them).
| Delete the analytics._
|
| That depends on your individual preferences I guess. I
| think having an audience is at least an indication that
| you're succeeding at it. Otherwise you have a diary, not a
| blog.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| At least in my experience, writing is a great medium for
| creative expression. It's a relatively permanent medium
| to express the fleeting now. I can look back in many
| years and remember and reflect on what I did and thought.
|
| As long as you're not dependent on having an audience as
| a form of income, I'd think the blog is intended for the
| writer first and foremost, and having a readership is
| secondary/optional.
| kaashif wrote:
| > I think having an audience is at least an indication
| that you're succeeding at it.
|
| If the goal is to get an audience, then having an
| audience is a success.
|
| If the goal is primarily to crystallize your own
| understanding of things, write thoughts up in a coherent
| way, or something else which doesn't necessarily involve
| an audience, then you can have success without an
| audience.
|
| > Otherwise you have a diary, not a blog.
|
| If the blog is still there for people to see, it changes
| the kinds of things you write. I don't feel comfortable
| posting half-incomprehensible jumbled thoughts with
| partially worked examples, filled with mistakes on a
| blog, whereas I would feel comfortable writing that
| privately.
|
| This does definitely depend on individual preferences and
| whether one can motivate themselves to write well without
| even the possibility of an audience. I can't.
| omginternets wrote:
| To add to your comment, it's also been my experience that
| writing improves one's speaking. So to the extent that one
| wishes to be more articulate in his oral communications, he
| should not write as he speaks.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Uhh no
| paulpauper wrote:
| Success at writing has almost everything to do with who is doing
| the writing, not the quality of the writing or how clear it is.
| Michael Crichton demonstrated this himself at Harvard by turning
| in an essay written by Orwell, unbeknownst to the teacher, and
| got a "B-". I have seen this as well. Why do Glen Greenwald
| articles get so much traffic even though it's just basic
| political commentary? Because of his brand.
| legrande wrote:
| Being grandiloquent does not equate to being more intelligent,
| you're just being superfluous when more terse and lean sentences
| are better.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| The old adage "sorry for the long letter I didn't have time to
| write a short one" has some relevance here if you approach it
| from the perspective of maximum efficiency and information
| density. But that is not always the best path to get your idea
| across. A conversational style presumes you have a longform
| narrative and the extra elbowroom for nuance and variations on a
| theme. I dictate a lot from inside a VR headset and I usually
| work backwards from the spoken paragraphs to an outline form I
| can then expand on at a later stage in an email for example. Just
| sending pages of raw transcript is not great if you respect your
| readers time.
|
| As an aside, the best mix for me is doing Screen Recording
| walkthroughs of some topic which can communicate so much more
| info than a written description while keeping the conversation
| narrowly focused. Video platforms like Loom, mmhmm, yac, Tella,
| etc all these provide a better way to coordinate discussion when
| integrated with typical tools like email and thread messengers.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I see some people on HN, presumably Americans, start sentences
| with 'Like,...'
|
| I find it annoying and it dims my view of the poster.
| cole-k wrote:
| I would encourage you to try and push past this feeling.
|
| It's part of a natural change in dialect. There are instances
| of prejudice toward similar phenomena such as vocal fry or
| uptalk that have been shown to disproportionately be attributed
| to women, even though this is not the case.
|
| (https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article..
| . some reading I found on the subject)
| secondcoming wrote:
| Like, nah, I probably won't.
| extragood wrote:
| I'm pleasantly surprised to see so many diverging with Paul on
| this point.
|
| "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick"
|
| My take is: don't let language get in the way of expressing
| yourself. Language is one of our most important social
| constructs. Restricting yourself to simple language has the side
| effect of losing precision and/or meaning in communication.
| bcantrill wrote:
| As with so many things Paul Graham: there is a good, important
| idea here (omit needless words!) but he overshoots the mark,
| descending into venomous overgeneralizations. The truth is more
| nuanced: speaking and writing are both important vectors for
| communication (obviously?), but they _are_ different
| (delightfully so!) -- with different strengths and weaknesses.
| Great writing is tight: it crackles. If a word serves that end,
| it should be used -- knowing that if someone like Graham wants to
| decry the word choice as "fancy", it reveals more about the
| critic than the writing.
| louison11 wrote:
| And that, sir or madam, was a beautiful comment. I don't know
| if you speak like that - and it doesn't matter.
| civilized wrote:
| > venomous overgeneralizations
|
| Sorry, but this illustrates Graham's point even better than the
| "mercurial Spaniard" thing. Reaching for a fancy word that
| doesn't quite make sense in context.
|
| Overgeneralizations could be absurd. They could even be
| dangerous, perhaps - although Graham's alleged
| overgeneralization really doesn't seem to be, even if wrong.
| They're not venomous, at least not without an argument. You
| can't just throw it out there for _effect_. That 's
| grandstanding.
|
| The slower, less urgent pace of writing allows us to overthink
| things and make odd communication mistakes we wouldn't make in
| conversation. Graham's advice is good for avoiding this.
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| The venomous, dangerous, overgeneralized part is - I assume
| intentionally - snuck in under the radar. Did you follow the
| link on the word "bogus", and notice what keywords PG thinks
| are indicative of bogosity? A warning against overwrought
| language is one thing, but it's carried through to an attack
| on _any_ complexity in written language (with no
| acknowledgement that sometimes that complexity is necessary
| or preferable except for nefarious reasons), and from there
| to an attack on the caricature of the liberal arts that STEM-
| lords love to mock without understanding. You start out
| nodding along to the idea that "mercurial Spaniard" is a bit
| much, and by the end you're nodding along to the idea that
| liberal-arts academia is a conspiracy.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| That "bogus" link is also cheating. I can't hyperlink with
| my voice, so hyperlinks aren't spoken language.
| rfrey wrote:
| >Sorry, but this illustrates Graham's point even better than
| the "mercurial Spaniard" thing
|
| Funny, I thought it _refuted_ Graham 's point, very
| effectively.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The most successful writers in the world do not do this, and many
| who do are not successful. Writing has to be much more precise
| than speech. Speech has tone, cadence, and body language. Writing
| does not, so you need to be articulate to get the the desired
| message and intent across and most importantly avoid confusion.
| And it has to be interesting enough for the reader to hopefully
| not give up too soon. This is much harder than speech.
| pklausler wrote:
| I'm not going to write the same words that I would speak because
| my reader is not going to process those words in the same way
| that my listener would.
| [deleted]
| indus wrote:
| Three core mediums that transfer human knowledge:
|
| - spoken words (live events, political speeches, etc)
|
| - recorded words
|
| - written words (blogs, books, papers)
|
| Spoken words have the highest activation energy. Hence, the value
| that we expect is very very high. There is commitment of time.
|
| Recorded words are speeches, discussions, lectures. Lower than
| listening something live.
|
| Written words have the highest volume in today's society. Also
| the lowest activation energy for the writer.
|
| If written words are not edited, thought through, the increasing
| volume adds to the noise rather than a better signal.
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| This is mistitled. What it should be is "Write like I talk."
| Sorry mate but not everyone limits themselves to the stripped
| back, limited vocabulary of Silicon Valley demotic, even in
| speech.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Eh so like I think this maybe is primarily good advice for people
| who are good, like naturally good advice, no I mean speakers, not
| people like me who like can barely keep the tail end of a thought
| in my head... co- uh co- coherenty ... like.
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| How much of PG's blog is based on setting up strawmen and using
| them to bash on the liberal arts?
|
| > Even one sentence of this would raise eyebrows in conversation.
| And yet people write whole books of it.
|
| These sentences immediately identify one big, relevant difference
| between speech and non-blog writing, which is not commented on in
| the blog post: _people do not generally give book-length
| monologues on a single topic_. Books will necessarily end up
| using more flowery language because if they didn 't _they would
| be extremely boring to read_.
|
| > perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words
| give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying
| more than you actually are.
|
| On the other hand, simpler words and sentence structure give the
| reader the false impression that you're being more honest than
| you actually are. Demagogues (especially of the right-wing
| variety) have known this for centuries: people like simple ideas.
| Making an idea sound simpler, even if at the expense of _actual_
| clarity, means that people will agree with you more readily. That
| can be dangerous.
|
| But even assuming you're communicating in good faith, sometimes
| you really need the nuance that only more sophisticated language
| can grant. In speech, we tend to do this by inflection, body
| language, and gestures; in writing, those aren't available, so we
| do it with vocabulary choice and more careful sentence structure.
| In English (and many other languages), a single spoken word can
| have dozens of different connotations, or a sentence dozens of
| meanings, depending on tone and emphasis (see
| https://bridgeenglish.com/blog/2012/08/28/who-stole-the-mone...
| for a classic example). In writing, we have to be more precise
| with the words themselves.
|
| All of that said -
|
| > If you simply manage to write in spoken language, you'll be
| ahead of 95% of writers
|
| is probably true, but I think it says more about 95% of writers
| than it does about what's actually good. In most disciplines, the
| techniques it takes to become "not terrible" are qualitatively
| different from the techniques it takes to be "good". I would
| posit that writing is one of those; the best writers are
| fundamentally treating the written word differently than those of
| us who just want to get through the day and be understood on a
| basic level. Moreover, "top 5 percent of writers" is not really
| that good, considering that most readers are reading the same
| vanishingly small fraction of writers. Even in a professional
| capacity, where you're going to read design docs and such from a
| wider array of writers (as opposed to the extreme power-law
| distribution of novelists), I'm certain that the top 1 in 20
| writers in my company are read way out of proportion to everyone
| else, and some of them are still terrible writers.
| pwinnski wrote:
| This deserves a call-out:
|
| > On the other hand, simpler words and sentence structure give
| the reader the false impression that you're being more honest
| than you actually are. Demagogues (especially of the right-wing
| variety) have known this for centuries: people like simple
| ideas. Making an idea sound simpler, even if at the expense of
| actual clarity, means that people will agree with you more
| readily. That can be dangerous.
|
| Well said!
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _How much of PG 's blog is based on setting up strawmen and
| using them to bash on the liberal arts?_
|
| It'd be surprising if PG wanted to bash the liberal arts, given
| his longstanding interest in fine arts, specifically painting;
| see, e.g., his _Hackers and Painters_ book. (He studied
| painting at RISD and in Florence.)
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/d...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(programmer)
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| Liberal arts != fine arts
| pwinnski wrote:
| There is a good idea in here somewhere, but "write like you talk"
| is horrific advice that very few people should follow.
|
| "Write casually for a wider audience" might work.
|
| "Avoid complicated sentence structure and unusual vocabulary for
| a wider audience" might also be good advice.
|
| People don't read in the same way they listen, so one should not
| write in the same way they speak.
|
| Or, to put it another way, "Gosh, I dunno. Seems kinda like he
| didn't think that one through, you know? Maybe he knew what he
| meant, but what he said sure ain't it."
| [deleted]
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| > But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words
| give you, the writer, the false impression that you're saying
| more than you actually are.
|
| Disagree.
|
| When you're writing / reading, it's much easier to parse complex
| sentences. It's also much easier to express a cohesive, complex
| thought this way compared to a meandering, directionless
| sentence.
|
| And the whole point of "fancy words" are to succinctly convey
| some nuance rather than using a generic word which is much
| broader. Check out the often reposted article about Webster's
| 1913 dictionary. Also this is exactly the purpose of the
| thesaurus. So yes, if done right, you ARE "saying more than you
| actually are."
|
| > The last straw for me was a sentence I read a couple days ago:
|
| >> The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: "After Altamira, all
| is decadence."
|
| "mercurial" does the trick in the quoted example, does Paul have
| a patch?
| teucris wrote:
| The Spaniard, known to change his moods on a whim, himself
| declared: "After Altimara, all is decadence."
|
| > And the whole point of "fancy words" are to succinctly convey
| some nuance rather than using a generic word which is much
| broader.
|
| Which can be bad when you want your audience to understand you
| without significant effort. Reading a novel, a reader may be
| willing, or excited even, to expend effort to get all the
| nuances and context. But if you're writing to communicate an
| idea, you have to match the expectations of your audience, and
| your audience may have a fixed effort budget to spend on your
| writing. Most people know this deal, which is why I think using
| big words is looked down on as self-absorbed or conceited.
|
| I think similarly about code one-liners: they are super hard
| for another programmer to read, and not everyone has time for
| that. So they tend to come off as a kind of elitist bragging if
| not done carefully.
| texaslonghorn5 wrote:
| If you're writing for an audience familiar with the word
| mercurial then saying mercurial conveys exactly what the
| author meant.
|
| If you're writing for an audience unfamiliar with mercurial
| then what you said is appropriate.
|
| As is with a one liner, you wouldn't put that into a tutorial
| but you might include it without description in a CppCon
| talk.
| 7speter wrote:
| >> The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: "After Altamira,
| all is decadence."
|
| It's one thing to construct a sentence like that for a
| fictional story or novel, it's another to write that way for
| documentation or a legal document.
| curo wrote:
| There is something exhausting about that example sentence.
|
| Yes, different words embed different meanings. For instance,
| it's clear to me what Paul means by "fancy" and "complex." The
| author William Zinsser makes both points: choose great words
| and write like you speak.
|
| But I agree that somewhere out there, beyond the horizon,
| there's a time and place for the word 'mercurial.'
| jameshart wrote:
| Perhaps pg favors git over mercurial.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's it, it'll depend entirely on the context. Maybe if
| you're selling something you should write like you talk, or if
| you're posting comments / opinions on an orange/brown/grey
| website, but if you're writing "A History of Ancient Britain",
| it's not exactly you'd talk to your friends about; it's a book,
| it's to educate and to entertain. Do you talk to your friends
| to educate and/or entertain? I mean the latter, sure, but
| people even change how they talk when they are entertaining
| someone else, so. idk.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Fwiw Stephen King in "On Writing" also says to not use a
| thesaurus and just use the words you already naturally know how
| to use. He follows on saying your vocabulary will naturally
| expand as you read more.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The first sentence is about the writer; the second about the
| reader.
|
| If writers aren't learning new words, then readers can't
| learn from them. When do writers learn new words? From
| reading! Who writes what the writer reads? Writers.
|
| King seems to be saying "the best way to discover new words
| is through the labor and chance of picking up the right books
| and finding some words you had not read before". So all words
| that can ever be useful have already been written or will be
| invented by fiction writers, and it is up to you to read a
| variety of styles and types of fiction rather than the
| compendium on your shelf. I find this notion silly.
|
| The answer of course is a blend. If someone is leaning on a
| thesaurus to make bad writing good, there will be a problem,
| too.
| [deleted]
| nathias wrote:
| I often use thesaurus to translate complex words into simpler
| ones, it really does improve the overall writing especially
| if you are biased towards redundant complexity ...
| js8 wrote:
| Not an english speaker, but I use thesaurus when I feel there
| might be a better fitting word or if I would repeat the same
| word several times.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I agree with King on that. A thesaurus is great for finding
| words you know but don't use often. Learning new words from
| it... you're usually missing important nuance.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I use a thesaurus as a memory prompt.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Agree. Fancy' words can add flavor to the writing and help
| avoid repetition, and also are more precise. If you are writing
| warning labels or instructions, then maybe simpler is better.
| But otherwise, I don't think it is a problem..
| glenstein wrote:
| And to make a point that perhaps is restating yours, or
| overlaps with yours, I think some good writing is "dense" the
| way that certain foods are calorie dense.
|
| You can intentionally write in a way that's different from
| your natural voice if your goal is, say, information density,
| or expressiveness that conveys personality or that makes the
| experience of reading more enjoyable, or to allow writing to
| shimmer with all of its contextual entanglements.
|
| Of course people can attempt to do this and make a reading
| experience worse, and I think writing how you talk can be a
| helpful rule of thumb for certain use cases.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| As a reader I would prefer the writer not repeat themselves
| and write less, rather than try to find some fancy way of not
| "sounding" repetitive, but in reality finding yet another way
| of repeating. I prefer actual repetition to that.
|
| More precise words aren't always better either. Having
| someone easily grasp what you are saying works much better
| for conveying information.
|
| Complicated writing is lazy writing. "If I had more time, I
| would have written a shorter letter."
| elevenoh wrote:
| freetime2 wrote:
| > "mercurial" does the trick in the quoted example, does Paul
| have a patch?
|
| How about:
|
| He said "After Altamira, all is decadence."
|
| That is the way I would probably phrase it if spoken. Assuming
| of course that "he" is clear from the context - if not I would
| use the subject's name.
| jameshart wrote:
| And if you wanted to attribute that sentiment to some aspect
| of his character and/or nationality?
|
| I can perfectly well imagine saying out loud, in conversation
| or in a spoken presentation, something like "Being the
| mercurial Spaniard that he was, Picasso said 'After Altamira,
| all is decadence'".
|
| I don't think there's anything wrong with the _vocabulary_
| choices here, but there is a kind of journalistic writing
| style which favors brevity, probably originally because you
| 're writing to a column inch count, and it drives writers to
| try to convey those extra connotations in fewer words. An
| editor will look at my wordy sentence, tell me to get rid of
| the throatclearing and filler words and reduce it to "The
| mercurial Spaniard said..." - and they may well be right.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > When you're writing / reading, it's much easier to parse
| complex sentences.
|
| All other things being equal, I think this is only true because
| you can reread them at will and puzzle over them until you
| think you know what the author was trying to say.
|
| Sometimes there's value in that. A good writer knows how to mix
| up the pacing of their prose, to organically guide the reader
| into engaging more fully with the parts that communicate
| complex ideas while the connective tissue disappears
| effortlessly into the background. But in the hands of a less
| skilled writer complex language is usually worse on balance:
| they don't understand that prose should always be economical,
| that less is almost always more, and many really do suffer from
| "the false impression that [they are] saying more than [they]
| actually are." Whether they're writing flowery romance fiction
| or technical manuals, they get high on their own supply without
| considering that writing is first and foremost a tool to convey
| meaning.
|
| The "mercurial Spaniard" bit seems fine out of context.
| However, _in_ context it had better be clear who that person
| actually is.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I speak as I speak and write as I write. There need be no
| competition between the two. What Graham is doing here is
| reducing two very different media to one.
|
| I love the rich complexity of language you can find in any book
| by Gene Wolfe. Much of how he writes allows him to communicate
| two truths in one thick sentence or leave us puzzling over a
| philosophy. I'd never expect or insist Wolfe to speak as he
| wrote. It would be a crime to his works and a crime to many
| others'.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| No, don't. Your writing will read like a transcript of a podcast.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| When you talk you talk custom calibrating to who and the
| environment (place and time). When you write that expands to a
| whole lot more diversity of mindsets. As much as I like and agree
| with many points that PG publishes, as general advice I'd say
| this is terrible advice adding that it would be okay advice if it
| would have been more modest, as in _Blog Like You Talk_ for
| example.
| gmuslera wrote:
| For a moment I thought that the article was about using phonetic
| language when writing in English, that may have some sense
| noticing sound alike words that may not be always obvious for the
| speaker.
|
| But regarding using a different way to express yourself in
| written and spoken forms, the media, the context and the timing
| matters. There are some things that we may rely on gestures or
| attitude that are not transmitted so easily in written form. Is
| not the same talking to friends face to face, with all the
| context you have with them, than to white sheet of paper. And you
| have time, you are not pressed by the people you are talking to
| to deliver the right word right now, you can make pauses, you can
| check for the right expression, you can rewrite what you wrote.
|
| It is not so simple, it have its own advantages, but it is not
| for everything and everyone at all times.
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