[HN Gopher] The day you became a better writer (2007)
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The day you became a better writer (2007)
Author : sherilm
Score : 18 points
Date : 2023-05-14 21:31 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dilbertblog.typepad.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dilbertblog.typepad.com)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _The Day You Became a Better Writer by Scott Adams_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953775 - March 2017 (4
| comments)
|
| _The Day You Became a Better Writer (2007)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13673276 - Feb 2017 (1
| comment)
| amelius wrote:
| Glad to see it didn't involve LLMs.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend "the boy
| hit the ball" quicker than "the ball was hit by the boy." Both
| sentences mean the same, but it's easier to imagine the object
| (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that
| way.
|
| My understanding was that that words are typically ordered
| differently in other languages, is that true? That would seem to
| disprove the idea that "all brains work this way" (although it
| may be how the brains of native english speakers work).
| dmurray wrote:
| Words are ordered differently in other languages, but it's an
| extremely rare language where it's standard to put the object
| before the subject.
|
| Wikipedia says that 96% of studied human languages, covering
| over 99% of the population, have the subject before the object
| [0].
|
| So it may not be an absolute, but there does seem to be
| something fundamental about subject-object being the more
| natural order.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject%E2%80%93verb%E2%80%93o...
| cocacola1 wrote:
| I think the general advice in English has been to write in
| active voice ("the boy hit the ball") rather than passive ("the
| ball was hit by the boy.") As I understand it: the subject is
| acting on the object - in that order - instead of the object
| being acted upon by the subject - again, in that order.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| For what it's worth, I often find myself defending the
| passive voice in various contexts. I don't know why the Style
| Tsars decided to hate in that one, but it's really not
| universally bad.
| taosx wrote:
| I'm bilingual and a lot of times if I speak/write fast without
| post-processing my thoughts I get the order of the words mixed
| up to the other language. And yes, words are ordered
| differently from language to language (ex. french / english).
| eks391 wrote:
| > I get the order of the words mixed up to the other
| language.
|
| I'm trying to piece whether this would be anicdotal evidence
| for or against the previous statement of
|
| > All brains work that way.
|
| Since there are many ways this could be occuring, would you
| say that you are ... * putting the 2nd language in the order
| of your native language (or opposite) * putting word order in
| active voice (or passive) regardless of which language you
| are speaking * or putting the words in the order of whichever
| language has been dominate at the time. Like if you are
| somewhere where you mostly have been speaking Language A, and
| suddenly switch to Language B, you accidentally use Language
| A grammar
| rektide wrote:
| I need to be more observant of what writing I like. I'd love to
| have a pocket anyzer that could tell me how much of this advice
| here creates things I like.
|
| I try to be much more mindful when I have real intent & want
| things done. But so much writing is an attempt to communicate
| unclear things, to explore, not convince. I have a hard time
| believing writing like this produces the things I like to read.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I used to think it was good prose, simplicity, clarity, etc. that
| matters most. Those do, but what matters more is finding the
| right audience that will be most receptive to your work. Try
| sharing a pro-Marxism article on an an-cap forum, or a pro-
| capitalism article in a Marxist forum, you're going to have a bad
| time, or at least create unnecessary obstacles to success.
|
| _Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don't write, "He was
| very happy" when you can write "He was happy." You think the word
| "very" adds something. It doesn't. Prune your sentences._
|
| By this logic, most popular writers and bloggers not be as
| successful as they are, such as Moldbug. Simple , strait-forward
| writing does not mean more successful, viral writing. If you're
| writing a how-to guide or an investment pitch, maybe simple is
| better, but expository writing does not need to be simple
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