[HN Gopher] I give you feedback on your blog post draft but you ...
___________________________________________________________________
I give you feedback on your blog post draft but you don't send it
to me (2021)
Author : Tomte
Score : 208 points
Date : 2024-09-12 10:10 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mango.pdf.zone)
(TXT) w3m dump (mango.pdf.zone)
| SPBS wrote:
| entertaining and very true. I will be sending this article to
| people next time I see them waffling on something.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Fantastic advice, packaged in a fun and relatable way. Accurate.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Funnily enough, the article had too many headings for me. I'm
| scared of Wall of Texts as much as the next netizen, but I
| need... text fences? Something a bit more than Heading-Paragraph
| repeated.
| benterix wrote:
| I agree, but that's their way of breaking quite a long article
| into chunks that others would find digestible.
| cubefox wrote:
| It also helps that they include 8 pictures. They break things
| up, even if they are otherwise unnecessary.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Their second heading is the same size as the first one, which
| made me think it's already the next blog post. IMHO, they're
| too big regardless. They're fine as a title but a
| (sub)heading doesn't need a 40px font.
| ximm wrote:
| I noticed that I automatically switched to only reading
| headings when the sections were super short. I guess there is
| some kind of rule here: The more headings you use, the less
| people will read your paragraphs.
| exikyut wrote:
| This reminds me uncannily of the anecdote from news media:
|
| 1. Say what you're about to say
|
| 2. Say it
|
| 3. Say what you just said
|
| I read it a while back so unfortunately I don't have a source.
| freetonik wrote:
| I've heard this is a standard advice given to high school
| students in North America writing essays.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Fundamentals I picked up from years of writing on the Internet:
|
| - Shorter sentences
|
| In general, you should aim to write sentences with 8-13 words
| each.
|
| - Shorter words
|
| You may think of this as "dumbing-down" your writing, but you
| don't get bonus points for saying utilizing instead of using.
|
| - One idea per sentence
|
| In other words, don't write non sequiturs.
|
| - One concept per paragraph
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Quoting Umberto Eco: "You are not Proust. Do not write long
| sentences."[1]
|
| [1]https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-
| write-...
| 0xEF wrote:
| It _is_ dumbing down. Let 's not dance around that particular
| bush. Shorter sentences and words with fewer syllables is why
| mainstream media has a following. Simplistic messaging for the
| simpleton masses.
|
| So yes, your advice is great if you want to sell a blog. It's
| terrible if you actually want to write.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| The point of a blog is, more often than not, to communicate
| something. It's not a writing exercise. If writing using a
| simple style helps you communicate to more people more easily
| then that's a win.
|
| Also, "simplistic messaging for the simpleton masses" is a
| terrible way to look at the current situation if you ask me.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I don't like it anymore than you do,
|
| Which is why my blog is a "writing exercise," as you put
| it. I believe people can be more engaged with their media,
| but it is admittedly easier to go for the slogan-style
| messaging nobody has to think too hard about. I dream of a
| world where everyone has valuable, well-considered input
| and I will continue to write as though I live in that world
| until we get there.
|
| Asking someone who wants to practice the art of writing to
| do otherwise is no different than asking a painter to just
| make stick figures.
| gljiva wrote:
| GP comment says that more often than not the blogger
| isn't an artist. I'd like to add that not only blog-
| sellers can benefit from the advice above: if someone is
| drawing an instruction manual, making an expressionist
| painting is counterproductive to the totally valid goal
| of conveying information as clearly as possible and in
| the most digestible manner. Stick to the stick figures if
| that's your goal.
|
| And if you write primarily for the sake of writing, I
| don't think anyone is telling _you_ to change your
| approach in a way that doesn't fit _your_ goals. The
| advice are for others.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| You're missing the point I'm trying to make and that's
| probably on me because I didn't explain it very clearly.
|
| You wrote
|
| > So yes, your advice is great if you want to sell a
| blog. It's terrible if you actually want to write.
|
| The advice has nothing to do with selling a blog--
| whatever that means--and more to do with communication.
| Writing, especially on the web, is more often than not a
| communication tool and not an exercise in rhetoric.
|
| And the point of communication is to, well, communicate.
| Using complex language doesn't take you closer to that
| goal. If you write 4000 words when 200 can be used to
| convey the same message and the result is that fewer
| people end up reading what you wrote then your
| communication is not effective.
|
| Now, if what you want is to write as an artistic
| expression then by all means write 4000 words or even
| 40000. That's totally fine and nobody is stopping you
| from doing that obviously.
| ekianjo wrote:
| its not dumbing down. most people have no clue how to write
| long AND clear sentences. so in practice this mitigates bad
| writing for most of us.
| _puk wrote:
| Bear in mind that not everyone is a native speaker. Using
| simpler words ensures the widest audience.
|
| I agree that not every piece of writing has the same intended
| audience, but I take umbrage at the use of the term
| "singleton masses".
| 0xEF wrote:
| I admit my phrasing was harsh, but I stand by it with a
| caveat that I could have expressed it better. I personally
| do not think of the masses as "simpletons," but I believe
| our media and product manufacturers most certainly do.
| There should have been a semi-colon between those two
| sentences, or something.
|
| My own writing could use more work, but I suppose that is
| the point of practicing it as an art.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I find the appeal to non-native speakers to be patronizing
| in itself. English is my fourth language and I understand
| long words and complex sentence structure just fine.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Not everyone's good at languages. I really appreciate it
| when people write simply, so I only have to look a few
| thousand words up in the dictionary to understand it.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| You can have a very high level discussion with remarkably
| simple language. Plato was very good at this, but it's
| something you see in a lot of good communicators.
|
| I remember I was struck reading a graduate level physics
| textbook co-authored by Feynman when I was a student. I was
| amazed how much clearer the language was than almost anything
| else I'd read at that level. It wasn't that it only used
| simple words, but it only used enough of them to be precise
| where precision was needed, and it took the time to introduce
| concepts even though they were expected to be known to the
| reader already, just as a refresher as to exactly what the
| discussion was about.
|
| The clarity comes from the fact while we typically share
| opinions about what common and simple terms mean, we may have
| slightly different ideas associated with more complex words,
| especially with regards to intangible subjects. Plato's
| treatment of the concept of Justice is a good example of
| this. We all think we know what the word means, but to
| actually pin the meaning down is quite a task.
|
| But honestly, Plato was dumbing it down, Feynman was dumbing
| it down, you should dumb it down too. A fundamental truth of
| communication is that you know the idea in your head better
| than your audience. You can't treat them as peers that
| understand what you are trying to say until you've clearly
| said it.
|
| The problem in any communication is to get your idea across
| as vividly as possible.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I like your examples, but I disagree. Having also read
| Plato and many of the speculative writings that address his
| work, much of it is still up for debate, especially when
| context is not understood. Feynman, whom I enjoy as well,
| often said some really nonsensical things that he probably
| thought had a lot of philosophical depth (I think
| specifically of _The Pleasure of Finding Things Out_ which
| is a nice feel-good piece but does not bring much meat to
| the table afterall). To be fair to him and your example, he
| did absolutely have a knack for breaking down scientific
| complexities to terms non-scientists could grasp, which I
| applaud. Yes, let 's do more of _that_.
|
| So, sure, there is a time where simpler language is an
| exercise in how well you _know_ a thing. Being able to
| break it down into simpler terms makes sense. But we do
| have to be careful with the language. It 's dynamic, as you
| mention, often subject to interpretation that could lead to
| misunderstanding or improper handling of an idea. I did it
| in my initial reply.
|
| That said, one must know one's audience and subject, I
| think. Am I conveying a concept from physics to non-
| technical individuals who might not care what I have to say
| in the first place? Sure, simplify. Am I telling a story
| about a personal experience or some relatable problem in my
| field? Expect a detailed and nuanced picture to be painted.
|
| Thanks for the comment, it gave me something to think
| about.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| No form of writing benefits from purposefully making it
| longer and harder to read. You might be writing about complex
| topics, but you still want to strive towards simplicity. As
| simple as possible, but no simpler.
| interstice wrote:
| There's a difference between making something needlessly
| complicated and just using meaningful words for the task at
| hand. The difference between someone who writes eloquently
| and someone who just writes well, one might say.
| apeescape wrote:
| Maybe no form of _non-fiction_ writing benefits from it,
| but that's not the only type of writing there is. Let me
| link a clip from Dead Poets Society regarding this:
| https://youtu.be/WfZu-Um9PV0?feature=shared
| tomrod wrote:
| People post fiction on the internet?
| nemomarx wrote:
| Yeah, well the time? Plenty of sites dedicated to that.
| You get feedback on your writing quickly, although if
| it's serialized there's some drawbacks for pacing.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Web fiction as a draft has essentially become the norm
| for light novel type books (<300 pages ultimately
| published as epub)
|
| Random example: https://www.ironteethserial.com/dark-
| fantasy-story/story-int...
| strken wrote:
| The poetry I like is by nature beautiful. Beauty is not
| created by taking a thesaurus and shaking it upside-down
| over your keyboard.
|
| _Are_ you morose? Perhaps you are sad, _very_ sad in
| fact, but find that you are neither glum nor morose, not
| disheartened nor heartbroken, not anguished nor stricken,
| not unsure of how you will go on nor distressed, and
| neither grieved nor aggrieved nor yet maddened with
| grief. Perhaps your feelings of sadness are to be
| expressed quietly and without intruding.
| apeescape wrote:
| I'm sure there's a sensible middleground between never
| using big words vs. using them only to add complexity.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I think a better wording would be to think of writing the
| same way as programming. It needs a certain level of
| complexity to be correct, but it should never have any more
| than strictly necessary.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >It is dumbing down.
|
| A dumb man says little with few words.
|
| A smart man says a lot with many words.
|
| A wise man says the least.
| smatija wrote:
| "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from
| big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I
| know them all right. But there are older and simpler and
| better words, and those are the ones I use." - Hemingway
| jnordwick wrote:
| "I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words
| and brief sentences. That is the way to write English--it is
| the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff
| and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an
| adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most
| of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when
| they are close together. They give strength when they are
| wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery
| habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of
| as any other vice." -- Mark Twain
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Writing simpler and shorter sentences doesn't always mean you
| are dumbing down. Before my tech/IT career, I had plans to be
| a lawyer and majored in Philosophy.
|
| People might find it surprising that students were explicitly
| told to write as simply as possible. I come to prefer this
| way of writing and its a clear benefit in written
| communication.
|
| It looks like there are some assumptions on why someone would
| write a blog. If my goal was to get the most visibility with
| my blog, I would choose a simpler writing style because I
| think its the most efficient.
|
| More long form or flowery prose can still be posted, if that
| is what your audience is looking for.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Hemingway wept.
| irjustin wrote:
| > you don't get bonus points for saying utilizing instead of
| using
|
| Except on HN, because we're above it all.
| bregma wrote:
| Even then I find myself often mentally substituting the
| bafflegab technobabble with the well-worn but still useful
| English words that would have clearly expressed exactly the
| same ideas to someone half a century ago. And likely still
| half a century hence.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Communities has expectations: ~$ su - roman
| zug_zug wrote:
| You're not explicitly saying to dumb it down, but I'd be
| curious if this advice would scale to genuinely deep content.
|
| The cynical hypothesis is that people don't want to think about
| what you wrote, and if you put enough pretty pictures and big
| fonts that even people who didn't pay much attention will have
| a good time.
|
| I'd be curious if perhaps a seminal blog post (e.g. one of
| PG's) could be rewritten in this style without sounding
| reductive and oversimplified.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I'd be curious if this advice would scale to genuinely deep
| content.
|
| For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_wo.
| ..
| brk wrote:
| _Most_ blog posts are not deep content though. Even from
| people that might be considered experts on the topic they are
| writing about. Deep content is still more the arena of
| whitepapers /e-books/conference presentations.
| crooked-v wrote:
| When someone can write about deep content in a simple way,
| they really understand it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > - One idea per sentence
|
| > In other words, don't write non sequiturs.
|
| That doesn't follow. A non sequitur isn't "two or more ideas
| per sentence".
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Yeah, that was quite a non-sequitur :)
| doubled112 wrote:
| I assumed that was a bonus tip.
| pjc50 wrote:
| See also Samuelson
| https://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers/goodwriting....
| whose first two points are "have a point" and "get to the
| point".
| zoky wrote:
| > You may think of this as "dumbing-down" your writing, but you
| don't get bonus points for saying utilizing instead of using.
|
| Can you please summarize this? We ain't got all day to read
| this 21-word-long textwall.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Using sophisticated words doesn't make your thoughts
| sophisticated. Sophisticated thoughts make your words
| sophisticated.
|
| You learn a wide vocabulary so you know how many words of the
| right kind to say.
|
| Or in other words: A dumb man knows nothing, a smart man
| knows everything, a wise man knows he knows nothing.
| fire_lake wrote:
| Sophisticated structures made of simple words can work
| wonders. Be sure not to overdo it.
| michaelt wrote:
| Short word good. Big word only good if short word can't word
| like big word.
| cubefox wrote:
| Also:
|
| - Don't litter your piece with links. Readers often don't know
| where they lead, whether the linked information is important
| for understanding the article, and which links may be skipped
| safely. So each link will slow the reader down, and make it
| more likely that they stop reading the whole thing. Similar to
| an overly long piece.
|
| Better:
|
| - skip links that are not strictly necessary
|
| - replace links with short explanations of the core idea of the
| linked article, if possible (i.e. don't link to Wikipedia if
| you can quickly explain the concept in a sentence)
|
| - only include links in a way that makes it is clear what is
| explained in the link target, so readers know whether they even
| have to click on it or not
| skydhash wrote:
| Use foot notes or margin note. I don't mind links, but I open
| them in the backgroumd for further exploration, not while I'm
| reading the article. But foot notes work great for
| contextualization.
| cubefox wrote:
| I find footnotes slow me down as well because I'm compelled
| to read every single one of them. Though they are better
| than links.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The links help convey credibility and trust to the reader ;
| it's not expected that the reader will actually click them
| bityard wrote:
| My philosophy towards writing is remembering how I wrote the
| multitude of bullshit papers I was assigned in college classes
| and then doing the exact opposite.
|
| The vast majority of things that I was told to write about were
| objectively uninteresting and SHOULD have been summarized in a
| paragraph or two. So I padded those babies out with long words,
| meandering and passive phrasing, tangents, definitions, and so
| forth. I don't think any teacher or professor ever directly
| called me out for obviously sacrificing quality for
| correctness. But in hindsight, I rather wish they had.
|
| (There's probably a deeper story in here about how some parts
| of college actively prevent students from succeeding in real
| life.)
| paulpauper wrote:
| There are many people, myself included, who have tried every
| piece of writing advice under the sun, and it's still hit or
| miss, mostly miss. Writing is especially hard because it's
| impossible to predict what will turn the reader off even if
| meticulous care is taken. It's similar to opsec in that even
| when every precaution is taken there may still be holes you
| failed to anticipate but is obvious to the attacker.
| settsu wrote:
| But at what point does it become no longer "blog" and just
| generic "content"?
|
| _Personally_ , I'd strongly insist that the whole point of
| blogs was to do whatever the fuck you want.
|
| Because that was the point when they emerged: they democratized
| publishing the way the internet democratized the share and
| spread of information on a worldwide scale.
|
| For better *AND* (you better believe) worse.
|
| Now, if you're concerned about reach, engagement, monetization,
| etc., well that's a _related_ but absolutely distinct
| discussion.
| MrJohz wrote:
| This doesn't have to be about making your writing more
| generic. Both Mark Twain and George Orwell wrote about the
| need to be concise when writing, and you'd be hard-pressed to
| describe either of them as generic.
|
| For me, I write a blog because I want to communicate what I'm
| thinking to other people. If I didn't, I'd just write a
| journal and keep it next to my bed. Therefore the
| effectiveness (and affectiveness) of that communication is
| important to me. In my experience, doing that well means
| being concise, having a clear structure, and a lot of the
| other pieces of advice in this post.
| settsu wrote:
| The primary goal of any aspiring writer on any medium
| should first and foremost be to write.
|
| _Recommending_ certain guidelines or approaches is
| certainly fine. Self-reflection and self-improvement is
| usually an admirable goal but not at the cost of just doing
| the damn thing.
|
| And, frankly, invoking seasoned professional authors is
| just silly when the topic is amateur blogging.
|
| And let's not pretend unwarranted criticism--or even just
| unnecessary expectations--so often just ends up being
| unhelpful and literally counterproductive or, much worse, a
| form of gatekeeping.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _invoking seasoned professional authors is just silly
| when the topic is amateur blogging_
|
| It's all communication. Obviously there is nothing wrong
| with someone blogging haphazardly, just as there is
| nothing wrong with writing a web app in Brainfuck.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| I can't tell if there is any emotion (sadness) associated with
| those rules, but I've found, sadly, that those and more apply
| to business email. It didn't use to be that way, but now that
| folks don't even know what bottom posting is, much less are
| able to discuss the merits:
|
| - one idea per email
|
| - exec summary must be first ... don't lay out a case then
| summarize at the end
|
| - only 1 question per email
|
| if it's more complex than that, you need to break it up into a
| kind of detective clue-hunting trap sequence, where you ask
| each question in turn, in a multiple exchange thread. never try
| to shortcut it / condense into a single message.
|
| - it is acceptable for your signature to be multiples of the
| body size
| groby_b wrote:
| This is mostly advice for audience maximation, not for writing
| well.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I'm very much a fan of the inverted pyramid structure[1], which
| is alluded to in the post but not quite spelled out.
|
| You want the point of the article as early as possible, in the
| title or the first paragraph, and then you elaborate on why. This
| filters out people who aren't going to be interested, and piques
| the interest of those who will.
|
| You can also just stop reading at any point and will have gotten
| the most out of it anyway.
|
| Most annoying format of writing I know is the article that
| strings you along some meandering 40k word essay and you can
| barely find out what it's about until two thirds the way down.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
| layer8 wrote:
| One annoying feature of the inverted pyramid structure is that
| it often isn't clear to the reader. The reader reads on and
| things keep getting rehashed in more and more (not necessarily
| interesting) detail, and to the reader it's not clear that the
| article is effectively already done in its scope and no new
| point will be coming up (although they're not even halfway
| through the article), until they give up because it just keeps
| endlessly meandering on.
| Avalaxy wrote:
| This is how I feel about a lot of books, such as The Lean
| Startup. Technically, there's a new topic with every chapter,
| but after the first 100 pages or so I feel like I get the
| gist, and I'm not really learning much new.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| A lot of modern book publishing has turned into a bit of a
| bait and switch grift. You take 2 post-it notes worth of
| ideas and pad them out to 300 pages with tangentially
| related anecdotes, because on average people buy books
| online based on the title and the page count alone, and put
| them on a shelf for several years before they read them,
| meaning they can't return them by the time they find out.
| skydhash wrote:
| Which is why my first read is just skimming the book,
| marking important passages. Then I read just these
| passages, write notes down, and put the book away. But I
| often buy heavily discounted books.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Separating level of detail
|
| _Publications can avoid frustration from repetition related
| to the inverted pyramid structure by clearly splitting up the
| multiple levels of details they provide_ As you say the
| inverted pyramid structure can lead to repetition. If this
| isn 't made clear to the reader it can be confusing and
| frustrating for the reader. One common solution to this is to
| use a convention that clearly separates the levels of detail.
| In newspapers a common way of doing this is to first have a
| headline with the key point, then for the second level, a
| short summary in a different font, say italics, and finally
| the full article at the third level. In scientific articles,
| there is the title and abstract with similar functions. Books
| can have many levels, with a title, subtitle, summary on the
| back, foreword, preface and introductory chapter.
| pavon wrote:
| I despise the inverted pyramid structure, at least as it was
| practiced in most newspapers. Starting with the BLUF is good
| practice, but after that the article becomes a disjointed
| smattering of factual tidbits, quotes from random people,
| rehashing of previous information with no flow or continuity
| and the reader is left to piece together the story on their
| own.
|
| I much prefer writers who organize the information in an
| article according to what makes it easiest to understand and
| flows best. You still start with a brief summary, but then it
| diverges from inverted pyramid. Sometimes this means putting
| things in chronological order, which means mixing more
| important and less important information as you go. Other times
| it means giving background information early on which helps to
| understand later information, which inverse pyramid would would
| put at the very end.
|
| It means the article can't easily be edited by chopping off the
| end, and it puts the onus on the writer to decide what
| information to include and what to cut, what background to
| summarize and what to link, and how to organize the content.
| But the result is much more readable.
| amotinga wrote:
| I read the entire thing. that doesnt happen often.
| jraph wrote:
| If you write a recipe, don't forget to start the post by a long
| story that recounts your whole life and your grand parents'. A
| recipe without this doesn't taste good, and everybody is
| interested in your story. A few pages of this annoys nobody I
| know.
| komadori wrote:
| One time I was baking a cake from an online recipe, probably
| just after recipe sites discovered the importance of verbosity
| for SEO. I found myself struggling a bit because the recipe
| wasn't very clearly structured and was quite vague about
| several of the steps, but I managed to work something out and
| get it in the oven.
|
| It was only then that I discovered what I had been reading was
| an anecdote about one time the author had baked this cake, and
| the actual method was given below!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Who, what, where, when, why?
|
| Organize with inverted pyramid (most important information at the
| top).
|
| Avoid jargon and fancy words. Use examples.
|
| This is all basic stuff you'd learn in a journalism class. Does
| anyone teach that anymore?
| eigenblake wrote:
| What I don't see represented in this conversation is the idea
| that you can just write for personal satisfaction, or examine
| something you're personally interested in. Not everyone needs to
| have 10k+ monthly active readers. Not everything needs to be a
| rat race. Why don't we see blogging like exercise? Sure you'll
| have your body builders, but some people just go on walks, and no
| one is doing anything "wrong" they just have different goals.
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