[HN Gopher] Sentence Structure for Writers (2017)
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Sentence Structure for Writers (2017)
Author : onemind
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-11-13 22:17 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.oup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.oup.com)
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| "Are the first two paragraphs a blockquote? If so, it's odd to
| see the author describe themselves as acclaimed in the third
| person"
|
| -- yakshaving_jgt, reputable HN commenter
| treetalker wrote:
| They are styled as a block quotation, but only to set them off
| from the rest of the text. It appears that the editor added
| them as an overview to help the reader decide whether to
| continue and to more quickly grasp the overall point.
| dahart wrote:
| Out of curiosity... why does the oddness depend on whether the
| paragraphs are blockquote? It would be less odd without the
| blockquote mark on the left? Are you certain that someone else
| didn't write that sentence? And what's odd about it? Even if he
| did write it, isn't it fairly standard practice to for people
| to write their own introductions & accolades in third person?
| I've seen it a lot, and the point, for better or worse, is to
| make it sound like someone else wrote it. In many cases authors
| of books, articles, talks, etc. are expected to provide their
| own introduction, and it's kinder than expecting someone else
| to to know your history or say nice things about you.
| BoostandEthanol wrote:
| Am I missing something here or does the very first example break
| this article's own point?
|
| "It was nice of John and Mary to come and visit us the other
| day," is 8 words before the verb come.
|
| "For John and Mary to come and visit us the other day was nice,"
| is only five, focused solely on the subject with no additional
| information (how the author felt about their visit)
|
| Yet personally the second one reads easier for me, so I guess
| that reinforces the point to me specifically? Although I agree
| it's unusual.
| leobg wrote:
| It's not about the verb. It's about the point. The "weight" of
| the parts. Here, the point was that it "was nice" that they
| came visit.
| pm215 wrote:
| The main verb in the sentence in both cases is "was". "come" is
| in a subclause, and it's that subclause that is the "weightier"
| part of the sentence that the author says should come later in
| the sentence.
|
| Incidentally, the two sentences don't really say the same thing
| -- the first is saying John and Mary did something nice for the
| speaker, and the second is so weirdly phrased it's hard to
| figure out what it's intending to say but it's hard to
| interpret it as having the same meaning as the first. It would
| need to end "...was nice of them" to be that, I think.
| phillc73 wrote:
| Why is the clunky construct "to come and visit" even used?
|
| "It was nice of John and Mary to visit us the other day"
| dahart wrote:
| Come and visit makes it sound like they traveled to be there,
| where just visit might be the neighbor stopping by. It's
| subtle and ambiguous, but I do see valid use for come and
| visit.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I believe it is for emphasis. Instead of a big deal. It is a
| big ginormous deal that John and Mary would come all the way
| from their country estate to visit us their poor relations in
| our humble house.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| You can drill down more. The come in "come and visit" is a
| colloquial redundancy and the other day is mostly redundant,
| unless they had another visit that was more recent. "It was
| nice of john and mary to visit/john and mary's visit was nice."
|
| This makes the difference between the two sentences very
| pronounced.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| The intent is that something was _nice_.
|
| English speakers prefer to say it was nice of <very long
| phrase>. Instead of <very long phrase> was nice. The <very long
| phrase> is John and Mary to come and visit us the other day.
|
| My theory is that by keeping the subject and verb short, it has
| less cognitive load on the listener as they know early where
| the conversation is going. In other words bottom line up front.
|
| For example, this sounds strange to my ear. The right honorable
| gentleman who had served in the US House of Representatives and
| had just been floated for an even higher ranking office has
| been dogged by accusations of sexual impropriety.
|
| I would phrase it as. Although dogged by accusations of sexual
| impropriety, the right honorable gentleman has just been
| floated for an even higher ranking office after serving in the
| US House of Representatives.
| motohagiography wrote:
| In the comparison of these two, they say the former is more
| natural:
|
| > The trouble began suddenly on the thirty-first of October 1998.
|
| > The trouble began on the thirty-first of October 1998 suddenly.
|
| sure, but natural isn't what a writer who is trying to persuade
| is going for. 'suddenly' in this example has a polarized value.
| as an adverb observation it inserts the writer into the story,
| which either has tremendous meaning, or literally none at all. I
| would even say that the second example has a more masculine voice
| than the first because the "trouble began suddenly" usage is
| careless, non-commital, and low risk.
|
| A lot of what makes reading satisfying is pushing values onto the
| readers mental stack and popping them off in surprising ways, not
| unlike comedy setups or waiting for the drop. while I can be a
| bit turgid, I would have written this as:
|
| "The trouble began on the thirty-first of October 1998,
| suddenly."
|
| Adding the comma gives you suspense to resolve by popping it off
| with an example of suddenness. e.g.
|
| "The doctors said it was a possible side effect of the seizure
| medication, but it was as though a resevoir of something stable
| and forgotten had breached. Victims in collisions with head
| injuries often have behavioural changes, they said, but he was
| not a victim, or even a perpetrator. what is the opposite, a
| protagonist? 'shopping cart jousting' was the line in his file
| adjacent to a generic billing code reserved for cases of
| decidedly other. Not a victim, but perhaps, a Champion."
|
| the comma pushes us down into the story, and the whole stack can
| be popped by the champion punchline.
| malicka wrote:
| > I would even say that the second example has a more masculine
| voice
|
| You could also make the argument that the second is more
| feminine, as it is non-committal and low-risk, something
| indicative of "hedging" that women often do.
| youssefabdelm wrote:
| Really interesting points. Also, I find most or even any
| absolute determinations of what makes 'good' writing less a
| signal of 'good writing', but more so a 'style' of writing that
| you can choose to take elements from or not. Just like any
| piece of writing. There is an implied "to me" with all of these
| things... to me at least.
| pm215 wrote:
| You do need the comma, though -- otherwise it just seems weird.
| And the article does say it "could easily turn up in a novel".
| I think the reason it works to surprise the reader in the right
| context is exactly because the first word order is the normal,
| non-marked, way to say things. If you don't _intend_ the
| special effect then using the non-natural word order isn 't
| good writing, it's just unclear.
| dahart wrote:
| You can get the stack effect in your story, if that's what you
| want, without imposing it on your sentences. There is a strong
| and not always correct belief that saving surprises to the end
| is both fun and clear to the reader, that everything should be
| written as though it's the big reveal climax of a mystery.
| However, unless you're a professional writer, that easily can
| (and often does) come off as muddy and forced.
|
| I used to feel the same way, that surprises should be saved to
| the end, for general non-mystery-thriller writing -- including
| technical writing. I've changed my mind and agree with the
| author now. I think it's better, in both writing and
| conversation, to put what you want to say up front, to start
| with the punchline, and let the reader drill down rather than
| pulling them down. It's better to use fewer clauses, and make
| sentences more straightforward. I often don't succeed at this,
| so don't take my comment as an example of practicing what I
| preach. ;)
|
| Forcing little surprises everywhere to me feels like one of
| those curved sidewalks in a park. They're maybe cute once, the
| first time, and then forever after, especially when you're
| trying to get somewhere, they are obnoxious and slow me down.
|
| Personally I prefer 'the trouble began suddenly' because
| putting suddenly at the end is splitting the verb and adverb
| apart and shoving a long subject in the middle. To me it feels
| much better to place suddenly next to the verb began that it
| applies to. I do not agree with the claim that either sentence
| feels more meaningful or that there's a gendered voice. That's
| completely subjective and power of suggestion. You could argue
| exactly the opposite, and it wouldn't be any more right or
| wrong.
| motohagiography wrote:
| using the adverb at all is weak, as either it contains a
| critical idea or it doesn't, and I'd never use one in a
| business context because it's bargaining. the aesthetic
| qualities of a masculine voice aren't zero sum either, and we
| know it when we read it. many men write and speak
| effeminately or like boys, and some women use a more
| masculine voice beautifully. sex absolutely yields an
| aesthetic value. people can't draw a little heart above it
| when they dot an 'i' anymore so they use an exclamation
| point. instead of bubble letters they use rote phrases that
| signal their in-group status. e.g. someone who uses the word
| problematic may be nominally, but is probably not
| persuasively a heterosexual man as the jargon is an artifact
| of academic polari. these are aesthetic effects that are
| downstream of the writers experience.
|
| otherwise, I agree with you for anything that isn't fictional
| or witful.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "suddenly' in this example has a polarized value. as an adverb
| observation it inserts the writer into the story, which either
| has tremendous meaning, or literally none at all. I would even
| say that the second example has a more masculine voice than the
| first because the "trouble began suddenly" usage is careless,
| non-commital, and low risk."
|
| It does not sound masculine to me whatsoever.
|
| It just sounds awkward.
|
| Suddenly, the trouble began... The trouble suddenly began...
|
| Each sound more normal to me with the second one being the more
| natural
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The entire article's advice strikes me as biased towards one type
| of reader at the expense of all others.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Can you elaborate for plebes like myself?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, I can try to elaborate. I don't see why you
| referenced plebes. I wasn't trying to be elitist
|
| The advice assumes that people process information the same
| way that the author does. I'm sure a great many people do.
| But I'm also sure other people do not. After all, specialized
| and scientific writing did not evolve into a difficult to
| understand sentence structure for no reason.
|
| Consider the last point. The author thinks that the
| description of the person dying/playing for Real Madrid is
| too long because he spends the entire time waiting for a
| verb. That's subjective. I would not have minded more
| information about the person before finding out that whatever
| happened happened.
| yesfitz wrote:
| I often try to break out complex ideas into multiple sentences,
| ordered by importance.
|
| Modifying the author's last example: "A jug was on the table. The
| jug was big, red, and full of milk."
|
| It might sound like a children's book, but since I mostly write
| emails, I can expect the recipients to read the subject line, one
| question or request, and one sentence of context. Any more
| context is for the interested reader.
|
| I was taught to write that way in journalism classes (inverted
| pyramid), but it looks like "Bottom Line Up-Front" is a better
| fit for 2-way communications.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| My attempt ... On the table was a big red jug maybe full of
| milk but it was screaming BIG HEAVY DO NOT TOUCH and if you
| break it lashings by tongue and angry voices will be followed
| by lashings by a heavy leather belt and tears streaming down
| not so much due to pain but the needless humiliation of it all.
| o11c wrote:
| Grammar and style are ultimately just two ends of a spectrum. The
| greatest writing sin is ambiguity (including partial ambiguity
| due to the possibility of mishearing or similarity to common
| errors); improper placement of weight means having ambiguity
| until the reader completes the sentence.
|
| Weight is harmed by the widespread "rule" against using the
| passive voice (which is as bad a rule as "said is dead"). I'd say
| that topic (vs comment) is most important, then agent (vs
| action/patient), with subject (vs predicate/object) last and thus
| not sensible to make rules about.
| domoregood wrote:
| Page throws up a bad gateway error for me. Archive link for
| anyone else this is happening to:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240725094047/https://blog.oup....
| canjobear wrote:
| The principle of end weight is a special case of a more general
| principle: sentences are usually easier to understand when
| syntactically related words are close to each other, all else
| being equal. A more precise version of Strunk and White's "keep
| related words together".
|
| The interesting thing is that in English this generally pushes
| you to put short phrases before long phrases, as described in the
| article, but in languages with other word orders you can get the
| opposite effect. For example in Japanese the verb is always the
| last thing in a sentence, and so the way to keep related words
| together is actually to put long phrases before short phrases. So
| you'll often get sentences with structures like [[very long
| object] [short subject] verb].
| yshui wrote:
| I (kind of) know multiple languages and they all have different
| word orders. I find it interesting that my brain is able to
| switch from expecting information to be received in one order
| to another. Each word order feels normal to me in its
| respective language, mix them and they will feel weird. It's
| like my brain is able to process information in different
| orders, but there are feature flags to enable them based on the
| language used.
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