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Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

My own writing style, for better or worse, tends to hover around a sixth-grade reading level, but I love experiencing authors who have distinct voices, and I especially appreciate ones who have the courage to break out all of the five dollar words and obscure metaphors.

In our anti-intellectual culture, doing that really risks mockery (case in point), but I think sophisticated, complex writing can illuminate in ways other styles can't, and it's just a fun obstacle course for the reader's language center.

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>anti-intellectual culture

I agree- I really wish there wasn't such a stigma against, as you phrased it, "five-dollar words". I love reading older writing because (maybe without the internet and things like /r/iamverysmart?) they seem drastically less afraid to say exactly what they want to, in the way they want to.

There's also an anachronistic charm to them I guess, but I think the word-choice-freedom is still a big factor.

to be fair, a good portion of /r/iamverysmart is not just about using fancy words, but also about misusing them or using them to present yourself as better/smarter than other people

That comment is in no way 6th grade level writing.

I think calling clear and understandable writing for "anti-intellectual" is the stupidest thing I have heard in a long time.

I agree with your sentiment that writings rich in vocabulary can be a "fun obstacle course" but if you have an actual message you want to convey, it is usually not a good idea to hide it behind an obstacle course.

> I think calling clear and understandable writing for "anti-intellectual" is the stupidest thing I have heard in a long time.

"Clear and understandable" to who? Communication in general, and writing in particular, usually has a target audience. If your audience can grok[1] it, go for it!

As an extreme example, you cannot write a "clear and understandable" PhD thesis in Linguistics while avoiding five-dollar words (to borrow the term).

I think XKCD's "up-goer five" is a suitable counter argument against words that are too simple to clearly communicate complex ideas succinctly. Jargon has its place in language.

1. Meta-excercise: attempt to use the word 'grok' in casual conversation with a non-techie.

> I think XKCD's "up-goer five" is a suitable counter argument against words that are too simple to clearly communicate complex ideas succinctly. Jargon has its place in language.

Are you saying up-goer five is a good example of simple word usage or a bad example?

Anyway, parent poster is talking about how we should add rare and hard-to-understand words to make reading a more mentally challenging exercise as opposed to using words that describes the subject matter clearly and concisely, using the simplest words and phrasings that can adequately convey your message.

Your "extreme example" is abused by thousands and thousands of academics as an excuse for poor, hard to read and hard to understand academic writing. You can in fact write clear and concisely in a phd thesis. But since the author assumes the reader has a large background knowledge in the field, it will still not be accessible to the average reader.

> Are you saying up-goer five is a good example of simple word usage or a bad example?

A bad example (because of the resulting verbosity and inexactness). It's an example of how simple words are inadequate to explain complex ideas succinctly

> You can in fact write clear and concisely in a phd thesis

You ignored the rest of my sentence. I did not say [you cannot write a "clear and understandable" PhD thesis]. I said [you cannot write a "clear and understandable" PhD thesis in Linguistics while avoiding five-dollar words]

> But since the author assumes the reader has a large background knowledge in the field, it will still not be accessible to the average reader

Who exactly is the "average reader" of academic writing?

It sounds to me like you are making a blanket statement: "jargon is bad". I am saying jargon provides useful ways of expression.

There's a nice table with $5 and $.5 words here:

https://www.prismnet.com/~hcexres/style/pompous_words.html

First time encountering the expression for me. It's not about jargon, as far as I can tell.

> That comment is in no way 6th grade level writing.

No, but the first couple of paragraphs of my most recent blog post[1] are.

> I think calling clear and understandable writing for "anti-intellectual" is the stupidest thing I have heard in a long time.

Yeah, that would be pretty stupid. Good thing I didn't do that, I guess.

> I agree with your sentiment that writings rich in vocabulary can be a "fun obstacle course" but if you have an actual message you want to convey, it is usually not a good idea to hide it behind an obstacle course.

Sure, but I think you're hinting that the "but if" part is a given in all writing. I mostly do technical writing where my aim is to inform. I also try to entertain since it helps people stick around long enough to be informed.

But that's a pretty narrow slice of the kinds of things people can express in language. Think about poetry, satire, koans, philosophy, and metafiction. Imagine what little would be left of House of Leaves after a technical book editor had their way with it.

A huge part of the experience of reading is decoding the author's language back into your own mentalese. For many authors, like mine, the goal is generally to make that process as easy and transparent as possible to help their reader focus their attention on the unadorned ideas.

But some of my favorite reading experiences were ones that required me to stretch my brain, or that juxtaposed a series of words together in such a surprising, novel way that I felt I'd seen a new color for the first time. Some ideas have lodged permanently in my head not because the author shot them into my skull with the ease of a crossbow bolt but because I had to tear apart the author's words with my bare hands and stuff each dripping piece of knowledge in my own mouth.

[1]: http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/09/08/the-hardest-pro...

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