Bad Habits Creeping into Your Writing?

When I was an industry analyst, my boss called it "throat clearing." Sometimes I do construct something that IMO serves as a nice intro even if some people here would prefer it to be "Just the facts, maam." But, yeah, I not infrequently just end up deleting a few paragraphs.

It is even worse in internet recipes. The authors tend to go on and on about their feelings, family and personal stories before finally getting to the point how to actually cook the dish. I usually have to skip several paragraphs.

On many of my favorite Youtube videos, that "excrutiating" warm-up is part of the appeal. It feels more like a mysterious build-up towards an exciting payoff, when done right. That can be generalized towards writing or any other media.

This can be a highly effective form of writing when done well.

A strong setup can certainly pull readers in. The problem is often most inexperienced writers use such a setup to clear away their "mind fog" and get to the point. And once the words are on the page it's hard to remove them (nobody wants wasted effort).

My guidance to new writers is always this: start with two bulleted items. First is a question or priming sentence. Second is the conclusion the reader will takeaway after reading what you've written.

Once you have those two bullet points you make them part of your first paragraph AND use them to structure the entirety of the piece (just add more bullet items between the first and second points).

> I know why this happens.

I don't think you've nailed it.

It's all calculated, just like that exquisite art piece someone crafted just for that article.

It's designed to string you along to keep you on that page, and to bloat the content so more ads can be inserted.

Also, don't forget that every word is also potentially a search-engine stuffer. Some verbiage is machine-generated for this purpose.

Not just in blogs, rambling, long winded style common at The Atlantic and New Yorker are excruciating too.

Also referring to personal anecdotes of random persons to further a point.

I also find the use of statistics/citing numbers from studies to prove a point, a most boring way to argue a point in writing.

> A single edit with the goal of ruthlessly eliminating every unnecessary word works wonders for any first draft.

"A single edit, eliminating unnecessary words, works wonders for any first draft."

It's a cheap shot (that I learned from Language Log) but if you're going to live by the sword...

> My own pet peeve in non-fiction, particularly the kind that appears on blogs: the excruciating warmup before the author finally gets to the point of the post.

Pet peeve of mine - If we could eliminate the "I appear to be talking about something happening today, but am actually talking about something that happened in 1840" article setup entirely, that would make me very happy. It was clever at first, but you can now usually see the setup coming a mile off.

I prefer the author's version.

What you have gained in brevity, you have lost many times over in tone, pace and depth.

The author's repetitions are not errors - they highlight his insistence. Additionally, despite ample pronoun use, his text is clear and illustrative of his point.

I bought Benjamin Dreyer (the author)'s book on writing style, and the arrogant title of his book alone should have been a red flag. I'd strognly recommend On Writing Well instead.

We do this here every time writing comes up. Engineers should not comment on writing.

Why stop there?

- Pronoun overuse bad. Write don't speak. When talking, many pronouns understandable. Not on paper. Avoid same pronoun for multiple people (same-sex romance especially difficult).

Or how about another:

- Pronouns bad. Write don't speak. Can speak many pronouns, not write. Same pronouns, multiple people? No. (Same-sex romance especially)

Making something shorter or "tighter" isn't necessarily better. Word count isn't everything.

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but that implies there's still wit left. There's lots of writing effects that can be lost through overediting, or following the "rules" too closely.

This is not intended to be a flame, but your example there, reads like a staccato-enamoured teenager mumbling into his bowl of fruit-loops in the morning, or alternatively, like you're reading back notes you copied off someone's powerpoint slide during a presentation.

Half of that is neither grammatically correct, nor complete sentences, and there is limited implicit or explicit relation or flow between your dot points.

Please never write like this.

Shortest isn’t always best. Writers have other concerns.

> Don't use acronyms for short names or phrases. "Department of Motor Vehicles" is a mouthful, but not much more of an eyeful than "DMV" after seeing it twice.

I find this much harder to scan than the acronym, especially when the acronym is common.

Can you explain why? The phase allows you, after having made a point, to invert that point then suggest an alternative explanation or perspective.

I read a few of the posts in the search results, and "That being said" felt natural in many cases to join sometimes contradictory positions or different degrees of the same position together into one fluid thought.

Someone can cringe at anyone. Without offering critique, insight, or alternative it feels hollow though.

I have the same cringe. I think it comes from feeling inserted as a pretense to authority by writing style. Other examples I cringe at: The use of the word "titular", the phrase "abc cum def", ... For whatever reason they sound pretentious like the author is using them to show off, not to actually inform.

Some others are "I've said it once and I'll say it again", "as I said/wrote/posted/blogged before". Those seem to suggest the author is assuming they are famous/popular enough that their previous content has been read. Of course you could look at it as they are just suggesting you go read their previous post but for whatever reason that specific way of saying it comes across less as info and more as "of course you read my previous post".

I'm aware this is a personal opinion with no basis in reality.

There's https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/

and

https://english.stackexchange.com/

I'm not entirely sure what would be on a literature GitHub.

Wikipedia, sort of. Certainly in terms of devotion to openness, collaboration, etc. Haven't heard of a similar project for essays or fiction.

Even worse is the dissonance that comes when you consider that the author is treating this like a celebration of pop-culture that he loves, while in-universe this is the result of incredibly poor and culturally oppressed people desperately memorizing a dead guy's favorite stuff to try and get all the wealth he stumbled into and then hoarded until his death.

I think this goes either way. In referencing these things, you alienate an audience that hasn't seen them, but I can think of a lot of artists with small but dedicated followings that do this. If a demographic identifies with your taste in e.g. movies, they will keep reading because they feel like they identify more with you by proxy.

Reading Humboldt's Gift, by Saul Bellow, I could have made a gigantic list of things I had never read or often even heard of, and still left out about half the references I didn't see because I didn't know they were references.

The book is basically an elaborate setup for "nostalgia and trivia save the world", so I'm pretty sure this is an example of an author deliberately flaunting a rule and trying to make it work rather than stumbling into it accidentally. As someone that loves nerding out about various media, I liked reading a book for once about characters that did too. (I'd like to see that more, but hopefully as less of a center-stage beating-the-reader-over-the-head-with-it sort of way in the future.)

I think this can go both ways. If it's a constant stream of references, it can be obnoxious and feel like showing off. On the other hand, an occasional reference can give life to character without going out of your way to do it.

I don't know the best way to tell you that your fly is down, but... 'well'. You write well.

I believe you probably write "well", unless you were being ironic.