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Comment by aabhay | Hacker News Reader

I think there are two sources of confirmation bias here:

1. People on HN are already primed to appreciate this style of writing. Simple. Precise. Direct. It suits a technical literal mind to have less ambiguity and fewer flourishes.

2. On the web, where each individual piece of writing is not meant to last as long, the writing style has become more casual. Consider the difference between your average Medium article versus your average academic research paper.

Both of these points considered, I disagree entirely with the premise. There can be value to dense, even perhaps enigmatic writing. I would say that the greatest works of English literature tend towards that direction (James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace).

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>People on HN are already primed to appreciate this style of writing.

My perception is the reverse. Probably 60% of the articles linked on this site, day in and day out, are a thicket of impenetrable jargon. Endless blog posts that make no attempt to explain to the non-initiated what the various acronyms mean or why the concepts might matter for a person who is not deeply, deeply immersed in whatever technical field the author is writing about. I wish more people who write about coding/tech would realize that a larger audience is interested in what is going on, but that the communication of the concepts needs to be approachable. This is not just a shortcoming of this field, obviously, as people in all sorts of technical/specialized fields tend to write the same way, speaking only to the in-crowd.

I think jargonistic writing is typical when trying to impress. Academics have long employed jargon to obfuscate in order to seem more clever and subtle. Expressed simply, ideas seem simple. Among folk who depend on appearing clever, the last thing they want is to appear simple.

Insightful ideas are rare. Hiding mundane thoughts in abstruse verbiage leaves questions in the mind of the readership: "I don't see the author's point. But he seems pretty smart. I must have missed something." Vote up.

Many well established schools of untestable academic thought are often built on foundations as sandy as these, IMHO.

Ah the old nerd trick of disregarding the context of a statement and applying it to a context where it clearly doesn't work.

Do you really think Paul Graham is arguing against James Joyce style writing? Why would you think that?

Because James Joyce's style isn't "simple" by any stretch of the imagination, I would guess? And the essay presents its position as a general statement void of all context. What context are we supposed to assume here?

> And the essay presents its position as a general statement void of all context.

Are you sure? From the blog (first sentence):

> I try to write using ordinary words and simple sentences.

Since the "I" in this case refers to someone who does not write poetry, speculative fiction, drama, tragedies, comedies ... and only ever writes for a technical audience, the context is clear: technical[1] audience not seeking poetry, fiction, drama, etc...

Further one he says:

> So you can't assume that writing about a difficult topic means you can safely use difficult words.

Once again, that indicates to me he is talking about writing something technical[2], not prose or poetry.

[1][2] "Technical" is not limited to IT and engineering; it's about anything that involves technique. Describing dance moves is "technical", as is writing a recipe (which is very similar in technique to writing a tiny program) or anything involving writing down music (Should you use 7/4 for the first verse, or alternate between 3/4 and 4/4? Which will be clearer to the flautist?)

The title of the essay is "Write Simply." Furthermore, the second sentence is more general than the first:

> That kind of writing is easier to read, and the easier something is to read, the more deeply readers will engage with it.

That is a general claim. I agree that it is often good advice, but there are caveats which Graham does not provide.

I don't think Paul Graham writes for a "technical" audience only and am fairly certain he would dispute that claim.

I'm also fairly certain that the type of writing he's talking about is mostly non-fiction prose, such as the essays he writes himself (even though he doesn't state that explicitly). Would you consider those "technical" writing?

What is an 'ordinary' word? The first sentence threw me for this precise term, which was internally inconsistent with later in the article talking about second or third+ English language users, or even, not mentioned in the article, first language speakers with differing backgrounds.

A very odd term to use.

I'd open simply with "Think of your audience, think of your goal" and on thinking of audience expand to "Think of your audience, of which there may be some you've not thought of, or it might just be yourself, and think of your goal, if any."

Everything has context. Paul Graham is a leader in the startup scene so more than likely he's talking about the types text relevant to startups. Blog posts, press releases, etc.

Again, why the fuck would you assume Paul Graham is talking about James Joyce?

> Again, why the fuck would you

Please drop swipes like that from your arguments here, and generally please don't escalate hostility even when someone is wrong or you feel they are. Your comment would be fine without that last sentence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: as for "Try to not be autistic for a second" - we ban accounts that do that. Please review the guidelines and take the intended spirit of the site more to heart, so we won't have to ban you.

I do not have much of an opinion on the underlying debate happening here^1, but I will disagree with this comment.

I do not believe that the article's prescription is confined to business writing.

> Paul Graham is a leader in the startup scene

That is true. But Graham is also a self-described essayist. He was writing long before he started Y Combinator, and his essays often discuss writing as a thing unto itself. For example, his "Nerds" essay mentions that one of his goals for life in high school was to write well^2.

Given that Graham is deeply interested in writing, and that the article doesn't explicitly confine itself to business writing, I think it's quite a stretch to assume that this essay is only talking about business writing.

> Again, why the fuck would you assume Paul Graham is talking about James Joyce?

This is a strawman (and also unnecessarily combative).

[^1]: Well, see my top-level comment. But that's not really relevant to this comment.

[^2]: "There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things." http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

If "more than likely" he's talking about "the types of text relevant to startups" then surely that would be stated in an essay tooting the virtues of "simple." However, that doesn't appear to be the case.

It seems more like Paul Graham might be talking about the kind of writing he does himself. Like essays. However, even in such a case, his point is debatable. Which is what people are doing here — debating.

No one is assuming he's "talking about James Joyce." You must be confused. He's talking about a certain type of writing style and making contestable generalizations about it. People are illustrating the contestable points with examples.

I think the essay is clearly about _non-fiction_ writing. It's arguing about how best to communicate ideas (he uses the term 'ideas' several times).

Sure, fiction can be trying to communicate things, and sometimes even ideas, but to me it's pretty obvious that the essay isn't trying to give advice for fiction writing in general.

It's pretty obvious to me too. That's not the point.

The essay makes a generic statement about the superiority of a particular, although loosely defined, writing style.

People debate the edge cases of that statement, showing its limits, and pointing to counter examples.

The result is that the content of the essay is reduced to a very banal statement of the type: "All other things being equal, prefer writing something simple rather than not simple." As an aesthetic preference, it's all well and good. As a persuasive argument, rather lacking. It "tries to prove too much."

The other person (at the top of this sub-thread) did say "Both of these points considered, I disagree entirely with the premise. There can be value to dense, even perhaps enigmatic writing. I would say that the greatest works of English literature tend towards that direction (James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace)." I would not consider these edge cases, because I don't think literature is relevant to the essay and its purposes.

If you want to restrict Graham's argument to non-fiction, I'll happily grant you that.

But let me give you a bit more context:

As a Frenchman, when I think "Essay", my mind almost automatically reaches for two authors: Montaigne and Pascal (e.g. in his Pensées).

"Simple" is probably the last qualifier I would use to describe their works. They're not simple. They're complex, rich, beautiful, copiously quoting from classical authors and yet often crystal clear. They have the same quality poetry has where replacing a word by another damages the precision of the message and images conveyed.

That is also true of non-fiction prose in longer form. I shudder to think what could become of Tocqueville's writing style, a peculiar mix of classical and romantic, if it were translated into "simple" language.

Well okay, who is he addressing? That’s pretty much the only question I had reading it. Surely it isn’t the modern blogger or clickbait ‘journalists’, since they know what they are doing and we know what they are doing.

It’s possible he simply said nothing.

It reads very much like it's a response to this not-even-particularly-upvoted comment on his last essay, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26377185 "Why does he write like an SAT reading comprehension passage"

Kind of incredible.

> On the web, where each individual piece of writing is not meant to last as long, the writing style has become more casual. Consider the difference between your average Medium article versus your average academic research paper.

I would argue that academic writing tends to be pretty poor.

> I would argue that academic writing tends to be pretty poor.

The above-namedropped David Foster Wallace certainly thought so.

Among people who spend their days thinking about language I'm pretty sure academese is considered more of an elaborate, extended shibboleth than an effective communication tool, going beyond merely being sprinkled with jargon and fake-fancy clichés (like, say, business language) so that it serves as an effective gatekeeping tool. Hard(er than it needs to be) to read, hard to correctly write.

Agreed. Simple writing is perfectly valid in the right time and place. Rich, dense writing also has a place and value. The real answer is understand what type of writing serves your intent and write with deliberate intent towards that style for that impact.

Exactly.

> I think there are two sources of confirmation bias here:

[...]

Did you see what he wrote in the essay, regarding this:

> Simple writing also lasts better. People reading your stuff in the future will be in much the same position as people from other countries reading it today. The culture and the language will have changed. It's not vain to care about that, any more than it's vain for a woodworker to build a chair to last.

Indeed, lasting is not merely an accidental quality of chairs, or writing. It's a sign you did a good job.

> I disagree entirely with the premise. There can be value to dense, even perhaps enigmatic writing. I would say that the greatest works of English literature tend towards that direction (James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace).

It seems pretty clear to me that the essay is about non-fiction writing, not fiction. All the arguments in it apply to non-fiction writing.

I also will defend PG point.

Most of us are not creating greatest works of English literature and me or many others are not James Joyce neither David Foster Wallace.

If you are writing some greatest work of literature please use all the tools that language gives you.

But for clear communication use simple language, please.

He didn't say it, but I'm pretty sure Graham is talking only about writing non-fiction essays, especially posts in social media. Writing with verve and elan requires variety and timing and imagination, not just clarity and simplicity. Other genres of literature like poetry, fiction, haikus, plays, sonnets, and even longer forms of non-fiction... these are horses best depicted not by monotone but by a rich spectrum of color.

I think the point is that one should use a direct and clear style of writing where the objective is to convey a clear message. Examples include technical papers or journalism. Of course, literature is not included.

Direct and clear doesn't always mean simple.

That's the main shortcoming of this essay. It doesn't define what it means by "simple". "If you want to be clear, write clearly" is a bromide, not an essay.

The essay is titled "Write Simply". It's about why you should try to write simply, rather than being a how-to. I think that's reasonable. It may be very difficult to precisely define what "simple" means, and it may not be that necessary: it's just telling people why (he thinks) they should aim for simplicity. Most people can make a conscious choice about how simple or complex their writing is - and this essay is advice about which direction to go in.

Ok, so what makes James Joyce a good writer?

Yeah but the genre seems to matter.

Fiction and poetry vs whatever type of writing blogging is.

> Fiction and poetry vs whatever type of writing blogging is.

Essayists, pamphleteers, and diarists (blogs), and aphorists (Twitter). Genres with centuries-long histories.

How do you define "greatest"?

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