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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

> the text is amazingly blunt and honest

It would likely have been written to be comprehensible to people with a fairly low reading level.

Why? The US literacy rate in the 1940s was 97.1%, and the US military had special programs to teach the illiterate to read. During WW2, 95% of illiterate recruits achieved minimum literacy within two months through the special training units developed for that purpose.

I know it’s easy for some people to think of a trigger puller as a dumb grunt - even more so one who served 80 years ago, but it’s not accurate or fair.

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp [1] https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/soldiers_lit.htm

I didn’t mean it as a value judgement; it’s clearly written to be very comprehensible. That’s a good thing!

Literacy at what level?

From your first source: "In 1940, more than half of the U.S. population had completed no more than an eighth grade education." The manual had to be written at 8th grade level (at most) in order to be easily understood by more than 50% of the army.

Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like. There's an important distinction between reading level and intelligence, and I think we conflate the two in modern writing. Simple language doesn't need to be simplistic.

> Which makes it all the more impressive that it's quoting Tacitus and such like.

There's a common trope about "8th-grade" education in the US, and a fairly common response to it, e.g., https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/p_test/1895_Eightgr_test.h....

There are, of course, reasons for the differences that aren't merely reactionary "people are dumb now" or "technology FTW!!1!" I suspect some of the quoting of Tacitus is due to a more classical emphasis, even in early education (see, for example, the McGuffey Readers[1]), where Latin and Greek were more widely studied, and their authors more integrated into the grade-level curriculum. I didn't read Herodotus or Tacitus until college (a classics course) and was pleasantly surprised by how readable and accessible they were.

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14640 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuffey_Readers

Well yes, but you also use that fact to be blunt and dishonest, like saying "Yep, the french don't wash. Guess they're just uncultured. They're still our allies, get used to it!"

I think more writers, especially technical writers, should am for this type of writing.

I like simple.

The DoD produces documents that are either

a) incredibly clear and straightforward, or

b) completely impenetrable (esp. anything with a diagram)

There is no middle ground. Seriously though, the Army's writing manual is top-notch and most high schools would be better for spending a month or three teaching from it.

Perhaps also to enable the French to read and understand it? You wouldn’t want them just reading the gripes (which are short and simple) and then not reading the responses.

There's also an excerpt from the NYT in there, number 33.

People weren't as fragile and sensitive then. It was better in that way.

Except that it's actual nonsense. Not long after WW2 the congress tried to ban comic books for spoiling the youth,just couple decades later people were holding public protests against the Simpsons, and the first TV show to mention the word "period" was met with similar level of protests as if that's something dirty and unspeakable.

No, it's the exact opposite - "back then" people were far more fragile and sensitive and doing or saying the wrong kind of thing could have serious consequences on your life.

Those are examples of a morally conservative society, in which a Judeo-Christian value system was in place, and when there was a stronger emphasis on conformity. I guess the sensitivity was in breaking those rules. In those times too, however, children were taught "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me".

Now, everyone is comfortable with talk of sex and biological realities...but a book critical of transgenderism is literally called "violence": https://www.rt.com/usa/529308-american-booksellers-associati....

I guess critics of such topics are today's Juvenile Delinquents. /s

You are both right, in some ways we have become less bashful about certain aspects of life, but also society today is a bit more particular about some things. It is no longer enough to disagree with someone, you must destroy their will to continue.

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