Hacker News Reader

Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of the content, it strikes me that this author is a bit stuck in his own head? He uses rare words when common ones will do ("dyad"? What's wrong with "pair"?), passingly mentions obscure terms for no reason, and in general writes like the less the reader understands, the smarter the material was.

View on HN

Dont mean to pile on (still better to write than not, glad it was linked, etc!) but I agree. It reads as language-fetishizing to me, too in love with little turns of phrase and eddies in the current. Noticed the same thing in Bo Burnham's Inside (lots of attention placed on aesthetic details), maybe it's a consequence of doing it all solo.

The older I get the more I admire people who are straightforward and cut through the gloss. If something is worth saying, it's worth saying simply.

From a practical perspective, I found myself in a sort of context switching throughout the piece, looking up various bits to make sure I understood their use, but also finding myself disappointed when I came to the conclusion that the use of a given piece of jargon didn't seem warranted over a simpler version of the phrase. I liked the topic so I pushed through, but it made it tougher to read than it seemed to need to be.

Or it’s just a style that they write in, plainly inspired by the stuff they like to read.

We can have a discussion about whether it’s good delivery of that style, or whether the style itself is accessible, but I’m not sure what we gain by trying to analyze someone’s personality through it.

I didn't mean it as an analysis of his personality (how can you do that from a blog post?), it's just shorthand for "I dislike this writing style in this specific way".

disagree - writing advice has skewed too much towards pg-style "write for a 5th grade reading level" making everything sound plain and bland. while thats an appropriate style for clear communication, sometimes you just want to flex your literary muscles, and English offers so many wonderful ways of self expression that are slowly being lost due to boiled down business writing.

Coda's technical chops are undisputed AND is a well known technical communicator, dont cramp his style, there are few enough of him as it is

I find there is a time and a place for this in your work though. You don't have to use obscure words nonstop, use them where people can learn or figure out just from context. Sometimes thats not possible but it usually is. If you think it isn't, maybe you've got a new writing skill to learn and improve on.

Writing for the reader is important if you want your work to be read.

Write to think all you want but don't expect other people to read your unedited drafts.

> sometimes you just want to flex your literary muscle

If so, then you usually don't want to mix it with profanity.

I mean, you can, but it's a style that went out of fashion years ago.

Who cares if it's out of style? Sounds like an excuse to kill creativity.

All I will say is if I need to use the dictionary on every paragraph it is probably a bit too much! Props for where he linked to definitions though.

Eh, as the sibling comment says, it's about the ROI of the new word. If you're defining something with it that would otherwise take many words to explain, or if you want to introduce a new idea, or otherwise use it as shorthand, great. If you're using a new word only once, then why even use it?

Is ROI in this case a measure of comprehension? What about the enjoyment and playfulness of metaphor and expressive language - do these have a negative ROI if they aren't sufficiently terse?

How far do you take efficiency as a measure of communication quality?

Did Kevin have it right when he asks "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM

If your goal is to flex your literary muscle, then write poetry, but don't waste people's time.

Like how all tech blogs nowadays writes "leverage" instead of "use".

"I leveraged a hammer on these nails" sounds hilariously stupid, but it's quite literally using the word leverage for an action that has leverage, unlike tech blogs.

Oh don’t be silly, you don’t just leverage a hammer… you leverage the synergy of your entire toolchain! ;)

Disagree: I found it highly readable partially because it was just a shade more colorful and elegant than the typical stuff, without trying too hard.

Yes, I got that "look at me, I'm so smart" vibe off the writing too.

affectation

I'm at the point now that I'll immediately stop reading whenever I see obscure expressions in latin or French.

English is basically Latin + French + a few other sprinkles. These expressions are pretty trivial to pick up, especially if you have read much history, logic, etc.

For example, his phrase cum hoc, ergo propter hoc is a pun on post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which is a well-known logical fallacy.

cum hoc is another well known logical fallacy

https://www.fallacyfiles.org/cumhocfa.html

Well, it's more German than either of those, especially wrt structure, conjugation, and helping verbs. But we do take a huge amount of vocabulary from Latin and the romance languages, especially in the realms of the arts and science.

English is a Germanic language that was injected with a large amount of French vocabulary. Latin and Greek are typically used in very specific jargons, such as philosophy or medicine, with some phrases escaping confinement and reaching a larger population.

English being a Germanic language is why the whole "no prepositions at the end of sentences" thing never made sense. That was a Latin rule. But Germanic languages have a property of augmenting verbs using prepositions. In German itself these are called "separable verbs".

Ich stehe auf. I stand up.

"Up" is not a preposition in this sentence. It's an integral part of the verb. That is, the verb is, in its entirety, "aufstehen" or "to stand up".

Meanwhile, this same phrase in Spanish uses reflexivity:

Levanto me. I lift myself.

Good think you left greek off the list, otherwise you'd never get anywhere in statistical reasoning.

ceteris paribus, technical terms are obscure to people outside the field. Using them well is a nice way to bring people into the field, and to signal that you mean the term in a very specific context.

And that paragraph is one of the worst uses of "ceteris paribus" I've seen. For one, I'm not even talking about economics. And only tangentially about holding some variables constant while changing others.

Yes. Jargons exist for a reason. They develop because people working together come to a common agreement on specific meanings for specific terms, regardless of common usage. And it typically leads to more precise communication. "Legalese" is a great example.

Reads like a lot of Uni material.

We actually had a course at our Uni to stop us writing in this style. The Professors had become sick of reading white papers that said something straight forward in this strange Academic language.

I'd be willing to bet this person is very well educated or has maybe has worked in Academia.

Okay, playing the devils advocate here, but sometimes the "lingo" is useful.

Grabbing a "couple of beers" could really mean a "bunch of beers". But a "dyad of beers" is very explicitly exactly two beers.

But so does "two beers", and it doesn't require you to know a random Greek word.

I mean, it doesn't necessitate you to ken an aleatorial Hellenic lexis.

So is a "pair of beers".

To me "a pair of" can colloquially (see, I did it again) mean "a bunch of".

I'm with you on "couple" potentially not being exactly two, though I tend to default to using "few" in such cases. But I can't sign up for "pair" not being exactly two.

Yay language!

If someone puts on a pair of jeans followed by a pair of socks, how many articles of clothing have been put on? :)

A pair!

It’s a term I wasn’t personally familiar with until a few months ago. But my introduction was via my 8 year old son! They were using it to explain concepts in class at school. Now I’m wondering if there’s some larger trend/influence that has introduced it into a collection vocabulary that I’ve missed?

"Force Dyad" was a plot point in Star Wars: Episode IX (2019), which I would imagine would be a noteworthy enough source.

Unless you refuse to acknowledge that that movie came out.

What movie?

> author is a bit stuck in his own head ... passingly mentions obscure terms for no reason

My sentiments exactly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com