Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulpauper | Hacker News Reader

This may be good advice for an instruction manual or children's books, but I think good prose is something of an art in and of itself. Some of the most successful writers do the opposite. Look at the articles that go viral ..you see that the prose is varied and even complicated, not just simple.

The best prose is that which conveys the intended message for the intended audience in the best way possible. I think it's also a revealed vs stated preferences problem. People state they want/like simple writing but revealed preferences show otherwise.

I think the reason why so many business authors give this advice is confusing cause and effect. Writing simply does not make you successful or persuasive, but that people who are involved in business write that way naturally, but success at one does not follow from the other. Just like Bill Gates did not get rich by being good at bridge.

View on HN

"Write simply" is given as advice because, well, it's good advice. Too many writers try to ball before they crawl.

A memorable critique, from an English professor, of my writing: "stop trying to sound smart". He meant that I should stop trying to use big words and stop trying to construct complex sentences.

>People state they want/like simple writing but revealed preferences show otherwise.

Simplicity isn't what you think it is. The simplicity people want is sentences that flow regardless of complexity. You say complicated, I say clunky. An author might use a complex sentence to coalesce several ideas, but if that complexity, because the construction interrupts the flow, requires the audience to reread the sentence, the author has failed.

That's how we arrive at simplicity. I find it easier to pepper diversity into my prose ex post facto than try during first draft. Connecting two simple sentences is less work than unwinding a complicated sentence.

The advice isn't really to leave your writing simple, it's to start simple. At some point, you will be required to use a complex sentence to connect ideas.

I think we are confusing two concepts: clear prose and ordinary words. It's right in the first sentence:

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

They don't go hand in hand. Quite the contrary, I'm arguing they are in conflict.

Drawing from a larger vocabulary allows greater precision, results in shorter sentences and enables the writer to express complex ideas concisely.

Ironically, artificially restricting what words one can use puts a far greater cognitive burden on the reader. It's superfluous to quote the relevant xkcd.

There's no cure for unclear prose: it's the necessary consequence of unclear thoughts.

> They don't go hand in hand. Quite the contrary, I'm arguing they are in conflict.

"Those two things are at odds with each other."

> Drawing from a larger vocabulary allows greater precision, results in shorter sentences and enables the writer to express complex ideas concisely.

"Using more precise words enables simpler sentences, even for complex ideas."

> Ironically, artificially restricting what words one can use puts a far greater cognitive burden on the reader. It's superfluous to quote the relevant xkcd.

"Limiting yourself to only simple words makes it harder to read."

> There's no cure for unclear prose: it's the necessary consequence of unclear thoughts.

"????"

I think what you're saying would be a lot more convincing if you had, in fact, been able to express it more clearly.

Reminds me of a recent exchange during which someone sent me an email with the word anachronistic but then explained it with “updated in the past” later in the sentence.

Laughed at the use of extra words to explain a big word rather than just saying something like “out of date”

I love this maxim: "As simple as possible, but not simpler".

and this leads to _clear_ writing. Write clearly.

Of late, I'm reading diverse authors, and I noticed that I get drawn to more aesthetically pleasant writings. So I'm beginning to pay more weightage and attention to the aesthetics of writing than before. Good content and pleasing aesthetics go together. It means the writer made an effort to make the writing beautiful besides bringing forth insightful points.

It could also be about appreciating subtler aspects of life as I grow older. Regardless, the net result is my impressions about "write simply" suggestions are exactly what you stated.

I think one needs to understand PG's bias.

He has written excellent technical books that are both deep and a pleasure to read.

He is not in the business of writing the next War and Peace, i.e. aesthetics is secondary to his goals.

Good writers can use big words well. Someone who has been writing for 20 years is able to reach for a precise word in the right situation, to get the right effect. 99% of the people are not good writers, and when they try to do that, it comes across unreadable in the best case and self-important in the average case.

Just say what you mean. Text is beautiful because it flows, the sentence might evoke the thing it's describing by its sounds or rhythm or structure. It's not beautiful because it uses big words.

"Why use many word, when few word do trick." ~Kevin Malone, The Office.

I agree with you.The point of language is to get an idea from my head into your head with as little loss-of-signal as possible. That is much more challenging than it might sound. Note: an idea might be an emotion.

If I were to write that as simply as possible, I might say: "Yes. Talk is communication. That is hard", or even more simply "Talk hard!!!"

Too much simplification is reductionist, and something is lost. Excessive verboseness is too high a noise-to-signal ratio, and something is lost. There is a balance to be had, and that balance is a moving target, depending on the complexity and importance of the idea and your audience. If I'm trying to convey deep-technical knowledge to a fellow engineer, then I'll be precise and "jargony" - it won't be "simple"; if I'm trying to show that I'm having a good time to my inlaws with whom I don't share a common verbal language, then a beaming smile may be all that's needed.

That joke spoils itself by adding "trick". But if it didn't, then it wouldn't work, since "Why use many words when few will do" is perfectly grammatical.

Dang

The joke was that I was acknowledging the point "that the joke spoils itself by adding "trick"", was acknowledging the point with a single word, and that single word was simply the username of the user who pointed out that the joke ruins itself - thus, reusing a word already in the thread instead of introducing a new word. Guess I took the "why use many word when few word do" too far!

why use many word, few do?

I suppose if you were golfing it, "many word? few!" would be the endpoint.

That would be inherently less funny - the whole joke is that Kevin isn't really saving any time by speaking in a confusing way, it's just dumb.

If anything, your point makes the joke funnier - he's managed to make the sentence longer than has to be, in addition to grammatically incorrect, to express the same idea.

Yes I'm sure I missed the subtleties of the scene. Sorry!

Let's make a simple, boring clothing analogy: "Why use a broken suit with an elegant combination of fabrics and colors when a simple, ill-fitting T-shirt and a pair of chinos would allow you to cover your body?"

Let's make yet another analogy with the body: "Why spend time in the gym working with barbells and dumbbells to achieve a shape and tone that would make you look like a Bronze of Riace instead of doing "just" 10k steps a day?"

Perhaps a dress can be too flowery or stiff; appropriate for a wedding, inappropriate for a day in the woods. A body may be too muscular for a marathon, not enough for a bodybuilding competition.

It is a matter of taste, of situation. Terse writing may fit here and not there; flowery writing may work here and not there. Prescription always depend on the context and the goals.

If you are aiming for virality, you need to use the lowest common denominator. A fast thinker will understand someone that speaks slow, a slow thinker will not grasp everything a person who speaks fast says.

There's a bit of both. I couldn't get past a few pages of Walden, because I could barely make out what he's saying.

It's nice to decorate, but not nice to encrypt.

I always thought the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake broke these rules wonderfully. The amount of stuff I had to look up in the dictionary..

I know zero articles that went viral with varied and complicated prose. Care to share an example or two?

Try five:

- https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-dropped-acid-and-saw-into-th...

- https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...

- https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

- https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview

- https://mango.pdf.zone/finding-former-australian-prime-minis...

Slate Star Codex in particular has a way of pushing the indulgence in his essays beyond what seems possible. When I read the one on Moloch, I thought "this is an idea I am extremely familiar with, expanded to 100 times the necessary word count", but now, when I consider the effects of market optimization, I think of that essay.

I asked ChatGPT to rewrite the slatesarcodex article as if it were PG:

"I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup:

Tolerance is important, but it should not extend to the "outgroup". An outgroup is defined as those who are perceived as fundamentally different or opposed. Tolerance towards the outgroup can lead to harm to one's own group and undermine social cohesion. It's better to tolerate ideas and individuals within your own group and be intolerant towards the outgroup. This creates a sense of loyalty and strengthens bonds within the group."

Its hard to focus on the style of that summary you gave when that "summary" doesn't capture what the slatestarcodex article actually says. That summary is vaguely upsetting in how confidently wrong it is.

The actual "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" article is a ponderous critique of our human tribal tendancy to find an outgroup and hate them. The article finally comes full circle when the author notices the whole essay itself could be seen (ironically) as an attack on another outgroup.

The article is intentionally not making a clear point. The experience I had reading was to come away ponderous, thoughtful and self reflective. I'm not convinced that a simple summary or simplification would be able to give a reader the same experience. (But at least summarizing the article correctly wouldn't hurt.)

Simple language has its place. But its just a style, like flat design or modernism. Its certainly no panacea.

"Vaguely upsetting in how confidently wrong it is" is a good summary of ChatGPT in general, so the summary captures what ChatGPT is better than it captures what the article says. Very few humans are both capable of putting sentences together that coherently, and so incapable of a first-order understanding of the author's point. We don't have ready words for (or widespread recognition of) this kind of LLM-idiocy, because internalizing a probability distribution over words, sentences, and paragraphs without any correlated world model is not something humans do. "Bullshitting" comes close, but there's a difference of degree that becomes a difference in kind.

> That summary is vaguely upsetting in how confidently wrong it is.

Being confidently wrong is an important step towards passing the Turing test. The upsetting feeling is the "uncanny valley". The stupid machine is now expressing arrogance normally reserved to self-confident humans.

I wouldn't call Slate Star Codex complicated, to me it's more like having some of fun along the way instead of being straight to the point like Paul Graham. That fun, to me, keeps me engaged and allows me to read long articles easily. Now, maybe that fun is what causes the length in the first place, but some also comes from quoting studies, analyzing them, adding examples, caveats, more than in a regular PG article.

I wouldn't call "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" complicated. The sentence structure and word choice are straightforward. The narrative structure is... deliberately meandering, if that's a thing. It takes the long way around, on purpose, to aid in reflection. But I feel very confident that it isn't the kind of prose that PG would find distasteful or a waste of readers' time.

Curtis Yarvin built an entire writing career doing the opposite of this advice, too. Same for David Foster Wallace. Many others.

David Foster Wallace had a couple of essays published online that went viral if anything can be considered viral.

DFW is the classic example of prose which is incredibly pleasing to read, but isn't actually better at conveying information. He routinely expands banal topics in philosophy into pages. I don't think his intent was ever to bring the reader up to speed on a topic, or convince the reader of a particular philosophical position though.

Many people try to emulate his style, usually they fail, and if they succeed it works against the purpose of their writing, which for most people, most of the time, is to communicate an idea.

Even his own article about writing simply used the word “expend” in the third sentence. Maybe I’m an indian hillybilly but that sounds quite non-simple to me lol.

I've been thinking about writing and about how people can learn to write well in a time of non-writing.

I have a service to use AI together with expertise in guiding beginner authors, writers for whom English is not the primary language, and for experienced casual writers. There are many heuristics that can be shown to writers to make the message clear, more impactful, in essay writing, short fiction, poetry, etc. If anyone's willing to beta test the service, contact me on reddit /u/goldfeld.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com