Ask HN: What's the highest-quality of writing on the web?
I'm looking for excellent writing on the internet, as inspiration to improve my own writing. Form, content, topic or politics are secondary.
What do you recommend? Ideally freely accessible.
What do you recommend? Ideally freely accessible.
George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" is a the standard reading advice in this context [0].
However, in many ways it is outdated, though it still resonates because we all dislike gaseous bloviators. The quality is inseparable;e from the message.
So consider this [1] reply to a commenter yesterday.
Giving the strongest interpretation and assuming the commenter was writing in good faith, s/he experienced what is by all reasonable standards "a good essay" as awful, seemingly because they bitterly disagree with the message.
Therefore, I don't think one can ordinarily experience prose in isolation as "good", even if technically faultless. The message is part of the reading experience.
The contrary also applies. I'll be down-voted to hell for saying it [2] but I personally find Paul Graham (who writes here frequently) as rather anodyne in style. The topics he chooses are interesting however little is ventured in colour.
[0] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=39737184
[2] which might prove my point that acceptability of message trumps all other qualities in the experience of reading.