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Comment by kylecazar | Hacker News Reader

"Use minimalism to achieve clarity. While you are writing, ask yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that paragraph or that section?"

This echoes advice I first read in Strunk & White. It remains the most actionable tip for better writing I'm aware of, technical or otherwise.

Aside: I consider McCarthy's residency at SFI an ideal job

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When I read papers I often think: if only the author had the space here to write two sentences instead of one, then perhaps I would immediately understand what they are trying to say.

Oh, that's the only way to write a good paper - first you write 1.5x pages to figure out what you want to say, and then, with this knowledge, you replace entite confusing paragraphs with short sentences focused on exactly that. When i don't know how to express an idea, i ask myself "-so what idea are you trying to communicate? -well, that XYZ holds -if so, just go ahead write literally that!"

FWIW I think this is exactly the opposite of what the OP was trying to say. I think the OP meant that they often wish authors had used more space to explain their ideas, because that would immediately make them more accessible.

And I must agree. I often feel papers are written with an extra 20% over the page budget, then condensed in the last minute to fit the constraints, which hurts the exposition.

It's a great way to write fiction too. But only if you're not marrying to what you've written.

Sometimes two sentences is the minimum necessary number of sentences, but everybody should be wary of that instinct

This is rich, coming from the guy that spends multiple paragraphs describing an empty ditch in the desert.

Apparently he thinks that is the minimum required. There is no metric included with the statement.

Reminds of this quote attributed to Dieter Rams:

> A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing to take away.

That's from Saint-Exupéry.

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/38837/where-does...

Aside: I consider McCarthy's residency at SFI an ideal job

This is a testament to just how multifaceted he was.

Sorry, but he takes it too far. McCarthy's omission of punctuation makes his books difficult to understand who is saying what, and a challenge to follow especially with dialogue. The Road and No Country for Old Men both do not contain quotation marks for speech, and he omits the common speech tags like "he said" or "she exclaimed" which makes it a challenge to know who is saying what. It is a choice and the art form he's choosing, but is far from writing for clarity.

I would assume that his suggestions for clarity in "scientific papers" and his literary style don't overlap all that much to infer the former from the later.

This is certainly the case, but it does make it all the more amusing that the myth

> Commas denote a pause in speaking.... Speak the sentence aloud to find pauses.

made its way into this article. Hard to imagine that this particular point, to which I might attribute many of the comma splices I see in scientific writing, actually came from a professional writer.

McCarthy's books involve unrelenting violence. If he viewed commas as pauses, it makes sense that he would never use them.

It goes without saying that you're a better writer than Cormac McCarthy. Tell us something beyond that.

The implication was that likely not all of the advice in this article, which was written by biologists, is actually attributable to McCarthy.

> the former from the later

my writing advice:

never use the former and the latter

Does it make me sound pretentious? That's fine, we're debating literary styles after all. :D

no, it's just a stylistic pet peeve of mine. lacks specificity and always makes me have to think about which is the latter and which is the former, no matter how many times i look it up. scrambles my brain.

I recently read Blood Meridian, the only one of his books I've read. I agree this was a bit jarring and confusing at the start, but I got used to it by the end.

Though I haven't read any scientific papers, so can't comment on those.

I agree about clarity, so this is just an aside but that's what makes it a fun experience for me. It's unlike reading anyone else (although I haven't read many authors). I'd say no country for old men was still pretty straightforward, but I had to re-read sentences and whole paragraphs with blood meridian.

The work makes it worth it, makes it that much more rewarding to me personally. It's like choosing to play a difficult videogame, because you know once you overcome it, it'll be great.

I agree, his literary work is unique, and does take a bit more work to read, and with that it includes additional meaning behind it. For example, in The Road often times it doesn't even matter if its the boy or the man saying it.

However, I wouldn't take his advice on how to write for clarity. I too often found myself rereading paragraph, "wait is this description or dialogue", "who said that" - this is not what you want in scientific papers

> The Road and No Country for Old Men both do not contain quotation marks for speech, and he omits the common speech tags like "he said" or "she exclaimed" which makes it a challenge to know who is saying what.

I am reading NC4OM right now and this is not, technically, the case. He does use those “speech tags”.

technical writing and fiction writing are two totally different forms of writing. the ability to modulate between those disciplines is the sign of a good writer.

I routinely reduce my Readmes by 30% or more in the third draft.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

- Antoine de St Exupery

"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."

Yes, I came here to say this sounds a lot like Strunk & White

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

Yet behaving consistently according to well-chosen rules is a path to probable prosperity and, often, greatness.

I guess that means that machines will be greater than man could ever hope for.

What kind of greatness? Or prosperity? Well-chosen according to whom?

You’re using an absolute attachment to relativism to critique objectivism. This is a category error.

Strawman word salad.

Big brain socialist “everything is a special case” quote.

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