HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, makes the point that (I'm paraphrasing) students don't learn to write for real world audiences by writing for an audience that's forced to read their crap (teachers).

I may be misremembering what I heard when I watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ A4ET8a8uTh0

As a person, who, on occasion, has to read email from people, who send me things, I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement. I do, technically, have to read some of them as it is part of my job description ( not completely unlike the teachers ) and very much a captive audience.

And I get that it is hard and everyone has their own idiosyncrasies and all that jazz, but, and this is probably the only time I will defend corporates, were it not acceptable language enforced by HR, those emails would somehow be even worse than they are now.

So the goal is the same.. give the audience what it wants. What do I get? Well, it varies..

edit: I am really enjoying the link provided, but clearly this guy is talking about a very different level of writer.

First time I heard of using writing to think was in this talk, "The craft of writing effectively"[1]. It's definitely been a motivation to try to write more.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

I don't read many academic papers, but are the summaries normally 3 pages alone?

It reminded me of this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

The instructor in the video covers why academics struggle getting published because they're used to writing for individuals who are paid(E.g TAs & Profs) to read what they wrote.

⬐ etiam

I don't think the initial three pages are to be viewed as article summary in this case, but rather as background to the issue at hand. The post appears to be something akin to a (very?) late draft, and of a book chapter rather than a journal article. I expect there will be an "abstract" published somewhere, but this isn't where.

⬐ jraph

This video is fantastic. I recommend it. However, that's not my take at all.

My take for this video at the time I watched it was that as students we are used to write for teachers who are paid to grade us, and may take bad habits we can get away with as a consequence, but that will not be enough the day we write for people who are not forced to read what we write. But again, teachers won't expect a journal article written with suspense and stuff when they read your dissertation.

Academic writing is simply not at all the same exercise as journalism. Expectations are different, sometimes opposite.

There's no reason a scientist who write good papers will write good articles, and vice versa. Writing well will help a lot in both cases but that's not sufficient.

Many researchers don't write that well, but if your paper is not comprehensible, it will be rejected. As a researcher, you also want your research to be worthwhile usually, that's a motivation to write better. Also, the point of a paper is to report some discovery. People reading your papers are your reviewers (who are not paid for this, it's just extra work for them usually!), and people who need to understand your work. They probably won't read your paper linearly, they will mine it for information. Because of this, your paper should have a boring structure. To allow fast information seeking. In any case, they are not there to entertain themselves, though a well written paper can be entertaining and that's way better in my opinion, but it's not the point.

Your mainstream journal article should, however, be as enjoyable and entertaining as possible to read otherwise it won't be read by many people (especially if they are only vaguely interested in the topic of your article), or worse, the journal will not be bought at all if all the articles are dull. At least, that's what the lecturer in this video is saying.

⬐ tgv

This article is more of a literature overview, and it's a book chapter (if I'm not mistaken). The "normal" you refer to is probably an empirical study defending a theory in a journal. That's a different format. First, because there's a clear goal that can be summarized (my theory is right!), and second, because journals give you a much more limited number of pages.

⬐ jll29

Abstracts should be less than a page in any discipline (at least the ones I've encountered - computer science, maths, geography, linguistics, Eng. lit...).

Good "unstructured" (section-less) abstracts are about three paragraphs long and follow the structucture "what is the problem?" - "What is the state of the art regarding solution proposals?" - "Shortcomings of these that motivated this paper" - "What is proposed here as an alternative?" - [What are the key results?].

People are divided as to whether results should go into the abstract: some say the abstract should be a teaser that entices people to read the paper, others say the abstract should be a self-contained distillation of the paper itself.

Structured abstracts are often nearly a page (common in the life sciences): they have explicit section headings like "Method", "Data", "Findings" etc., which is a great idea and should be embraced in all empirical disciplines at least, IMHO.

George Gopen hails from the same school of writing as Joseph Williams[1] and Larry McInerny[2]. He has also written a book that dives deeper into things[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style:_Lessons_in_Clarity_and_...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3393233-the-sense-of-str...

Unfortunately, [3] is a bit tedious, IMO, go for [1], which is the best book about writing, bar none.

Second best in principle is Thomas' & Turner's "Clear and simple as the truth", but it is hardly applicable to scientific (or technical) writing. If you're thinking about writing essays, get T&T.

⬐ cratermoon

I have Williams' book and endorse it. Also worth picking up is William Zinsser's On Writing Well https://www.harpercollins.com/products/on-writing-well-willi...

⬐ teddyh

> Larry McInerny[2].

*Larry McEnerney

(I, too, recommend his talk.)

⬐ thcipriani

I love this list.

An additional resource I would add to it is Steven Pinker's "Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century"[0].

Pinker's book advocates for the same classical style as Williams and Thomas & Turner. But Pinker also offers a deep dive into grammar, linguistics, and word choice (Pinker is a member of the American Heritage Dictionary's Usage Panel[1])

One other note: Joseph Williams's "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace" is available in roughly infinite editions under similar titles. PDFs of some of those titles are available for free online.

[0]: <https://stevenpinker.com/publications/sense-style-thinking-p...> [1]: <https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/usagepanel.html>

⬐ _qua

Just wanted to add another vote for "Sense of Style." In addition to exploring the subject matter in the posted article in more detail, it also exposed me to the concept of the "curse of knowledge" which has been instrumental in helping my approach toward communication.

> Most likely we changed the title to make it less baity—"In Defense of" doesn't really add much information except "Fight", and that's a bad way to prime a thread.

Such words also signals value, since they signal that someone has something significant to contribute to the conversation. For an extensive discussion about how such words signal value, see Larry McEnerney’s lecture The Craft of Writing Effectively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

A more value-signalling title with less “Fight” might have been “The benefits of simplicity in OpenStreetMap's data model”.

⬐ dang

> The benefits of simplicity in OpenStreetMap's data model

That would have been a great edit. I won't bother doing it now since it's too late to matter, but if you come up with any of those in the future, I'd love to hear about them.

Larry McEnerney’s lecture The Craft of Writing Effectively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ Tomte

McEnerney’s lectures are great, let me just add that he is from the very same "school of writing" (actually, the same faculty) as my recommendation, Joseph M. Williams.

As is George Gopen who also has a wonderful book that is more into the finer points of where to stick which part of the sentence. Williams and also McEnerney's lecture are much more motivating.

A post about writing means that I need to plug a couple talks by Larry McEnerney. [1,2]

The tool described in this blog post is all about text-based rules: what the _text_ ought to look like. To improve your own writing (a) learn who your readers are, (b) know what they value, and (c) write so that as readers, they find your work valuable to them.

[1] https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM [2] https://youtu.be/aFwVf5a3pZM

⬐ Semiapies

Only if you consider it worthwhile to spam with links about agile development in discussions of linters.

Writing, like programming, is a task that involves work at multiple levels.

Regarding the writing itself, see Larry McEnerney’s lecture The Craft of Writing Effectively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

I vastly prefer Larry McEnerney’s lecture The Craft of Writing Effectively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

In particular, he disagrees with this article about outlines.

⬐ thundergolfer

In which bit of the lecture does he talk about outlines?

⬐ teddyh

Outlines are mentioned about six minutes into the talk, but it is, IMHO, heavy with context, so I strongly suggest you simply watch it from the beginning.

⬐ nobody_nothing

This is one of the best – maybe the best – videos I've seen on effective writing. I rewatch it every couple months.

Great video that will definitely help you rethink your approach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

It challenges the bad advice you've received up to now

You might like, https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

Something I wish more writers watched.

Explaining things is not that hard, and if you’re bad at it, you can get better with practice and by learning a few tricks. But explaining is mostly useless in the real world. What will get you ahead is, instead, the ability to be convincing. That is, to pry people loose from their existing beliefs, and nudge them to adopt beliefs of your choosing. This, perhaps surprisingly, does not involve explaining your beliefs and hoping other people see the error of their ways. People don’t work like that.

Also, the three-step structure he advocates is a bad idea, as described here (IIRC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ mathnmusic

I find that unconvincing. Great explanations are usually also great at convincing me.

⬐ teddyh

You probably did not have any significant preexisting opinions about those subjects, then. When people already have an opinion about something, a mere explanation of a contrarian viewpoint will mostly accomplish nothing.

Of course, you might be the great exception, a perfectly reasoning actor, which we hear so much about in thought experiments.

⬐ vaylian

I think some people (like you) have opens minds, because they have realized that there is no point in insisting on wrong things, especially when those wrong things lead us to make wrong decisions.

⬐ lootsauce

Thanks for sharing the link, best thing I have seen on effective writing, ever.

⬐ bloak

I for one am not going to watch a video on effective writing!

⬐ historynops

> What will get you ahead is, instead, the ability to be convincing. That is, to pry people loose from their existing beliefs, and nudge them to adopt beliefs of your choosing. This, perhaps surprisingly, does not involve explaining your beliefs and hoping other people see the error of their ways. People don’t work like that.

Can you give an example of writing that does this? Is it more about making declarations (with sources I hope) to nudge the reader to your beliefs? I'm not sure how you convince intelligent people without some explanations.

⬐ teddyh

Mostly, convincing and explanations are mixed together. But some examples of convincing without any explanation is advertising, including “submarine” articles (as should be known to HN readers).

Examples of explanations without convincing can be found in most academic writing.

⬐ vicda

Your claim that explaining is mostly useless is a bafflingly terrible take. The video you linked is a well known video of someone explaining how to write well.

⬐ teddyh

The video also starts with, and continues throughout with, convincing people why their current writing style is bad, and why a new style is better.

⬐ vicda

The video also starts with, and continues throughout with, explaining to people why their current writing style is bad, and why a new style is better. It happens to be a convincing explanation.

⬐ teddyh

> It happens to be a convincing explanation.

It doesn’t just randomly happen to be convincing. The convincing part is why it works at all.

⬐ teddyh

Apologies, that was the wrong link: the explicit mention of the three-step structure is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFwVf5a3pZM#t=41m40s

ALthough, I think that the first link is a better version of the two.

⬐ axus

https://blog.codinghorror.com/but-you-did-not-persuade-me/

⬐ nerdponx

Consider that not all communication is about "getting ahead".

Also no, explaining things well is very difficult. Otherwise there wouldn't be so much bad explanatory writing out there. If you think it's easy, then you are either naturally skilled at it, or you are actually bad at it and don't realize.

⬐ bubblethink

>Consider that not all communication is about "getting ahead".

But you don't need to follow any advice if you do not seek to get ahead (i.e., better) in some sense. So, that doesn't make sense as a counterargument. OP's point is that you can become better at explaining, but that on its own does not add value. This is quite evident in scientific writing. Plenty of well-written papers are rejected if they do not provide sufficient value.

⬐ siddboots

You’re implying that the only possible goal is to “get ahead”, which is not true. There are clearly other goals one can have in writing and in life.

⬐ bubblethink

No, I'm not implying that. I'm saying that you do not need to heed to advice if you do not wish to become better, for whatever definition of better or 'getting ahead' you use. Saying that you don't want to get ahead is like a null statement. It doesn't add anything and is quite irrelevant to this discussion. It's like saying, "but I don't care; I'll do my own thing". You can say that for anything.

I have found this video very helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively

Do you worry about the effectiveness of your writing style? As emerging scholars, perfecting the craft of writing is an essential component of developing as graduate students, and yet resources for honing these skills are largely under utilized. Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, led this session in an effort to communicate helpful rules, skills, and resources that are available to graduate students interested in further developing their writing style.

⬐ maire

I also found this video helpful.

A key point in the video is that when you are a student the reader is paid to read your paper.

When you are not a student - the reader pays to read your paper (or book). Is it worth their time or money?

Reminds me of one of the points in this lecture:

"Teachers read texts because they are paid to care about the students. You've learned to write in a system where you're writing to readers who are paid to care about you. That will stop."

And he goes on to emphasize the importance of writing in a way that is valuable to the reader.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

This video has a segment on knowledge which I found very interesting https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

If you are writing academically, please watch this (or other) session by Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM , this is what he's been teaching for a long time, very eye-opening.

My biggest transformative learning experience regarding this has been how much of even technical (in particular CS, AI, ML) research is about recombination of existing ideas and that the most successful researchers aren't doing strictly technical contributions and "breaking ground", "discovering new terrain", but of selling new stories and narratives involving known concepts and shifting the emphasis from known aspect to another known aspect.

Relatedly, in this lecture [0] he expresses it by contrasting the "positivist" model where knowledge is piled on, linearly expanding vs the model of discourse, where research is a conversation, where participants must know what the others take for granted, assume, doubt etc and new contributions argue that there are better ways to do or conceptualize things. Works are forgotten, left behind, ignored etc. A work can be valuable in one context at one stage in the discourse, while worthless at another time. It's not like a neutral map of some terrain that we can just file and store forever.

He's in the social sciences, where this may be more obvious, but it's also true of sufficiently developed technical sciences too. When the low hanging fruit has been picked, the game becomes closer to zero sum. I mean new value can still be created, but not mainly through bringing in "new characters into the story" but by letting the story unfold using the same characters (main ideas). Only a true paradigm shift may break this equilibrium.

[0] https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ HPsquared

Kind of like how sales and marketing people search for and find new customers and applications for an existing product or service.

[1] is actually the reference material for this [2] lecture, which another commenter has already mentioned.

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

By watching the UChicago class[1] on " Writing Effectively ", this is exactly what happens to some HN readers:

1- You slow down - and read again

2- You don't understand

3- you get angry

4- You're done

5 - (optional) You write about it on HN because 3 and 4

[1] https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM?t=413

This looks amazing - added it to my collection of technical writing resources [0].

I'd also specifically recommend this talk by Larry McEnerney [1] which I discovered only recently in spite of actively looking for similar content - I guess I have a bias for written stuff.

[0] https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-writing/blob/master/...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

The resource that has spurred me into thinking differently about effective writing was shared on HN, from UChicago Social Sciences' Leadership Lab - The Craft of Writing Effectively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ ayewo

Echoing the other comments that this was an excellent lecture on how to approach writing from the perspective of the reader, aka the top-down approach.

He contrasted top-down with the bottom-up approach taught from elementary school to the undergraduate level which shows it as a superior approach to writing—if your goal is to introduce ideas that change the minds of your readers with your writing.

⬐ vendiddy

Thanks for the recommendation. Watching it now. I like how he takes a top-down approach to writing.

⬐ drykiss

Thanks for the recommendation. The point that more than anything, your writing should be valuable to the group of readers it is targeted at is fascinating.

⬐ bonoboTP

This is why I love HN. These rare moments of hearing someone articulate something that I haven't quite grasped yet, but have seen glimpses of and have struggled with, presented clearly, insightfully. Feeling my brain being rewired. I've watched this talk multiple times over the last days and it is transformative.

It's not like anything he says is, by itself, that new or counterintuitive. But the whole talk, when fully digested, lets you view the world in an entirely different way.

The talk isn't about writing. It's not about science. Not about careers. It's about everything. The same thinking can be applied to speaking, to dating, to everything human.

What's in your head isn't intrinsically interesting to anyone except your mother. What value do you deliver? It's harsh. Harsh and cruel. It's not the cozy feel-good message you see everywhere nowadays. Maybe some would call the whole framing toxic. But would you rather taste the poison and then learn how to handle it, or would you stay ignorant and die of it (silently get ignored, nosedive your career, etc.).

In a masterfully meta way, the talk manages to deliver immense value.

⬐ will_pseudonym

Absolutely. In that same vein, I've gotten a lot out of so many similar videos which are ostensibly about one thing, but to effectively use what they're teaching, you have to start learning/mastering something else entirely. "Indirect learning" is one way to put it, and a term I picked up from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture[0]. I've gained so much from watching that video, as well as his Time Management video[1]. So much so that I rewatch it about once a year, because every time you rewatch something, you're a different person in certain ways, and you often appreciate things much more the more you change and grow as a person.

[0] https://youtu.be/ji5_MqicxSo

[1] https://youtu.be/oTugjssqOT0?t=17

Nothing has impacted my writing more than that book. There are several versions now, the one I have is titled "Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace".

I chose it over White's book because of this passage from Clear and Simple as the Truth:

> The best-known teachers of practical style are Strunk and White, in their ubiquitous Elements of Style. The best teachers of practical style are Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb, in Williams’s Style: Toward Clarity and Grace and a series of academic articles and technical reports. Williams and Colomb present an incomparably deeper and more orderly treatment of practical style. The style they present is consistent and mature; it makes decisions about all the major questions that define a style, and is fully developed.

I almost can’t overstate how much it’s changed how I read and write. Before that book, some writing just felt “clear” and other writing didn’t, but I couldn’t explain why. Now it’s much easier to see how that sense of clarity is created. Even though I don't write for a living and mainly do technical write ups, it was easily worth the time investment.

This video is also good. It has a ton of interesting points, but the part about creating instability in your writing I found particularly useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM&ab_channel=UChic...

I found this video very helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ badhaircut

Thank you for sharing this excellent video.

I work in academia on the “business side” in IT. Interacting with faculty is notoriously frustrating.

Around 23:00 in this video the presenter offers a rule of academia that “nothing will be accepted as knowledge or understanding until it has been challenged by someone competent to challenge it.”

I found that immediately insightful and instructive.

His video "The Craft of Writing Effectively": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

The Joseph M. Williams in the introduction is, of course, the author of IMO the best book about writing, bar none: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style:_Lessons_in_Clarity_and_...

⬐ motohagiography

A video by him was the most influential video I've ever watched. What he says about writing applies directly to developing products.

⬐ boldslogan

watching the above video, he says some really great things, do you remember the video you are referencing? or is it the same one?

⬐ wenc

Here's a summary of the lecture + PDF of the handout

https://buomsoo-kim.github.io/learning/2020/03/30/Craft-of-w...

This is a fascinating way of thinking about writing.

> This isn't your creative writing class

I think it is less this and more just code-usage to facilitate showing that they're part of the in-group. If I use the appropriate words ("Elucidate", "Ameliorate", "in situ"), I'm showing that I have learned the subject from a similar heritage.

Partially an aside, but an interesting talk on academic writing, which I've enjoyed [0].

[0] https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ mattkrause

In situ has an actual meaning--and it would look decidedly weird if you called it (say) "in-place hybridization."

`Elucidate` is an basically a fancy weasel word: I read it as "I don't actually have a strong prediction about what will happen--but I expect something obviously cool will happen when I do this experiment."

⬐ alextheparrot

It is a synonym for “in-place”, though. If academic writing was optimizing for reach, the more commonplace word instead of the latin variant would likely be used. To your point, though, if someone submitted a paper using “in-place” someone would probably point it out [0].

I think that’s the original point, that a lot of the word-level complexity is just how the writing is taught and subsequent reinforcement by mentors and peers to use the appropriate language.

Yeah, elucidate is just a fancy word for “figure out” - but I think it is part of the dialect because of the connotation you mention (Even if a casual reader might not use it).

[0] Not because it is strictly wrong, but because it violates how the in-group expects converse. I think this holds even if we go outside of phrases (One could argue in-situ hybridization is one item), as if I discover something new I’ll likely use the term “in-situ” if it involves similar locality properties

⬐ yhoneycomb

But in situ actually MEANS something.

Elucidate is unnecessary but not terrible - at least it's used in everyday writing. If I had my druthers, I would ask for a less cumbersome word to be used. Still, I think most reasonably educated people would know what it means without missing a beat.

Words like ameliorate are just wrong. Just absolutely wrong.

⬐ alextheparrot

I guess I'm having a hard time understanding the distinction you're working to draw between the three words. All three mean something, and could be argued to have value because of their pithiness [0]. If you're inclined, I'd be interested in a bit more of you're framing. Especially in terms of bio-medical texts, I'm a bit confused which characteristics make 'ameliorate' worse than 'in situ'.

[0] Like this word. I could have said "Because of their precise meaning", but I picked a word that encapsulates that directly.

⬐ yhoneycomb

I mean, the point of writing a paper is to educate - and if you're using obscure words, you are also probably succeeding in obscuring your message.

Take this example:

> Chemical and/or biological therapeutic strategies to ameliorate protein misfolding diseases.

Why not just "to target protein misfolding diseases"?

⬐ alextheparrot

The target audience for most academic papers is not the general public and these words or phrases are known to the target audience. If the idea is that academic papers should have a more general audience, then I feel that’s a different statement, because I agree that academic papers are often less accessible to non-target audience members due to word choice.

In the case you mentioned there is a bit of redundancy which makes the word “ameliorate” easy to substitute. Terms like “therapeutic” and “misfolding” make it easy to derive that we’re going from a bad to good state.

“Activated protein X ameliorates biofilm formation” has more content than if we swapped to “target” in this case, because it has the added effect of indicating that the interaction was “good”.

As a continued aside, I think you’d enjoy the talk I originally posted. It dives into the difference between using writing to think vs persuade or educate, and how not recognizing that difference can cause poor scientific communication.

⬐ yhoneycomb

> As a continued aside, I think you’d enjoy the talk I originally posted. It dives into the difference between using writing to think vs persuade or educate, and how not recognizing that difference can cause poor scientific communication.

Thanks, I'll check it out!

⬐ mattkrause

As someone who recently used `ameliorate` in an abstract(!), let me make the case for it.

`Target` sounds active and vigorous, but it is quite vague in that context. You can target a diseased brain region (for stimulation, surgical removal, etc) or a mutated gene for deletion, but it's not clear to me what "targeting" something abstract like a disease would mean.

`Ameliorate` means "to make something better". It has the added implication that the situation is quite bad, but the intervention won't totally restore things to normality. This is exactly what I meant: we don't think this intervention is a silver bullet that will reverse the disease, but it seems like it should help--and our proposal is cheap and easy, so...consider it.

This also keeps Reviewer #2 from busting your chops over how effective the proposed strategies might be, which you'd be inviting with a stronger word like "cure."

Here, you could also use `treat`, which feels like an intermediate-strength claim. "Manage" might work too though that comes with implications of its own too: to me, managing a disease suggests that it is temporarily being held at bay, or the negative consequences are averted without fixing the underlying problem.

I learned `ameliorate` in junior high--and was writing for people with PhDs--so I went for it.

⬐ ZephyrBlu

It's funny that so much of what we do as humans is signalling.

⬐ watwut

You all assume some grand reasoning and evil intent behind the word.

Simply, most people writing scientific articles are bad at writing and generally are happy or is somewhat English. They don't obsess offer single word, because their focus is elsewhere and they have no clue about writing anyway.

⬐ alextheparrot

It is exactly because no one obsesses over single words in practice that these words gain usage, though. Academic writing is taught and word choice is a part of what is taught. I started using those words in my academic writing because that’s how I was taught to write from lab courses to journal contributions. Early in my studies professors and teaching assistants did correct single words where a more normative word was possible, so you just start writing like that to avoid any trouble.

There isn’t anything intrinsically evil about norms and signaling, I feel that assuming someone recognizing a structure means that structure is inherently evil is a bit presumptive. In-group jargon usage is common and useful for some, and a hurdle to overcome for entrants, that’s it, absent any moral judgement.

⬐ alextheparrot

A couple people thought this video could warrant its own discussion thread when I posted it in a comment [0]

We often use writing as a tool to think, which is useful as it helps facilitate incrementally forming thoughts. However, we also use writing as a tool communication. The main message of this video is effectively "Don't expect your readers to care about the writing you used to think!". Then, the lecturer teaches us different ways writers who wrote for thought can re-orient their writing for be best received by readers.

In terms of differences, writing for thought usually is incremental and explores a problem space. On the other hand, writing for communication usually seeks to expose and then resolve gaps in a mindset. One is converging the whole way, the other needs to diverge before converging. Effectively, making the reader care.

The lecturer also explains how important words can be, insofar as they show you as part of an 'in' or an 'out' group. To be an academic and have your work received well by other academics, you need to communicate like an academic, written communication is no exception.

The video isn't short, but well worth your time.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23912252

This aligns well with a lecture from the University of Chicago I watched recently[0], which explores how many academics use writing as a tool for thinking (What the article describes) and don’t think about the reader. Writing is an incredibly powerful tool to form thoughts.

However, as the lecturer in the video details, don’t expect the writing done for thinking to be useful to readers! When we think, there is usually a certain incrementalism, whereas when we read we’re trying to resolve dissonances in a current mental model. That’s a key distinction, it means you need to make people care or understand why their mental model is broken when writing to informs reader. When we write for our own thinking, we usually understand the general problem already and are just traversing the problem space to better understand different components.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ ricksharp

Interesting. I was taught to consider the audience in communication, but I think I fail to consider their mental model most of the time.

⬐ frandroid

You write once for yourself/thinking, let it sit overnight. Come back the next day, and without looking at the original text, write it again for the audience.

⬐ raegis

This video alone is worthy of its own topic on Hacker News.

⬐ temblerwalk

Agreed, this was great.

⬐ alextheparrot

Thanks (To both of you)! I've submitted [0] it and hopefully others resonate with it as well and that fosters more discussion around it

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23917587

⬐ hanoz

> "many academics use writing as a tool for thinking... and don’t think about the reader"

That would explain an awful lot about my university reading experience.

⬐ alextheparrot

Don't believe me, watch the talk! If this resonates with you, the talk will both resonate and leave you better equipped to fix the problem moving forward. His role is to help academics write in ways readers want to read.

I found this lecture pretty informative: The Craft of Writing Effectively - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

Here are some tips/hacks/info that might be helpful:

- Use a voice recorder (step a way from the computer an dictate to yourself what you want to say--ideally while walking), then come back to the computer and transcribe what you said. You writing style will be come --- literally --- conversational. A plan/outline might be helpful to bring on your walk-a-talk to help you stay organized.

- Use dictation software like the one built-into mac OS, or the one in google docs. It's pretty good accuracy

- Use a text-to-speech software to read back what you've written, see info how to setup here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...

- Watch the video on this page https://documentation.divio.com/

- Think of the reader https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

The writing style is dense. I suspect a voice fresh out of academia.

The post about salary reads much better so might just be an experience thing.

https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ derivativethrow

Dan Luu is not "fresh out of academia."

⬐ waheoo

So youre saying he's just dense?

This is something I'm just starting to understand after being an idealist/perfectionist for most of my life.

YAGNI seemed like a shortsighted dogma. My colleague's design decisions looked like ugly hacks. I preferred something to be well-done than to be useful. According to my MBTI type, I was a perfectionist of idea, not a perfectionist of action/result. I was trying to build a cathedral, not a bazaar.

I can attribute my ongoing transformation to a single video about effective writing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

The main takeaway is that text is meant to be read, not written. Providing value to the reader is the only thing that matters. How well you write, how smart you sound, how much knowledge you deliver, doesn't matter as long as the reader gets value from the text.

It sounds obvious, but it truly changed my perspective. I recommend this video to everyone.

I found this lecture about effective writing to be very useful:

LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively (Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

I think these two resources are excellent:

1. Simon Peyton Jones, How to Write a Great Research Paper https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/wr...

2. Larry McEnerney’s writing workshop https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

These focus on writing papers, and get as close to talking about “scientific” writing as any resources I have seen.

But I think good general writing advice will help with scientific writing, too.

The book “Style: Towards Clarity and Grace” may be useful for that.

I would also suggest that it is important to remember, even in technical writing, that you are telling a story. The more you practice your storytelling, the better your papers will be.

Besides jargon, I see two common problems in the papers I read. (I am an art history student, but I expect this is not unique to my field.)

1. I read too many articles that fail to get me excited about where they are going. They tell me what they will say, but not why I should care.

2. I read too many essays that fail to conclude with applications, take-aways, or next steps.

Please don’t just give A Novel Approach To Dragon Slaying. Show me the villagers suffering from the dragon’s violence. Then show me how to slay the dragon. And don’t end with the dead dragon—end with the fireworks the villagers light in celebration.

⬐ VarFarYonder

You can find the printout he refers to during the lecture here: https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/u.osu.edu/dist/5/7046/files/20...

This lecture contains the best advice I've come across for academic writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

A good video on writing that talks about similar ideas is https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM

This video is geared more towards academic writing, but, I've found it helpful even outside of that space.

Related: I've found advice on this video to be very useful in terms of some actionable feedback that can be incorporated in your writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

⬐ lerxst00

To add to that, the one of the biggest takeaways from the video, and what is also mentioned in this post, is to 'open people’s eyes by proving the status quo wrong'.

People only read things if they find value in what you have written - they are less likely to pay attention if the article is written in a way that best demonstrates how much you (the writer) know about something. And, showing readers that their understanding might have some gaps is a good way to sustain their interest.

⬐ based2

src: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20418569

⬐ diNgUrAndI

The video is about academic writing. I wonder how much can be applied to technical writing, like API documents.

I agree with this. The beginning of the post describes how rereading a previous post has been insightful for the author, then it delves into details, without explaining why, or how this could be useful for the reader. Too much rambling/offtopic content and breaking through the fourth wall. I, as a reader need to know why this could be useful for me first, then I would decide to read it.

Recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM has very interesting tips on writing.

tl;dw : you have been taught to write to people(teachers) who are paid to care about your writing.

Not AP,

But I'm curious, can you Tldr the tax for typescript?

I skimmed half the article but I couldnt actually find what the tax was?

In similar vein to the above above poster, you might find this lecture useful: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

Your writing has a very nice cadence to it I'm just not sure you grasp the reason I might want to read it!