

HTML5 Brief: in one paragraph - voidfiles
http://alexkessinger.net/story/html5-brief-one-paragraph

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dprice1
Many of the sentences in this paragraph suffer from one of the following
defects: poor grammar, redundancy, excessive jargon, excessive use of metaphor
("as a toy ... dodo's game ... chips on the table", "gearing up to bet big"),
and spelling mistakes. This greatly reduces the credibility of the author. The
use of comma to connect sentence fragments improperly is really painful: "Web
developers are happy, but all the other platform hackers are sad, flash,
silverlight, ...". The literal meaning of this sentence is that "other
platform hackers" are, among other things, "flash".

The paragraph's construction makes it hard for the reader to know what the
main point is. At the beginning of the paragraph, I was lead to believe that
the topic of the paragraph was the lineage and evolution of HTML5 and its
emergence from a previous failure. Halfway through, the topic shifts
("Implicitly,") to discuss the implications of the technology. In the third
half, it seeks to get to a "bottom line," which seems to be "you should care
about HTML5."

The lack of hyperlinks and references has several knock-on effects. The first
is that claims made ("Some dismiss") smell like straw man arguments or like
hyperbolic statements ("there will be no more versions of html"). Another
effect is that the reader is left with no way to learn more, making this a
pretty shocking example of the failure to use hypertext (ironically, to
discuss hypertext markup technology).

Some recommendations: (1) Print out the paragraph, take a pen, and start
crossing things out. Seek to reduce the number of words. (2) Read your work
out loud, as you would read a book to a child. Not as you would talk to a
buddy over a beer. (3) Review some books on clear writing.

~~~
voidfiles
This was really helpful. I'll I can say is that I am going to take this, and
get better.

Some people might wonder if I actually tried to edit, I did; this isn't me
being lazy. So, feedback like this is helpful. Well, not linking to source
material that is lazy.

I went to college, 4 years, in a program that had a fair amount of writing. I
never thought I was a good writer, but I never got a good take down like this.
Even from my teachers, I wonder if they just saw it as a lost cause.

Anyways, thanks.

~~~
dprice1
I forgot two more suggestions: One is to find a writing buddy. Edit (and by
that, I mean critique, not rewrite) each other's work, and offer comments back
and forth. Establish some ground rules so that you don't get angry at each
other. I personally think this is best done in person. When I need to
communicate something important at work, I'll almost always ask a trusted
coworker to help me read and edit my writing. Without fail, they will see
several things I missed.

I try to self-edit and, I can offer a suggestion from my own experience. I
strongly suggest using a pen on a paper copy. This takes you out of the
context in which you originally wrote the work-- your computer and keyboard.
You can step away from your desk and go somewhere with a different context. A
library, coffee shop, or outside under a tree are good places to rethink and
rewrite.

And finally, I hope we'll see a revised version of your HTML5 paragraph--
you've clearly hit on an idea appealing to HN readers...

------
carussell
Omitting the paragraph breaks from writing doesn't turn it into one paragraph.

~~~
voidfiles
Edit: Okay, I probably should have just let it go.

Original: But who decides where the paragraph breaks go?

Edit:

okay well the above comentor obviously wins, but my point was that their is no
compiler for english that can point out my syntax errors, and that we each
develop a sense of english, and rules are fluid, and can be broken.

~~~
wwortiz
General rules for beginners is one topic or idea per paragraph.

But your "paragraph" is even harder to define as there isn't any real fluidity
to it, it seems more like thoughts here and there in short sentences with
little to zero continuation.

I don't want to turn you off from writing and you should just keep on going in
order to improve (no matter what people say), however learning from authors
and books can also help along the way.

------
daychilde
Perhaps some might call me petty, but in my mind, credibility takes a serious
hit when mistakes like "many more have there chips on the table" are made.

That being said, I think this is a good _attempt_ to encapsulate HTML5 into a
short statement (which should, as others have pointed out, really be broken up
into multiple paragraphs). I'm not so sure it _is_ a good encapsulation; but
certainly a good _attempt_.

~~~
chc
That is petty. Most of the great thinkers of the world have not known English
even well enough to write that. It is illogical to question somebody's
credibility merely on the basis of minor language mistakes.

(In the same spirit: The semicolon in your final sentence should be a comma.
But it doesn't affect my judgment of you one way or the other. ;) )

------
pvg
Playing a dodo's game? Platform hackers are sad? HTML5 is going to be 'every
where you want to be'? Why are a few lines written to the standard of a middle
school book report on the front page?

~~~
voidfiles
Well, it's certainly not because I am in middle school, I wish I started
writing like this in middle school I would be much better by now, no, it's
because I am a bad writer.

Thank you though, this is going to go in my list of question to ask my self
while editing; does this feel like it could be in a middle school book report?

~~~
megablast
Hey, everyone here should give you a break, it is easy to criticize, and
English is clearly not your first language.

~~~
voidfiles
Well, I wish that were the case, or you are making a joke. I can't tell.
Either way it's funny.

------
weego
My reality of HTML5:

HTML5 can do nice things that hackers can currently post on their blogs in the
hope that, if they are first and loud, eventually someone big will come
calling and their developer dreams will come true. HTML5 is a nice thing to
research for the mid-to-long term because in the real world the percentage of
users that hit the site my job relies on that use IE6+7+8 is over 85% and that
will not change any time soon. HTML5 demos do look pretty though so kudos on
those but don't get carried away.

------
ggchappell
> Web developers are happy, but all the other platform hackers are sad, flash,
> silverlight, and Objective-C folk to name a few.

Why does HTML5 make "Objective-C folk" sad?

Obviously, Objective-C means Apple, and Apple's total control of their
platforms might be thwarted by the kind of functionality enabled by HTML5.
However, that does not seem to have anything to do with Objective-C _per se_.

Does it?

------
xtacy
"After this version there will be no more versions of html"---that's a pretty
bold statement..

~~~
voidfiles
It's not my statement it came from Mark Pilgrim. You can check it out here
<http://blog.whatwg.org/whats-next-in-html-episode-1>

~~~
Twisol
It would have been nice to have a link to that as part of the post itself; I
thought that was a odd thing to say. But I'm definitely going to read that
now.

------
Charuru
My HTML5 Brief in one sentence:

HTML5 is a buzzword like AJAX and Web2.0 that encapsulates the most exciting
improvements to the web platform in the past and next few years.

~~~
voidfiles
So HTML5 isn't a w3c spec?

~~~
masklinn
Beyond a w3c spec, HTML5 is now a brand. An umbrella term for a number of
related technologies which go far beyond the W3C spec called "HTML5" and
includes CSS3, microdata, geolocation, local storage, JS remote communication,
SVG, Canvas, ...

We had that discussion with AJAX in the past. The one on the side of strict
interpretation of the acronym failed. They'll fail again if they try to fight
this one.

~~~
MartinCron
The purists always win in theory. Pragmatists always win in practice.

