
How to Say Nothing in 500 Words - mcantor
http://www.apostate.com/how-say-nothing-500-words
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chime
Giving concrete examples is something Feynman talked about a lot too. It is
easy to talk abstractly about anything but in the end, something real and
relatable must exist. When I deal with enterprise software, I prod the sales
guys to tell me what the feature really means and does. Sure, it will
streamline the sales order approval process but what does that entail? Outlook
add ons? Browser popups? Notifications over SMS? Excel reports? Or 12
different screens that users have to click refresh on all day? My users will
interact with something in the end. Show me the screenshots of all that
already.

When I write business software, I dig in for details with my users in the same
way. I understand you want me to fix the document printing process.
Unfortunately that is too vague to write code for. Let's find out exactly what
it is that needs fixing. Usually after some digging in, I change a button or
two and it is now fixed!

It is hard work to be exact, precise, and specific. Being general is too easy.

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cduan
I used to write papers in a fractal form. A short one would go like:

 _In my opinion, A is true. A is true for at least three reasons: B, C, and D.

B is true for at least three reasons. First, E. Second, F. Third, G.
Therefore, B is true.

C is true for at least three reasons...

D is true for at least three reasons...

In conclusion, A is true._

If I wanted a longer paper, there would be subparagraphs under B, C, and D, in
the same form. For my thesis, each of those subparagraphs got sub-
subparagraphs. You can guess what I would do if I ever wrote a book.

~~~
olegkikin
Your post is only 113 words long. I give you a "D".

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...

~~~
mcantor
It seems to me that, in my opinion, as to all practical intents and purposes,
it's arguable that what you meant to say was something along the lines of,
"Your post seems to be no more than 113 words in length; I have no choice but
to assign you a grade of 'D'."

~~~
Mithrandir
Well, you know what they say: at the end of the day, it is what it is.

~~~
whimsy
This tautology appears to be a tautological tautology.

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damoncali
Reminds me of the most wondrous, but little known, feature in word perfect for
windows 3.1 - the "make my paper one page longer" button. That button saved me
hours in college. I've often wondered how it came to be - talk about listening
to your customers!

~~~
David
Out of curiosity and unfamiliarity with word perfect, what was that feature,
exactly?

~~~
damoncali
There was literally a button that said, "add one page" or something like that.
I assume it changed line height or margins in some subtle way, but it was
magic at midnight the day before your eight page paper was due, and you only
had seven pages.

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David
The headings speak for themselves:

"Avoid the obvious content"

"Take the less usual side"

"Slip out of abstraction"

"Get rid of obvious padding"

"Call a fool a fool"

"Beware of pat expressions"

"Colorful words"

"Colored words"

"Colorless words"

Though [edit] the titles are a good summary of the article [/edit] (as per
"slip out of abstraction") the examples given are humorous, thorough, and help
in really getting the point being made.

It's interesting to consider how the author's (sometimes verbose) sentences
could be shortened. If writing for pure conciseness, what would you cut out?
Which parts are completely necessary? Are the rephrasings necessary to convey
the different aspects of the current point? Is the example given important
enough to stay?

"Pat expressions are hard, often impossible, to avoid, because they come too
easily to be noticed and seem too necessary to be dispensed with."

=> "Pat expressions cannot always be avoided."

"A writer's work is a constant struggle to get the right word in the right
place, to find that particular word that will convey his meaning exactly, that
will persuade the reader or soothe him or startle or amuse him."

=> "Each situation calls for a certain word with a certain connotation; the
writer toils to find it."

Again, there's no problem -- it's excellent writing, it just struck me that
word golf could be as interesting as code golf. What is the shortest possible
phrasing to express this exact idea? (I suppose we're doing it all the time,
except in English classes where word count is the goal.)

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spudlyo
_Slang adjectives like cool ("That's real cool") tend to explode all over the
language. They are applied to everything, lose their original force, and
quickly die._

I've often marveled at cool's longevity -- unlike the adjective _sick_
(popular briefly in my social circle in 2005) which seems to have died out
almost entirely.

~~~
X-Istence
2005? That was WAY past its prime. That started in around 2001 for me in North
Jersey and existed until around 2003.

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rfrey
Perhaps only semi-related, but can anybody tell me how scientific journal
writing fell into almost universal use of the passive voice? It drives me nuts
every time I read that some more assumptions will be validated or that
something else will be proven.

Which is to say, every single time I read an academic article.

~~~
flapjack
It's to make what was done (which is important to the paper) seem important
and make who did it (which is less important to the paper) seem unimportant.

~~~
pmiller2
The interesting thing to me is that in mathematics journals, the universal
pronoun is "we." The reason (I've been told) is that "we" represents the
collaboration of the author and the reader to understand the results and
proofs in the paper. This makes sense to me, because reading and writing
mathematics is a skill entirely apart from most other types of discourse. (Of
course, when I say "mathematics," I mean to include fields like theoretical
computer science and others in which discourse is of the "theorem, proof,
discussion" form.)

~~~
dreyfiz
That _is_ interesting. I instinctively use "we" when commenting code or
talking myself through performing a novel task, in both cases for the same
reason.

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Mithrandir
I can't believe how many books I've read written by so-called "accomplished
writers" that use the exact same language as exampled in the article.

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mcantor
I bet this could be a great answer to the poster in the "Shadow Scholar"
thread asking how he could possibly write 10 pages per hour.

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kevinburke
At least he assigned a word deadline and not a page deadline. I wish schools
would let you get feedback on an essay from the teacher and then hand it in
again. Revision is not emphasized.

~~~
sumeeta
Revision was always emphasized to me, but I never understood why. I always
thought I was above it. After I became a programmer and had to look at old
code I’d written, I finally understood why revision is so important.

Couldn’t my teachers have told me that revision is so important because we’re
not qualified to evaluate our creations until they’re no longer fresh in our
heads? It’s not an obvious concept, and I wish others didn’t have to learn it
the hard way.

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rbanffy
I suppose Percival Lowell's "nobody knows" telegram to William Randolph Hearst
doesn't count. And he did it with twice as many words.

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iwr
"All subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interesting."

Certainly, sex can be dull. Unfortunately, going into the specific anecdotes
concerning the topic would make HN less work-safe and also damage the modesty
thereof.

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rick_2047
The same way seo writers do it. I can write 500 words on any keyword.

~~~
eru
Try reading the article.

