How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly (2006)

http://www.downes.ca/post/38526

by bemmu • 10 years ago

490 74 10 years ago

tikhonj• 10 years ago

The article provides four categories of essays: argument, explanation, definition, description.

Personally, I've found it useful to think of almost everything I write as a variation on "argument". Perhaps I'm also describing, defining or explaining something, but there's always a core substrate of persuading. A integral part of defining something well, for example, is to simultaneously argue for why the defined idea is interesting and useful; without that, it's all too easy to descend into abstract nonsense.

My approach isn't universally applicable—it leads to a particular writing style—but it certainly helped me in organizing my writing and organizing my thoughts. Whenever I write I'm always making a point even if I wouldn't classically think of it as a "persuasive" essay.

qznc• 10 years ago

I see a fundamental conflict for writing between persuasion and logical argumentation.

Persuasive writing means I want to reader to get into an agreement habit. Start with something uncontroversial and work towards your core point. Avoid detours. Avoid negative triggers. In contrast, for a logical argument you should include objections and address them.

Persuasion works on a more psychological level and logic is not that relevant. As long as you don't trigger too many bullshit detectors in your audience, you are fine without logic.

GavinMcG• 10 years ago

I think there's clearly a dimension of persuasion that falls outside strictly logical argumentation. That said, if you're writing something, it had better be something you want others to believe.

There needn't be a fundamental difference, in my view. You can structure and describe true premises and relations persuasively without manipulating your reader.

vonnik• 10 years ago

According to Aristotle, persuasion has three parts - logos, pathos and ethos. Your logical argumentation is logos, a powerful tool but not the only way to persuade. Pathos is the appeal to feeling (avoid triggers), and ethos is the establishment of trust, authority, credentials, character. Different persuasive tactics work with different audiences. On HN, logos can work. In US elections, pathos tends to work.

joe_the_user• 10 years ago

I suspect that any of the four styles is actually broad to be used for any piece of writing someone might do. So everything can be an argument (or an explanation etc).

Still, if you see everything you write as argument, perhaps you consider branching out a bit. Everything has a persuasive aspect but letting that persuasive aspect be implicit/toned-down come sometimes makes it stronger - a simple description of a war zone can be a stronger argument against war than a series of logical claims, or oppositely, an explanation of how to use a particular power tool may include an argument that person should use that tool safely but it's not something that needs to be pushed too hard.

mastercoder82• 10 years ago

The key idea is to give your articles/essays some structure before publishing them. That structure will generally be a nested form of constructs like arguments/ definitions/ explanations.

I think following two basic things helps:

   - Give your article a structure. 
   - Make it easy for reader to navigate that structure.

It works best when that structure is simple. If it gets much complex, divide it into multiple articles and publish as series/book. If it gets complicated, give it some more thought till it fits into some structure.

joshmn• 10 years ago

I really like stuff like this. You know, where it's laid out in a straightforward, no-noise formula for doing something. Does anyone have any more of these types of things? Social interactions, design patterns, anything. I love them.

idlewords2• 10 years ago

The best guide I've ever read to writing nonfiction is William Zinsser's "On Writing Well". If you do any writing for work or pleasure, his advice is indispensable:

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction...

krmmalik2• 10 years ago

Completely agree. I learned more in 2 weeks of reading Zinsser than I did in 3 yrs of English at high school.

combatentropy• 10 years ago

Completely agree. However I first read the Elements of Style. In 2 days of reading Strunk & White I unlearned 3 years of high school English. Later I read Zinsser and found him to be saying the same things. But a lot of people say that Zinsser's take is easier to read.

chatmasta• 10 years ago

On Writing Well and Elements of Style were required reading in almost every English class I took. Sounds like you had some bad teachers.

igravious3• 10 years ago

The 1-star reviews are more than a mite worrying.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-Classic-Guide-Nonfiction...

I tend to rely more on 1-star reviews than 5-star ones. I find them to be more reliable guides.

May I suggest that you write well in spite of the advice given here rather than because of it. :)

wglb2• 10 years ago

What in the book, from your reading, is the bad advice?

tptacek2• 10 years ago

It's a really good book.

tunesmith2• 10 years ago

I think about presenting arguments a lot. Arguments are best represented in DAG form; mostly a tree structure, although some premises might support multiple conclusions so it's inherently graph-based (graphical data structure). Because some conclusions are often lemmas supporting further conclusions, arguments can go several levels deep.

I like envisioning them with the conclusion on the top and the premises on the bottom, although people often visualize them flipped in another direction.

But the trick comes in presenting the argument to someone else, verbally, in a presentation, or through writing. What is the best way to do it?

Because your goal isn't just to impart information; it's also to be convincing and to hope that your counterparts get invested in the conclusion.

I find that if the conclusion is counterintuitive, then starting with the conclusion can create resistance. People love to interrupt and argue against something they disagree with even if they haven't thought it through.

On the other hand, starting with a bunch of premises devoid of context can just feel unrooted.

I guess I generally try to analyze the argument to find the highest (closest to conclusion) points that are not controversial, start with those, and then try to talk about the surprising conclusion that they imply. It can be a real workout, though, trying to anticipate responses, being open to feedback while still working towards your conclusion.

I wonder if this sort of thing is related to any algorithmic concepts, like most efficient ways to walk a DAG.

jarmitage3• 10 years ago

I conceptualise arguments in the same way. I think the requirement of serialising arguments and evidence is bogus for the age we live in and would much rather just give the whole graph to an audience to play with, and then elaborate and discuss as needed. Or heaven forbid the reader could have write access!

bemmu• 10 years ago

In the end you have to examine the arguments in some order. By deciding the order you are reducing work for the reader in finding a pleasant traversal of the graph.

nabla92• 10 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map

kmill• 10 years ago

I've been trying to develop a kind of argument map for mathematical proofs. Most proofs I come across are fairly ill-structured, especially from the point of view of someone with programming experience (a proof is just a program which operates on truths!). I'm still not sure about the grammar of these arguments, but some experiments are

- http://tmp.esoteri.casa/inv_dom.xml.html about dimension invariance of homeomorphisms, created to detangle an argument in Hatcher's Algebraic Topology book.

- http://tmp.esoteri.casa/galois.xml.html which only has some facts about polynomials so far, but again detangling some convoluted arguments.

The idea is that arguments supporting claims are indented, so you can read off the structure of the proof easier. Also, to keep nesting down, there is the convention that variables can be introduced with an implicit "for all" surrounding all of the following steps in a branch (using "suppose" or "for all"). Finally, proofs by contradiction are just case enumeration where some cases reach an impossibility.

I could see something like this being used for non-mathematical arguments. It would need a better way of having multiple arguments for claims, something math doesn't need. At some point I was thinking about a forum for arguments for facts/claims, where arguments can depend on these facts/claims. The idea would be that positions can be pulled up as a graph to see how strong or weak they are, or see where further arguing is needed. Perhaps something like this could improve political discourse.

hyperpallium• 10 years ago

Sustaining interest is also important. If you look at stories and stand up sets, there's an alternation between tension and release. In an argument, a challenging statement creates tension; resolving it is release. Meanwhile, with each such scene or joke, background is implicitly built up for a larger payoff later on.

Another aspect of this is explicitly addressing counter-arguments that arise in the reader's mind. If left dangling too long, the doubt is annoying for the reader. One problem is you don't know which specific counter-argument each specific reader is thinking of. So you corral them. You implicitly provoke this counter-argument, so when you address it, it's satisfying for the reader. By deliberately leaving open this specific counter-argument, and subtly suggesting it, you only have to deal with that specific one, at that point, for all readers. You lead them to objections, then resolve them.

Finally, if you finish a "scene" with another question, it propels the reader into the next stage of the argument.

BTW if you're not writing, but talking to one person, a crucial part of leading them to your conclusion is to find out where they are. Like giving directions to someone who's lost, they won't make sense if you don't know where they are. For an argument, it's their current view, what issues concern them, what perspective they have, and perhaps what misunderstandings they have. To convince, you should listen more than talk.

NB. All this is a lot of work, and mostly I can't be bothered.

paulsutter• 10 years ago

conclusion on the top and the premises on the bottom, although people often visualize them flipped in another direction.

In my own writing, my first draft seems to end with whatever should have come first. My second draft starts with that, and becomes shorter and clearer.

rymohr• 10 years ago

Have you seen http://en.arguman.org?

It allows you to make an assertion and then break the argument down into peer-validated because, but, and however statements.

laxatives• 10 years ago

Proofs should be in DAG form, but starting a presentation from first principles seems like overkill. If your audience isn't at least as interested already interested in your side, they aren't going to be baby stepped through ever layer, especially when the first layers are the lowest levels.

Probably the same still holds if you flip the DAG and start with the conclusion, as you've already mentioned. People are going to tune out if you are presenting an opposing argument.

I don't think there's a great formula for arguments. You have to know your audience and pick your battles. Maybe the next best thing is making clear what you want/don't want and making clear what you believe others want/don't want and trying to find options that maximize as many of those constraints as possible. I think a lot of arguments stem from people who are already in agreement about most things.

kenrick95• 10 years ago

A bit OOT: representing arguments as trees and computing which argument is the "best" is one research area in AI/KR, which I am currently doing for my univ's FYP. (if you're interested, check "Argumentation Framework" on Wikipedia and "Assumption-based Argumentation" on Google Scholars)

hassancf• 10 years ago

DAG? What is it?

detaro• 10 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_acyclic_graph

philelly• 10 years ago

this essay's style seems endemic in tech writing: logorrheic and trafficking in technical details/protocols in place of the underlying principles (cogency, brevity, a single unifying argument that can be simply stated).

i appreciate any tips to aid my writing, but i think very few match the tried and true approach of reading masters of the craft and revising one's writing, again and again, for brevity. i suspect that the blog format discourages the latter.

pcrh• 10 years ago

I somewhat agree with you here. In fact, as soon as the article starting drifting into lists, I stopped reading and scanned the rest.

mthoms2• 10 years ago

I also agree. But it occurred to me that the authors intent was probably to create a sort of reference guide that could be referred to over and over in order to apply the techniques discussed.

In that context, the use of lists makes a lot more sense. What's interesting is that the article also seems to be written in conversational style while at the same time intending to be a re-usable reference. At least, that's my take on it.

crdb• 10 years ago

This is because there are two families of tech writing, one is concise and detail oriented, the other is long form because it contains complex ideas that cannot be summarised in bullets.

Take as an example most of Dijkstra's output. Could you reduce "On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science" [1] into bullets and still retain its message?

[1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/E...

kayamon• 10 years ago

Using bullets is not the same as being succinct.

e12e• 10 years ago

i suspect that the blog format discourages the latter.

I don't really see how the blog format makes this any worse than writing published essays did.

The foreword to "American Essays"[1] edited by Shaw is remarkably relevant and on-point for what I would consider the good parts of blogs and on-line writing. There aren't all that many that I am aware of that write consistently and well - apart from the odd article in The New Yorker, Greenspun, Spolsky, Graham as well as Norvig are a few that come to mind (and I'm reminded I've not really read anything by any of them lately).

Many of the blogs that are posted here on hn are good first drafts, that if the author found the time to put in about three to five times the effort, might be considered decent essays. I absolutely understand why people don't do that -- it is a lot of work, for little immediate reward. But I think that a lot of writers could do well to aspire to match Hemmingway or White, rather than just trudging out interesting first-drafts and sketched ideas.

I believe the greatest benefits to the authors, other than improving their writing skill, would probably be improving their thinking - the level of understanding needed to write simply and delightfully about a subject is significantly above the level needed to jot down a few ideas and join them into sentences by rote application of a few stylistic guidelines.

We should probably all aspire to write better than a well-trained neural network that takes a few keywords as input ;-)

[1] Unfortunately I only have the paperback, and can't find the time to transcribe it all. Should be available as a preview in the Kindle edition, I assume: https://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-Shaw/dp/B00...

The volume appears to be oddly missing from Google books, I would think that has been scanned, but it appears not: https://www.google.no/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=e+b+white+essay...

I also came across an old note on another essay collection, "Essays of E.B. White" - from his own foreword:

"The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. (...) Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.

There are as many kinds of essays as there are human attitudes or poses (...). The essayist (...) selects his garb from an unusually extensive wardrobe: he can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter -- philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast. I like the essay, (...) but I am not fooled about the place of the essay in twentieth-century American letters -- it stands a short distance down the line. The essayist, unlike the novelist, the poet, and the playwright, must be content in his self-imposed role of second-class citizen. A writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem or a play, and leave the essayist to ramble about, content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined existence. (...)

There is one thing the essayist cannot do, though -- he cannot indulge himself in deceit or in concealment, for he will be found out in no time. Desmond MacCarthy, in his introductory remarks to the 1928 E. P. Dutton & Company edition of Montaigne, observes that Montaigne "had the gift of a natural candour....". It is the basic ingredient. And even the essayist's escape from discipline is only a partial escape: the essay, although a relaxed form, imposes its own disciplines, raises its own problems, and these disciplines and problems soon become apparent and (we all hope) act as a deterrent to anyone wielding a pen merely because he entertains random thoughts or is in a happy or wandering mood.

I think some people find the essay the last resort of the egoist, a much too self-conscious and self-serving form for their taste; they feel that it is presumptuous of a writer to assume that his little excursions or his small observations will interest the reader. There is some justice in their complaint. I have always been aware that I am by nature self-absorbed and egoistical; to write of myself to the extent I have done indicates a too great attention to my own life, not enough to the lives of others. I have worn many shirts, and not all of them have been a good fit. But when I am discouraged or downcast I need only fling open the door of my closet, and there, hidden behind everything else hangs the mantle of Michel de Montaigne, smelling slightly of camphor."

  -- E. B. White, 1977,  in foreword to Essays of E. B. White

https://books.google.no/books?id=wkTusWRWdlQC&pg=PA4&dq=e+b+...

As a mental exercise, substitute "blog" and "blogger" for "essay" and "essayist" as appropriate...

wglb2• 10 years ago

That is very much like the advice I remember Annie Proulx giving--something like "don't do workshops, read prodigiously"

lutusp• 10 years ago

Why am I not surprised at the poor quality of this writer's prose? An uncontroversial observation that's made worse by its intent -- to teach others how to write. Even the title --

"How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly"

-- contains a contradiction: by definition, an expert doesn't require tutorial instruction (expertise is not a transferable consumer product). The essay goes quickly downhill from there.

One more example:

"But part of it is a simple strategy for writing your essays and articles quickly and expertly, a strategy that allows you to plan your entire essay as you write it, and thus to allow you to make your first draft your final draft."

The observation this sentence makes is self-falsifying. The sentence is too long and meandering and cries out for the compassionate intervention of an editor.

coldshower• 10 years ago

The article is a mind dump from his blog Half an Hour. The tagline should explain it all: A place to write, half an hour, every day, just for me.

URL: http://halfanhour.blogspot.ca/

acagle• 10 years ago

I was turned off by the non-conversational tone of his writing and didn't get beyond the first three or four paragraphs. The sentences are long and pausing constantly with unnecessary commas. This is exactly the kind of writing I am trying to get away from, so I'm not interested in taking advice from someone who does this.

Spooky23• 10 years ago

If you focus on the basics, writing descriptive text is really easy.

Structure is important. First, be direct and make whatever assertion of statement that you are going to make. Next provide arguments, facts or other narrative that support the assertion. Finally close the narrative.

Avoid trying to be too clever. An essay isn't a conversation, and introducing conversational tone is confusing to the reader. Don't be funny. Edit mercilessly.

Finally, before you start writing, have a plan about what you are going to say, either in your head or in an outline. Don't let the mechanics of writing get in your way -- if you know what you are going to say, it will be easier to say it.

bikamonki• 10 years ago

You cannot fake expert. You cannot rush expert.

nwatson• 10 years ago

Pragmatics ... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics

osteele• 10 years ago

Cf. Paul Graham's “The Age of the Essay” (2004) http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html

Graham's essay is and describes a fifth category of essay. Graham calls this approach “meandering”; it might also be called “exploratory”.

idlewords2• 10 years ago

"An army of words escorting a corporal of thought."

akkartik• 10 years ago

I know you, "dabblers and blowhards" guy :) I don't agree with you, but I am aware of you.

igravious3• 10 years ago

Beware the "One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked."

personlurking• 10 years ago

Thanks. I hadn't read that one yet (and it did its job - it surprised me). It was only about 1000x better than the article being discussed here in the comments.

dredmorbius4• 10 years ago

I hadn't read that for a while, and as another comment notes, that's a much better discussion of how to write an essay than TFA here.

Interesting too that pg picks up on the Trivium and Quadrivium concepts from medieval education. I'd run across these independently myself and found them profoundly interesting. The trivium, for example, is an input, processing, output system: grammar, logic, rhetoric.

bencollier49• 10 years ago

tl;dr

partycoder2• 10 years ago

For some basic tips, I have found the site "foxtype.com" to be very good. It analyses your text for politeness and conciseness it asks you to rephrase text.

-- (now, this is the foxtype suggested text)

For some basic tips, the site "foxtype.com" to be good. It analyses text for politeness and conciseness and it suggests alternatives to phrases.

mthoms2• 10 years ago

Unfortunately, they don't seem to have an API. Can anyone recommend something like this that has a REST API?

mannykannot• 10 years ago

You might want to take a closer look at the suggested rewrite (especially the initial not-quite-a-sentence) first...

jcoffland2• 10 years ago

Was anyone else bothered by the numerous type-os? I counted at least 10.

zodiac• 10 years ago

Did you mean typo? http://www.thefreedictionary.com/typo

jcoffland2• 10 years ago

Yeah, just goes to show that your first draft should not be your final.

nxzero• 10 years ago

Citing authoritative sources is easily the easiest way to be seen as an expert. Next is having them cite you as an expert source, which is not as hard as it might seem.

dredmorbius4• 10 years ago

A slight difference of opinion.

Citing authoritative sources doesn't convey expertise, but is a courtesy to the reader. If you're going to say or claim something, back it up. I'm also picky about how sources are cited, and for anything more than a brief reference, I prefer the author and work be mentioned at least on the first instance, in the text. I'm reading Vaclav Smil currently, who follows the model of (Smith 2015), which I find ... kind of useless:

* It's more invasive than a simple footnote or endnote.

* It's less descriptive than "George Smith, A Work of Some Note". Which tells me, without having to turn to the back of the book, what I want to look up.

* Footnotes, as opposed to endnotes, allow me to quickly find, on the page what it is that's being referenced. This is quite out of fashion. So am I.

(On the other hand, endnotes allow quickly skimming all notes of a book in one place. I don't believe this compensates for their numerous other disadvantages.)

Expertise isn't based on citing an expert, but in noting the dimensions of a topic or concept, and in particular, the credibly disagreeing points of view.

William Ophuls is an author I respect in this. He's absolutely got a point of view (he writes on applying ecological limits to political concepts). But he also notes his principle critics and exemplars of opposing points of view, and frequently considers their views, data, and arguments. This increases my consideration of him greatly.

WhitneyLand3• 10 years ago

What is Stephen Downes primary job? He describes himself as a senior researcher and makes bold claims of pioneering and important work in the field of e-learning.

Maybe I'm missing his peer reviewed research, I don't see any. I read one unreviewed paper on "Learning Objects" and it had so much fluff it bordered on crankery.

Best I can tell he writes blog posts and articles for web sites.

sopooneo• 10 years ago

Your assessment of Downes may be correct. But I can tell you, that even in actual academic journals, "education research" is a level of self-sustaining garbage like nothing else you have ever encountered. I say this as someone that completed a MEd among some others that went on to be absolute magicians in the classroom. But 90% of the reading assigned for that degree could have passed for parody.

WhitneyLand3• 10 years ago

Wow, I had no idea thanks for explaining that.

dredmorbius4• 10 years ago

http://www.downes.ca/me/index.htm

MistahKoala• 10 years ago

He's a somewhat well-known academic in the field of edtech - 'true' MOOCs in particular.

That's not a defence of him, by the way.

dredmorbius4• 10 years ago

This essay is a counterexample to its own argument.

It's poorly written, verbose, poorly organised, self-serving, and offers little in the way of solid advice.

An expert essay should have a point and purpose, and execute it with competence. This means a few things, but among others, it means having a grasp of your subject, an understanding of others' understanding or lack of it, a firm grasp of the boundaries of your subject, if those are salient, and the capacity to communicate clearly and with interest. Recognising that all writing is a favour to the reader and not the author is also key.

I'm contrasting this essay and its glib advice to Neal Stephenson's "Why I am a Poor Correspondent", in which Stephenson excuses his infrequent presence in email, online discussions and social media, and on interviews and conference panels: he requires long blocks of time, and days of them on end, to be able to produce his primary product, long and complex novels.

I've occasionally spilled out long essays in a single continuous pour with little further major revision necessary (though numerous fixes, corrections, and tweaks are virtually always needed). The experience is an exception, and almost always happens only on material I've been thinking over for a long time -- weeks, months, years.

I'm sitting on at least a half-dozen essays and reviews right now that I've been kicking around for most of the year, so nine months, simply because I've not had the time and space to organise my thoughts and secure uninterrupted keyboard time in front of a system at which I can call up and incorporate references, and do the topics in mind proper justice. It's frustrating, but as with David Byrne, when I've nothing to say, my lips are sealed. Or at least that's my goal.

There's a difference between firehosing words onto a page or into an edit-buffer, and actually writing a coherent, cogent, intelligent piece.

This piece fails at that, and fails (other than by contradiction) to show how.

WhitneyLand3• 10 years ago

Agreed. In fact, I can't understand why this repost from 2006 is popular enough to linger on the first page.

mgalka• 10 years ago

What a great post! Very clear and practically helpful. Thanks for posting.

banusaur• 10 years ago

This article is bad advice. Any fool can string a few words together. Truly writing means re-writing.

Your first draft is always going to be ugly, raw data. Writing as a craft means taking that given set of words and processing it until it's concise and clear. Cut and replace until your argument is airtight.

And another thing: all writing is argument.

There are so many great essays about writing that are infinitely better than this - I'm surprised this gained so much traction on HN.

Here's one of my favorites by George Orwell: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...

How to Write Articles and Essays Quickly and Expertly (2006)

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