Writing, Briefly

http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html

by wumi • 18 years ago

46 25 18 years ago

mark-t• 18 years ago

Wow, you managed to find the one remaining page on paulgraham.com that hadn't been submitted before.

wumi• 18 years ago

By accident. Stumbled across this essay via another site (Venture Hacks I believe), so I submitted it. Lo and behold, it hasn´t been done before.

kirubakaran2• 18 years ago

I thought I submitted "the one remaining page" when I posted http://www.paulgraham.com/asterisk.html

wumi, you win.

Xichekolas• 18 years ago

You guys make me want to write a bot to crawl his site and just submit every URL.

Would probably be funny until my account got deleted.

Darmani2• 18 years ago

Never been linked to anywhere but the index: http://paulgraham.com/scient.html

jgrahamc• 18 years ago

OK, I'll be the first to admit... I had to look up the meaning of "anaphora".

mhb• 18 years ago

So you're not using aif or awhen I bet.

euccastro• 18 years ago

    a·naph·o·ra [...]
        –noun
        1.  Also called epanaphora. Rhetoric. repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences. [...]
        2.  Grammar. the use of a word as a regular grammatical substitute for a preceding word or group of words [...]
        3. (sometimes initial capital letter) Eastern Church. [...]

Aif and awhen use meaning 2, while this essay probably means 1.

mcormier• 18 years ago

He uses too many semi-colons for my liking.

ph0rque• 18 years ago

It's something I've come across in older writing (ie >50 years ago). As mentioned above, the modern thing to do is to use bullet points.

Darmani2• 18 years ago

Most modern English speakers seem to use way, way fewer semicolons than they should; I'm not sure whether to blame this on education or if it's just the bar for publishing being lowered; nevertheless, the vast majority of people I've talked to don't know to use semicolons with coordinating adverbs (or whatever they're called) such as "however" and "nevertheless;" oftentimes they also don't know that comma-splices are bad; as an amateur Grammar-nazi, this general practice really irks me.

allenbrunson• 18 years ago

kurt Vonnegut was rather famously against the use of semicolons. it made me rethink their usage. these days i'm more likely to use two sentences to convey the same idea.

mailanay• 18 years ago

Interesting and quite useful. I have made so many false starts on starting a blog of my own, that I have lost count. Being a founder of a software startup, I know I have to start blogging sooner than later, but (this may sound really weird) so far I have not had the courage. This essay will help me organize my thoughts and take me closer to "putting pen on paper"

edw519• 18 years ago

Don't be afraid to use long sentences.

There are no rules, only guidelines.

daveambrose• 18 years ago

If, and only if, you can craft one that makes sense and is coherent.

GavinB• 18 years ago

Here's one: If your essay turns into a list, use bullet points or numbers rather than a block of semicolons.

Otherwise, great stuff. I like that pg's advice for writing--create a first draft and iterate rapidly--is exactly the same as his advice for creating startups.

amjith• 18 years ago

Amen to that. I had to fight hard to finish the article.

abstractwater• 18 years ago

After the first 2 items of the list I realized it was indeed a list until the end: from that point, knowing the structure of the article made the reading even easier.

tel• 18 years ago

Create a first draft and iterate rapidly really ends up being a philosophy for almost anything that can be lumped into "design". It's a great message to espouse.

jraines• 18 years ago

True -- but that way it's just another of ten billion How To blog posts. This way, it's a tight, rapid fire (anaphora ftw) Essay.

ggruschow• 18 years ago

Interesting that most of the advice can be well applied to programming also.

lux• 18 years ago

Nice ending! Poetic even :)

brion• 18 years ago

Another added tip for writing and, this can be used for almost anything, is following the Statement Example and Explain format. (SEE) It is very English 101 but always helps, e.g., “I need you to change the font to bold” (Statement) “See this is how you do it <strong> my bold text</strong>” (Example) “ Once we make the change visitors will be able to read the text better” (Explain) Or “I love you” (s) “I think about you all the time” (e) “This is why we should get married” (e)

Writing, Briefly

Related Stories