How to Say Nothing in 500 Words

http://www.apostate.com/how-say-nothing-500-words

by mcantor • 16 years ago

69 30 16 years ago

Mithrandir2• 16 years ago

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.

rbanffy• 16 years ago

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

mcantor2• 16 years ago

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.

cduan• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...

mcantor2• 16 years ago

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'."

rfrey• 16 years ago

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.

icegreentea• 16 years ago

It projects an air of lack of involvement and therefore neutrality/lack of bias?

People will often fall back to passive voice (and other linguistic acrobatics) when they don't want seem like they're weighing in one way or another. For example, accident reports will sometimes go on with something like "Braking maneuver attempted without success".

flapjack• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.)

JoeAltmaier• 16 years ago

And how fiction came to be in the first person? Sounds like a valley girl telling a storey to her friends.

JoachimSchipper• 16 years ago

Novels are written to enable immersion and focus on the actors (protagonist); academic articles are written to be clear and neutral and focus on the subject matter.

Hence "I realized I loved her" and "the solution was lightly stirred for 10 minutes".

eru3• 16 years ago

Passive my be neutral, but it's often far from clear and unfocussed. Most western languages aren't very good at expressing passive.

chime• 16 years ago

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.

damoncali2• 16 years ago

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!

David2• 16 years ago

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

Avshalom• 16 years ago

I suspect it was a joke but I bet a word->phrase thesaurus/dictionary mash up could add say 30% to your word count.

damoncali2• 16 years ago

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.

spudlyo• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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

kevinburke• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.

David2• 16 years ago

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.)

iwr• 16 years ago

"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.

rick_2047• 16 years ago

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

eru3• 16 years ago

Try reading the article.

How to Say Nothing in 500 Words

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