I've always written essays on ideas, but it wasn't until when I wanted to start publishing my writing on a blog that I found this idea true. Often times flowery language can sacrifice the clarity of your prose for attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are.
It's a lot like the Richard Feynman idea that if you can't distill something to a freshman lecture, you don't really understand it.[1]
[1]: Feynman, Six Not-So-Easy-Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
Opposite to you, I'm often wary of conversational writing for exactly that reason: "Attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are". Especially a certain style of very breezy, self-assured conversational writing, that doesn't have any nuance or caveats, and hand-waves over anything too technical or specific.
Writers use that style to lay things out "like they really are". Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters. No Harvard footnotes and overcomplicating things here, just straight talk. Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks are effective users of that style of writing. Quite a few bloggers are, too. It produces this strange style that on the surface seems thoughtful, but doesn't really have much there.
> Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters.
You actually be may be right - this Gladwell style of writing is usually quite dangerous, because it does give the reader the sense that they really know what they are talking about, because they are "getting to what matters" (which is obviously very subjective).
The one thing I will argue though is that simple writing communicates the author's point more effectively than using flowerly language. The writer may be wrong, but at least I have much clearer sense of what they mean. By getting to "what matters", I find it easier to determine that they have "what matters" wrong. It is easier to refute the central thesis if the argument is presented without cruft, rather than an argument where flowery prose clouds the thesis.
I find that a mix of a conversational tone followed by technical details is usually the most effective for me. It's one of the reasons I appreciate mathematics within writing - it tends to be much more clear.
Although I do think you are right about Gladwell & Co, I am refering more to MBA-speak - which tends to use large empty words to convey ideas which pretend to have more depth than they really do.
It just depends upon your aims. If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load.
If you're a fantasy writer, it would get pretty drab pretty fast if you spoke to me like how most people speak to me. In fact, it'd be downright boring if you structured all dialogue between characters in such a manner. You need the pomp to make sentences glimmer or express significance.
I'm not sure what the thesis of this essay is since it starts out as "If you want more people to read what you write..." Well no, if you're a novelist, I wouldn't recommend this essay to you. And that's not just me being a pedant either; I think this whole essay is simply advice to CEOs who are trying to talk about their idea.
The thing that "comes over most people" is actually them trying to actually express their real selves, which often gets clouded in day-to-day interactions with others. The idea that you should just shut this off is nonsense and a barrier to increased creativity. You can write in a creative fashion while still maintaining a simple delivery. Just look at Larry Wall.
> If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load.
Even for transferring knowledge, it depends a lot on what knowledge you're trying to transfer, and to whom. In scientific writing, the more pop-science the goal of the article, the more conversational the style should be, and vice-versa. In a paper by someone in my field written for other people in the field, a pop-science conversational style isn't helpful, and would increase the cognitive load. In that case, I want clarity, precision, and accuracy, which is often helped by using a more specialized language.
This has been one of the main changes in science writing from earlier centuries. If you read 17th-century mathematics, it's actually trying to explain it all in a jargon-free conversational style, written as if you were having a parlor conversation about numbers. "Consider three whole numbers, such that the sum of the square of the first two equals the third", etc. This does not scale well and is error-prone.
Totally. I strongly disagree with the sentiment behind this article, which is odd considering how invaluable PG's advice usually is. I agree, nothing is more cringe than the misguided being overly-verbose. But dissauding the intelligent and capable from flexing their lexicon seems a little harsh. No Oscar Wilde or Robert Hughes? No thanks.
I'd, gladly, substitute 'mercurial Spaniard' with an honest 'thank you'. To each their own when seeking friendship. Finding honest, humble friends, in my opinion, supersedes worldly, articulate fellows.
Honesty and vocabulary are not even loosely correlated. I agree that, given the choice between the two, you should choose honest, humble friends.
But if you're ever judging someone's worthiness of friendship because of their Flesch–Kincaid score (whether it's too high or too low!), you're doing it wrong.
I find that if I need to use a word like mercurial it helps to add a four-letter word in proximity. It seems to aid digestion and thus cuts down on the commentary.
This is fairly popular advice, and I heard it at least a half dozen times at my (liberal arts) college. That's not to dismiss this post because its takeaway is commonplace: I agree with the sentiment. However, I think it's important to embrace the full implication of its thesis:
Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.
Athletic clothing is comfortable, it is functional, and it traffics in convenience.
But people wear clothes for aesthetics, for culture, for dozens of reasons.
When you optimize for, say, being as easily digestible by as many people as possible, you may reduce your nuance or your aesthetic or whatever. And words like mercurial tend to have unique depths and distinctions that keep them being used by the Neil Olivers of the world. That's a good thing.
(As a minor aside that doesn't detract from his point: You'd feel like an idiot using "pen" instead of "write" in a conversation with a friend. Really? Some people just feel more comfortable in suits than in sweatpants. There's nothing wrong with that.)
I remember reading one of Isaac Isimov's biographies, where he mentions that one of the critiques of his writing is that it is too simple. His response -- that's the way it is supposed to be!
In the same vein, if it helps your reader understand your point, use the most precise word that means what you mean to say and is easily understandable.
Synonyms have differences, and the additional depth is helpful in many circumstances - this is the whole point of scientific 'jargon'.
However, I don't think that conflicts with pg's overall point, perhaps just nitpicking his example. I do think that 'mercurial' has its uses.
Exactly, formality can be part of the message, and sometimes less is a bore.
There is certainly a place for more formal language at times, if only to communicate intent and add a bit of pepper to the writing. For example Will Self would not be Will Self without using ten words where one would do, nor would Poe or Henry James (who I suspect spoke much as he wrote).
I think what pg is objecting to here though is probably people putting on airs by attempting a more formal register than they are comfortable with, and thus coming across as a little stilted and a little fake and obscuring their meaning rather than communicating it. This is a particular problem in art criticism, where postmodern art critics adopt a certain stilted, formal, and impenetrable language as a sort of shibboleth; the height of this style is probably someone like Camille Paglia, who gives the impression of saying much about Art without saying much at all (IMO).
Of course you can also do the same by trying to be informal without being intimately acquainted with the particular usage you're trying to emulate, and it depends who you're talking to. What is appropriate (both in speech and in writing) depends on context more than we like to admit.
Quite. There is that ghastly put-on cutesy/folksy over-friendly style that a lot of startups use - which is every bit as stilted and ill-fitting as over-formality.
Articles in the New Yorker also tend to say a lot without saying much at all, from what I've seen. You don't need to spend 5,000 words and six 'next pages' telling the entire backstory of the people in question before making your first point.
Ooo... a new word! Hmmm... googling Mercurial... ((of a person) subject to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind.) Oh! like the metal mercury, how cool is that? Rich and Vivid :-)
I feel like us Swiss german people have a leg up here. We grow up writing anything personal in our dialect (a language that doesn't officially exist in written form), so we're used to writing like we talk. I wonder if it has an effect on our more formal, business-related writing.
If you're going to do this, edit heavily afterwards.
Most conversation is pretty redundant. Because not everybody hears every word, it's acceptable to say things a couple different ways in order to make sure you're understood. That's less OK in an essay or email, because it's assumed you considered everything you wrote.
If you don't believe me, try transcribing an email instead of typing it. Simple transcriptions aren't good writing.
Especially with email I value brevity over "natural" language. I spend time editing my written communications so others don't have to waste time getting to the meat of the message.
For general day to day stuff we all write, yes I agree. Hate reading emails and articles with a lot of unnecessary jargon.
However, Writing- as in writing fiction,poetry,drama etc is an art. Just like a great painting, it is complex and it gives people an idea of the great mind of the author and what he thought of the book from his perspective.
Imagine war and peace written in spoken language.:(
Writing style is an aesthetic: It should suit the subject matter. I wouldn't want to read Tolstoy in the athletic clothing of ideas. The article feels like an overgeneralization.
To the contrary, I explicitly do not write the way I talk; they are very different mediums! Each is better suited to communicate different things / emotions.
Writing gives me the freedom to edit, iterate and polish; something speech cannot do.
I love both writing and speech/presenting - do not be reductionist and reduce writing to mere "written conversation".
It's not that you must say something orally, use a computer automatic transcript and publish that, with all the errors and fillers.
You should edit it heavily to fix errors and increase clarity, but the style should be like something you would say oraly. An uninformed reader must feel that it's just the transcript of an informal talk.
I like this sort of conversational writing style and it's my preferred style as well. But it's not actually much like natural speech. Anyone who's tried transcribing a recording of a conversation knows that they need to be cleaned up quite a lot to be readable. We don't actually talk in essay format.
Writing this way takes practice and probably a lot of reading as well to understand what you can get away with. People don't start out just knowing how to do it. Many people's native dialects are pretty far away from this style, so "write like you talk" wouldn't have the same results for them.
The thing keeping me from agreeing with this is a qualifier. If it were "write like you talk when writing a X", where X could be substituted by tutorial, essay, lesson, etc. I think I'd be more inclined not to disagree here. But as it stands "write like you talk" cannot hold true across the board for the set of all writing goals that exists.
For example just watch any Tarantino film (or read the scripts), none of those characters talk like Tarantino does, I really would not want to watch a film where Uma Thurman walks around talking like him either.
Entire fields of writing would not exists if this statement were true: Poetry, Rap, Music, Marketing slogans ("Think Different"), many types of Comedy, etc.
EDIT: After a reread it looks he does suggest a qualifier, which is basically the general use case, which appears to be when "you want people to read and understand what you write" ie. informative essays, tutorials, emails that would occur in normal or every day communication situations, in which case I would agree.
I had to look up "abstruse". I understood it's meaning from context, but wasn't sure if it was a portmanteau of abstract and obtuse, or an actual word. I've honestly never heard it in my life, and wouldn't stop someone saying it in a sentence, but it did stop my reading.
That made me wonder, does the fact that you sometimes have to listen to the spoken word over-estimate the impact the same words will have when written?
I agree, simplifying would be great. You do realize, however, that a large part of the legal profession is to intentionally write broadly, imprecisely, and flexibly to avoid traps. Other kinds of legal writing are intentionally precise in some clauses so as to add complexity to deliberately avoid immediate comprehension.
In the manner of discourse such as you have exemplified with your comments under your current pseudonym, it is difficult to ascertain your intended trop, voice, or topic. Thus, I hereby request that you rephrase in a more course or colloquial or blunt manner.
Your sense of humor is dizzying and perhaps difficult to find.
If you want more blunt - I speak multiple languages at native or near native level, including two since birth. Spoken English, especially by your average American is rarely to the point, clear, and pleasant. Don't write like you speak, because the average person sucks at it. Instead, know your subject and audience and write to them. Avoid overgeneralizing because it's easy to make an ass of yourself like PG.
Regarding legalese, it is hard to understand and that is intentional. Could it be any clearer for you or will you down-vote again?
This is exactly how I write. It works great. Except in college where English teachers mark down your paper for stupid reasons.
Many good, powerful speeches have repetition. Using the same word to end three sentences in a row. This can make for a great speech. It does not make for a good school grade. Oops.
PG is on to something here, which is that when most people try to make their prose better, they do it the wrong way. They make the language stilted, they add silly descriptions (such as "the mercurial Spaniard"). But, writing is different from speech, and you can learn techniques specifically to make your writing better. I highly recommend Steven Pinker's new book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century" http://amzn.to/1LVI7eJ He has many concrete tips for improving your writing.
this is true in general, but it bears noting that highly specialized fields need jargon. there's nothing wrong with using a word "in a technical sense," nor is there anything wrong with leaning on connotation to help orient your interlocutor.
writing and speaking are like anything else: use the right tool for the job. when i talk to people outside of analytic philosophy, i can't use various technical terms to talk about wittgenstein's thoughts on language. i can talk about them, but it takes longer. like, a lot longer.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 296 ms ] threadIt's a lot like the Richard Feynman idea that if you can't distill something to a freshman lecture, you don't really understand it.[1]
[1]: Feynman, Six Not-So-Easy-Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
Writers use that style to lay things out "like they really are". Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters. No Harvard footnotes and overcomplicating things here, just straight talk. Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks are effective users of that style of writing. Quite a few bloggers are, too. It produces this strange style that on the surface seems thoughtful, but doesn't really have much there.
You actually be may be right - this Gladwell style of writing is usually quite dangerous, because it does give the reader the sense that they really know what they are talking about, because they are "getting to what matters" (which is obviously very subjective).
The one thing I will argue though is that simple writing communicates the author's point more effectively than using flowerly language. The writer may be wrong, but at least I have much clearer sense of what they mean. By getting to "what matters", I find it easier to determine that they have "what matters" wrong. It is easier to refute the central thesis if the argument is presented without cruft, rather than an argument where flowery prose clouds the thesis.
I find that a mix of a conversational tone followed by technical details is usually the most effective for me. It's one of the reasons I appreciate mathematics within writing - it tends to be much more clear.
Although I do think you are right about Gladwell & Co, I am refering more to MBA-speak - which tends to use large empty words to convey ideas which pretend to have more depth than they really do.
If you're a fantasy writer, it would get pretty drab pretty fast if you spoke to me like how most people speak to me. In fact, it'd be downright boring if you structured all dialogue between characters in such a manner. You need the pomp to make sentences glimmer or express significance.
I'm not sure what the thesis of this essay is since it starts out as "If you want more people to read what you write..." Well no, if you're a novelist, I wouldn't recommend this essay to you. And that's not just me being a pedant either; I think this whole essay is simply advice to CEOs who are trying to talk about their idea.
The thing that "comes over most people" is actually them trying to actually express their real selves, which often gets clouded in day-to-day interactions with others. The idea that you should just shut this off is nonsense and a barrier to increased creativity. You can write in a creative fashion while still maintaining a simple delivery. Just look at Larry Wall.
Even for transferring knowledge, it depends a lot on what knowledge you're trying to transfer, and to whom. In scientific writing, the more pop-science the goal of the article, the more conversational the style should be, and vice-versa. In a paper by someone in my field written for other people in the field, a pop-science conversational style isn't helpful, and would increase the cognitive load. In that case, I want clarity, precision, and accuracy, which is often helped by using a more specialized language.
This has been one of the main changes in science writing from earlier centuries. If you read 17th-century mathematics, it's actually trying to explain it all in a jargon-free conversational style, written as if you were having a parlor conversation about numbers. "Consider three whole numbers, such that the sum of the square of the first two equals the third", etc. This does not scale well and is error-prone.
I wouldn't say that in conversation. I'd say something like: "consider three integers, with a squared plus b squared equals c".
And in writing, I'd go for something like: "consider a, b, c ∈ ℤ, such that a² + b² = c". Which isn't far off.
But if you're ever judging someone's worthiness of friendship because of their Flesch–Kincaid score (whether it's too high or too low!), you're doing it wrong.
Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas.
Athletic clothing is comfortable, it is functional, and it traffics in convenience.
But people wear clothes for aesthetics, for culture, for dozens of reasons.
When you optimize for, say, being as easily digestible by as many people as possible, you may reduce your nuance or your aesthetic or whatever. And words like mercurial tend to have unique depths and distinctions that keep them being used by the Neil Olivers of the world. That's a good thing.
(As a minor aside that doesn't detract from his point: You'd feel like an idiot using "pen" instead of "write" in a conversation with a friend. Really? Some people just feel more comfortable in suits than in sweatpants. There's nothing wrong with that.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=mATFyeVI7IUC&lpg=PT324&ots...
Synonyms have differences, and the additional depth is helpful in many circumstances - this is the whole point of scientific 'jargon'.
However, I don't think that conflicts with pg's overall point, perhaps just nitpicking his example. I do think that 'mercurial' has its uses.
There is certainly a place for more formal language at times, if only to communicate intent and add a bit of pepper to the writing. For example Will Self would not be Will Self without using ten words where one would do, nor would Poe or Henry James (who I suspect spoke much as he wrote).
I think what pg is objecting to here though is probably people putting on airs by attempting a more formal register than they are comfortable with, and thus coming across as a little stilted and a little fake and obscuring their meaning rather than communicating it. This is a particular problem in art criticism, where postmodern art critics adopt a certain stilted, formal, and impenetrable language as a sort of shibboleth; the height of this style is probably someone like Camille Paglia, who gives the impression of saying much about Art without saying much at all (IMO).
Of course you can also do the same by trying to be informal without being intimately acquainted with the particular usage you're trying to emulate, and it depends who you're talking to. What is appropriate (both in speech and in writing) depends on context more than we like to admit.
Most conversation is pretty redundant. Because not everybody hears every word, it's acceptable to say things a couple different ways in order to make sure you're understood. That's less OK in an essay or email, because it's assumed you considered everything you wrote.
If you don't believe me, try transcribing an email instead of typing it. Simple transcriptions aren't good writing.
Imagine war and peace written in spoken language.:(
Writing gives me the freedom to edit, iterate and polish; something speech cannot do.
I love both writing and speech/presenting - do not be reductionist and reduce writing to mere "written conversation".
It's not that you must say something orally, use a computer automatic transcript and publish that, with all the errors and fillers.
You should edit it heavily to fix errors and increase clarity, but the style should be like something you would say oraly. An uninformed reader must feel that it's just the transcript of an informal talk.
Writing this way takes practice and probably a lot of reading as well to understand what you can get away with. People don't start out just knowing how to do it. Many people's native dialects are pretty far away from this style, so "write like you talk" wouldn't have the same results for them.
For example just watch any Tarantino film (or read the scripts), none of those characters talk like Tarantino does, I really would not want to watch a film where Uma Thurman walks around talking like him either.
Entire fields of writing would not exists if this statement were true: Poetry, Rap, Music, Marketing slogans ("Think Different"), many types of Comedy, etc.
EDIT: After a reread it looks he does suggest a qualifier, which is basically the general use case, which appears to be when "you want people to read and understand what you write" ie. informative essays, tutorials, emails that would occur in normal or every day communication situations, in which case I would agree.
That made me wonder, does the fact that you sometimes have to listen to the spoken word over-estimate the impact the same words will have when written?
If you want more blunt - I speak multiple languages at native or near native level, including two since birth. Spoken English, especially by your average American is rarely to the point, clear, and pleasant. Don't write like you speak, because the average person sucks at it. Instead, know your subject and audience and write to them. Avoid overgeneralizing because it's easy to make an ass of yourself like PG.
Regarding legalese, it is hard to understand and that is intentional. Could it be any clearer for you or will you down-vote again?
The discussion of when and where for either case is a topic in and of itself.
Did she read drafts without contributing to them?
However, as others have said, the important thing is to write naturally and with clarity to get the message across.
Many good, powerful speeches have repetition. Using the same word to end three sentences in a row. This can make for a great speech. It does not make for a good school grade. Oops.
writing and speaking are like anything else: use the right tool for the job. when i talk to people outside of analytic philosophy, i can't use various technical terms to talk about wittgenstein's thoughts on language. i can talk about them, but it takes longer. like, a lot longer.