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Re:Some thoughts on writing by spekcular on Monday December 13, 2021 @08:50PM (#29547211)
The problem is (imo) that he's writing for himself and not an audience. It reads like a stream-of-consciousness journal entry, not a thoughtful attempt at relaying information to another mind. A good start would be learning to self-edit; the length could be cut significantly with no real loss of content.

What's particularly aggravating is that he knows, more or less, what clear, concise writing is (cf. his discussion of "classic style") and goes out of his way to not write like that. Yes, I read his justification. No, it's not good.

Someone is going to chime in by saying that I must be wrong because his articles frequently reach the HN frontpage. But correlation is not causation. The actual information content is generally really good – that's why they're popular. But they'd be even better with more attention to the mechanics of writing.

Re:Some thoughts on writing by olau on Tuesday December 14, 2021 @04:30AM (#29549852)
Concise writing sometimes cut away important information that cannot be conveyed in a concise manner.

It's like a sonata where we have a favourite part. Why don't we just play that part?

This is not an argument against editing or improving the information density.

Re:Some thoughts on writing by paulpauper on Monday December 13, 2021 @09:53PM (#29547644)
Concise writing does not go viral like long writing does. I have observed that longer articles have more success even if few people read them in their entirety. Slate Star Codex articles are often long and go viral.