The window for great-grandmothers is closing

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by pimlottc on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @04:04PM (#39843919)

For pete sake, don't break up the flow and over-complicate your very first sentence with irrelevant asides like this:

> A friend and I were talking about our families today when I realized that my grandmother (this grandmother) became a grandma (not my grandma) at 45.

I got confused and distracted trying to solve the riddle of why his "grandmother" was not his "grandma" [0] when it had nothing to do with the point he was trying to make. And the "this grandmother" parenthetical could have just been a subtle inline link.

> A friend and I were talking about our families today when I realized that _my_grandmother_ became a grandma at 45.

Much clearer!

0: I think he meant that his grandmother's first grandchild, who born when she was 45, was someone other than the author, so technically she wasn't /his/ grandma at that moment because he didn't actually exist yet.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by enobrev on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @04:56PM (#39844496)

I no longer read anything in parentheses for this exact reason. It seems people tend to write their "live-edits" and "related thoughts" in parentheses rather than spending a moment to figure out what they want to say and writing it clearly. I've found skipping anything within parentheses tends to improve my understanding while reading.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by thiht on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @06:49PM (#39845561)

This is my take on writing as well, I consider everything in parentheses as optional. If I want to write something in parentheses, I try to reconsider: either drop it, or write it without parentheses.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by ironmanszombie on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @06:29PM (#39845375)

Really? You don't read anything in parentheses? I think that would be harder to do (I'm joking, don't take it seriously) than actually reading the parenthetical information.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by codetrotter on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @06:35PM (#39845422)

> I think that would be harder to do than actually reading the parenthetical information.

You must be joking, right?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by em-bee on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @05:01PM (#39844543)

i would have said it like this:

my grandmother became a grandma to my cousin at 45

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by JackeJR on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @06:52PM (#39845586)

Append to that "x years before I was born"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by stevage on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @05:13PM (#39844669)

I would have been more distracted wondering where the link went.

I kind of enjoyed the riddle.

I'd just move the parenthetical to a separate sentence, or leave it out.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by alexey-salmin on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @05:18PM (#39844716)

How is this unclear from what he wrote?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by tqi on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @05:34PM (#39844864)

For a substack called "memoirs & rambles", I think writing in a style that conveys a bit of the writer's own personality is fine, even if it comes at the expense of clarity. Not everything has to be an Argument Paper.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:The window for great-grandmothers is closing by sundalia on Wednesday March 27, 2024 @11:00PM (#39847310)

Not everything has to be clear and to the point. The sentence's murkiness adds emotion to the text. I'm not a native speaker (just like the writer isn't) and maybe that's why we're not so bothered.

But this comment is exactly what I expected from HN.

[ Parent | on HN ]