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595 points rbanffy | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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marginalia_nu ◴[] No.43505551[source]
My general takes (as someone who also has a somewhat popular blog) is that

The inverted pyramid is almost always the correct format for your text. I often put the tweet-length version of the post in the title or first paragraph. Get to the point quickly, then elaborate. Means you can bail out at any point of the text and still take home most of what mattered, while the meticulous crowd can have their nitpicks addressed toward the end.

The problem of finding an audience is best solved by being really transparent about what you're about. Inverted pyramid solves that. There's no point to drawing in people who aren't going to be interested. Retaining existing readers beats capturing new readers.

I'm less bullish on images, unless they are profoundly relevant to the text. Illustrations for the sake of having illustrations are no bueno in my opinion. You want to reduce distractions and visual noise. Images should above all never be funny.

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sunk1st ◴[] No.43505573[source]
Wouldn’t that be a regular pyramid? In what sense is it inverted?
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1. tantalor ◴[] No.43506000[source]
It's a bad metaphor.

In the "inverted pyramid" the most important information (which should come first) is represented by the base, which is the biggest part of the pyramid and holds up the rest of the pyramid. In a sense, it is the foundation, so you have to "get it right".

The analogy is "base = big = foundational = important"

Personally I think that's confusing, because you just as easily say the tip of the pyramid should represent the most important information, which should be conveyed concisely and without extraneous detail or background.

In that case the analogy would be, "tip = concise = main point = important"

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2. irrational ◴[] No.43508457[source]
That is confusing. In my mind, the tip of the pyramid is the smallest part of the pyramid, just like the brief overview at the beginning of the post is the smallest part. The base of the pyramid is the biggest part of they pyramid, so that is the bulk of the post where it goes into detail.