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Rules of good writing (2007)

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102 points santiviquez | 5 comments | 07 Jul 25 14:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.592s | source
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mtlynch ◴[08 Jul 25 23:50 UTC] No.44505052[source]▶
>Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way.

I agree with this, but I doubt that all brains work this way. It's probably true of almost all English speakers.

I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sentence constructions that go subject->verb->object. Not all languages do that, so I suspect that your brain has an easier time processing whatever's most common in the language.

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1. bbor ◴[09 Jul 25 00:16 UTC] No.44505185[source]▶
I had the same thought, glad you phrased it so succinctly! Surprisingly, a Holocaust-denying white nationalist is not someone you should trust on matters concerning global anthropology.
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2. cAtte_ ◴[09 Jul 25 01:18 UTC] No.44505470[source]▶
woah
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3. ChrisMarshallNY ◴[09 Jul 25 01:21 UTC] No.44505486[source]▶
I suspect they were talking about Scott Adams; not Michael Lynch (but it's fuzzy, due to ... unclear writing).

I'm not a huge fan of Scott Adams, because I disagree with his worldview, but I have other hills to die on.

He’s not wrong about this, but he’s just repeating very old “tribal knowledge,” about writing. I’ve been hearing the same advice, since I was a kid. Sometimes, I even follow it.

4. alvah ◴[09 Jul 25 02:13 UTC] No.44505760[source]▶
>Holocaust-denying

Didn't he write "no reasonable person doubts that the Holocaust happened" in the blog post you are referring to? That's an....unusual way to deny the Holocaust.

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5. gblargg ◴[09 Jul 25 06:01 UTC] No.44506747[source]▶
A discredited organization labeled Adams a Holocaust-denier, so NPCs consider him such.