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Rules of good writing (2007)

(dilbertblog.typepad.com)
103 points santiviquez | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.264s | source
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raincole ◴[] No.44505200[source]
Surely. Then you check Paul Graham, whose writing is influential in the world of startup, and find most of them are very long. Arguably unnecessarily so.

Perhaps it's a tech startup thing? After all programmers are not famous for their refined literary taste. And then you check the few LitMag that people care enough to pay for even when the content is available for free, like Clarkesworld or BCS. Then you find sentences there are generally not crispy and short.

It turns out there aren't rules. All guidelines are contextual.

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treve ◴[] No.44505369[source]
PG is not influential because of his writing though. His name is what gets his writing circulated, so I'm not sure if it's a good couter example.
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1. raincole ◴[] No.44505477[source]
The other way around.

Of course a lot of rich people got readers just because they're rich, but PG isn't the one of them.