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Rules of good writing (2007)

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103 points santiviquez | 2 comments | 07 Jul 25 14:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.438s | source
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irchans ◴[09 Jul 25 01:43 UTC] No.44505594[source]▶
I believer there is an error in

"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. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)".

It should be, "the SUBJECT (the boy) before the action (the hitting)." (I added caps for emphasis.)

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1. phs318u ◴[09 Jul 25 02:16 UTC] No.44505769[source]▶
> "the boy hit the ball"

In this sentence, boy=subject, hit=verb, ball=object.

> All brains work that way.

If language sentence structure reflects how brains think, then that's not entirely true. While most languages are SVO (subject-verb-object), not all are. Japanese is SOV (subject-object-verb), while biblical Hebrew is/was VSO (verb-subject-object). I'm sure there are other variations.

EDIT: it just occurred to me that Japanese SVO is syntactically similar to Forth/RPN.

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2. irchans ◴[09 Jul 25 13:19 UTC] No.44509713[source]▶
Forth :) It's been like 30 years since I the last time I wrote a Forth program that was more than 10 lines long---fond memories.