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Final report on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in-flight exit door plug separation

(www.ntsb.gov:443)
165 points starkparker | 9 comments | 10 Jul 25 20:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.226s | source | bottom
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thomascountz ◴[10 Jul 25 21:46 UTC] No.44525985[source]▶
> We determined that the probable cause of this accident was the in-flight separation of the left MED plug due to Boeing’s failure to provide adequate training, guidance, and oversight necessary to ensure that manufacturing personnel could consistently and correctly comply with its parts removal process, which was intended to document and ensure that the securing bolts and hardware that were removed to facilitate rework during the manufacturing process were properly reinstalled.

A bit OT, but what a gorgeous whale of a sentence! As always, the literary prowess of NTSB writers does not disappoint.

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0rzech ◴[10 Jul 25 22:10 UTC] No.44526228[source]▶
At school (Polish class in Poland) we were always taught to prefer complex and compound sentences over simple ones, because it's more elegant and speaks well the speaker/writer.
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1. ecb_penguin ◴[10 Jul 25 22:25 UTC] No.44526372[source]▶
It doesn't, though. It's pretentious and educated people will see through it. If the goal is to inform, then you should do the opposite.
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2. GuinansEyebrows ◴[10 Jul 25 22:33 UTC] No.44526440[source]▶
i imagine the language may change that though. With Polish having nominally 300k-400k words compared to English's >1m, i'd guess that it's a lot easier to misdirect and fluff up your writing in English.
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3. beerandt ◴[10 Jul 25 22:53 UTC] No.44526605[source]▶
Only if you're using technical writing in a situation where you shouldn't be.

Problem is the state of most English education doesn't even teach enough for people to recognize proper unambiguous technical writing, let alone appreciate it or attempt to compose it.

4. codedokode ◴[11 Jul 25 01:00 UTC] No.44527406[source]▶
English has over 1 million words? No way. Except for pronunciation, it is relatively simple language.
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5. 0rzech ◴[11 Jul 25 07:54 UTC] No.44529441[source]▶
It's not pretentious and there's nothing to see through here. This is the preferred style in Poland and it's widely used, especially by the educated people. Just because the sentences aren't simple, doesn't mean they're not informative.

Also, we were taught to prefer compound and complex sentences over simple ones where applicable, not at all costs. For instance, the quoted sentence from NTSB report is a bit too long in my opinion.

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6. 0rzech ◴[11 Jul 25 08:03 UTC] No.44529502{3}[source]▶
It can if you count all the different forms of each word and proper nouns. But this way Polish may have even more words than english, given multitude of different forms. I've never checked that, though.

There's also the tendency in English to make new words out of existing ones to create new meanings, while in Polish we often use multiple separate existing words to create new meanings.

All in all, I believe English has more base forms than Polish.

7. ahartmetz ◴[11 Jul 25 08:03 UTC] No.44529504{3}[source]▶
It has words of both Germanic and Latin origin, that's why it has so many. The fancy words are usually the Latin ones.
8. tuukkah ◴[11 Jul 25 17:36 UTC] No.44534956[source]▶
"a complex writing style preferred by educated people" - how is that not pretentious?

You started by saying complex sentences should always be preferred, but now you ended by saying "only where applicable" and the sentence under discussion was "too long".

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9. 0rzech ◴[12 Jul 25 00:48 UTC] No.44538302{3}[source]▶
> "a complex writing style preferred by educated people"

This is not a quote of me. Nor is it an honest summary of what I wrote. It also completely ignores the context: the "educated people" were supposed to "see through" - the same people who predominantly prefer the same style. I have also never claimed the style is not used by other people. Quite the opposite. Not to mention, that education until 18 years of age is mandatory in Poland anyway.

> how is that not pretentious?

The straw man you made up definitely is.

> You started by saying complex sentences should always be preferred

I wrote that we were always taught to prefer one over another (there were multiple teachers along the way), not that we were taught to always prefer one over another.

> but now you ended by saying "only where applicable"

There is no "but now".

> and the sentence under discussion was "too long".

I believe it is indeed.