mirror of
https://github.com/foo-dogsquared/wiki.git
synced 2025-01-31 07:57:57 +00:00
128 lines
5.4 KiB
Org Mode
128 lines
5.4 KiB
Org Mode
:PROPERTIES:
|
|
:ID: 63f1aae8-75f9-4282-91f4-9a0289ad2bf3
|
|
:END:
|
|
#+title: Linguistics, style, and writing in the 21st century
|
|
#+date: "2020-11-14 22:07:13 +08:00"
|
|
#+date_modified: "2021-05-04 20:52:14 +08:00"
|
|
#+language: en
|
|
#+tags: media.talk writing
|
|
#+source: https://youtu.be/OV5J6BfToSw
|
|
#+author: Steven Pinker
|
|
|
|
|
|
# TODO: Give examples to several of the sections here.
|
|
# It would be ironic if I didn't now, yes?
|
|
|
|
#+begin_abstract
|
|
This talk focuses on the problem of postmodernistic writings and how to avoid them.
|
|
It discusses the how this plague has started and proposes to look into writing from a more scientific perspective.
|
|
This note attempts to condense the 50-minute talk into several paragraphs.
|
|
#+end_abstract
|
|
|
|
Bad writing exists is a fact of life especially in bureaucrats, academics, corporates, and legal faculties.
|
|
Good people can write bad prose probably due to deliberate decisions, pseudo-intellectuals, and language (and stylistic) changes.
|
|
|
|
Some have theorized why this happened such as the degeneration of the language which happens at least one time per generation.
|
|
Others have concluded it might be due to writing being an unnatural act like baking, brewing, and crafting.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* Classic prose
|
|
|
|
Since writing is an unnatural act, we can make use of science to investigate what makes good writing.
|
|
One of the starting points of good writing is a good model of communication.
|
|
|
|
One of the more popular model is the [[id:79357d56-74bf-4854-820c-c0ad849f2468][Classic prose]].
|
|
|
|
- View the writing as the window of the world.
|
|
- Reader and writer as equals.
|
|
- The writer guides the reader into seeing the objective reality.
|
|
- Conversational.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* How does classic prose help?
|
|
|
|
Because it gives reader credit, it implies coordination between the reader and the writer.
|
|
Just like how you would intepret in a conversation, hearing "The students in this school are getting dumber." equates to the most students seem to be getting dumber.
|
|
It knows that the reader can read between the lines since they read to know how the writer will do about the subject.
|
|
|
|
Classic prose should serve the following goals:
|
|
|
|
- Make the reader sees a world instead of verbiage.
|
|
- Narrate the current events.
|
|
- Focus on the thing being shown instead of the activities that progressed it.
|
|
|
|
By consequence, classic style minimizes fluff such as:
|
|
|
|
- Apologizing (e.g., "as the concept of children is yet to be defined, more research is required").
|
|
- Hedge words (e.g., apparently, partially, a little bit, mostly).
|
|
- Metaconcepts (concepts about concepts) (e.g., approach, perspective, subjects).
|
|
- Professional narcissism (e.g., boasting about sales instead of the synopsis of the product, media outlets covering the stats of the coverage [popularity, reads, clicks, etc.] instead of the event itself).
|
|
- Cliches and idioms (e.g., piece of cake, ace in the hole).
|
|
- [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes][Shutter quotes]] (e.g., "in-the-know", "quick study").
|
|
- Zombie nouns (e.g., "make an appearance" instead of "appear", "creating a literary piece" instead of "writing").
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* Why passive voice gets the blame?
|
|
|
|
It is often known that academics abuse the passive voice.
|
|
As a result, traditional manuals often include avoiding use of it.
|
|
|
|
But first, we have to know why passive voice are often used.
|
|
|
|
As the presenter reveals, it is stemmed from the limitations of the language and how bad writers write.
|
|
|
|
Language is a way of converting our web of thoughts into a linear string of words.
|
|
A web can freely overlap in concepts but a linear sentence cannot.
|
|
A sentence has to do two things: show the subject and its relation to other things and introduce bits of information that are relevant to the reader.
|
|
Often, this comes into the form of the doer then showing the actions and maybe its effect.
|
|
|
|
# TODO: Show an example on how English with only active voice is bad
|
|
# and how passive voice is introduced as a solution.
|
|
|
|
Bad writers starts from what they know.
|
|
They focus on the effect, leaving the cause as an afterthought which makes it a use case for passive voice.
|
|
This causes the traditional manuals to discourage the use of passive voice.
|
|
|
|
But it does not mean that passive voice is inherently bad.
|
|
Passive voice offers a different way to order your thoughts.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* The curse of knowledge
|
|
|
|
#+begin_quote
|
|
Once you know something, it's hard to imagine from the perspective of a newcomer.
|
|
#+end_quote
|
|
|
|
The curse of knowledge — also known as hindsight bias, egocentrism, and mindblindness — is the tendency of the writer to not consider the background of the reader.
|
|
This often makes the writing filled with unexplained jargon, abbreviations, and references that the reader may not know.
|
|
|
|
For example, the writer may refer to a terminology a fellow expert may know or miss enlisting the definition of a jargon.
|
|
|
|
One of the well-known solutions to this problem is to be emphatic to your readers.
|
|
But as Pinker adds, we're not good at it since we don't know what our readers will like or not like.
|
|
The better solution is to give the draft to a real-life representative reader and gather as much feedback as possible.
|
|
You could make yourself as you would read the writing in the future.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* How language evolves
|
|
|
|
The evolution of the language changes the opinion of the writers.
|
|
As it turns out, some of the things deemed as ungrammatical by popular writers.
|
|
|
|
- Singular they.
|
|
- Split infinitive.
|
|
- Prepositions at the end of the sentence.
|
|
- Passive voice.
|
|
|
|
Several modern manuals also say that there is nothing wrong with the above things.
|