I found it quite impressive that people are capable of this. For me, I have neither energy, nor ability, nor comprehensive knowledge to do so. So, it is always fascinating (and a bit intimidating) to see people writing these all the time. I want to ask how you guys achieve this feat.
Maybe, is it that I am nonverbal so I cannit write coherently?
When I do it I mean to leave a couple sentences… aaand suddenly I’ve got a 500 word essay. Oops
I am guilty of writing walls of text as comments, but I try to stick to my lane. You can see my most recent wall of text about freeze dryers as an example. There are a few things that I think need to come together to create a good, high-effort post:
- Passion - If you don’t care, you aren’t going to spend the time to write about something
- Knowledge - For some topics this may be less required, but I tend to create walls of text about technical issues. I have a PhD in physics, so that gives me a pretty good foundation of knowledge to work from in this regard
- Writing Ability - You need to be able to write effectively to make a wall of text worthwhile. This is a skill that gets better the more you do it.
The other thing I tend to do when writing a high-effort post is I actually proofread it before making it. I try to cut out unneeded tangents, reword things that might be confusing, or supplement things that aren’t motivated enough.
For me personally, this doesn’t take me too long to do since I have been writing and presenting about extremely technical topics for about two decades at this point. Like I mentioned above, informative writing is a skill that gets better with practice. So, doing it regularly as a significant part of my job as well as providing feedback to others on their writing/presentations, has provided me with tons of practice to improve these things.
If you want some formal guidance on scientific writing/presentations specifically, two books I have found informative (mostly on presentations) have been:
- The Craft of Scientific Presentations by Michael Alley
- slide:ology - The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte
Over the course of half an hour. With lots of revisions and proofreading. If i’m putting in the effort, I’m putting in all the effort.
You just get started. Its part of the reason I’ve always preferred either forums or fark/ digg/ reddit/ lemmy style conversations.
Also, writing is a skill. You get better at it with time. Its like how a TV show host can just ‘riff’ on a topic. I think responding to comments has definitely improved my ability to write in particular style (engaging/ proactive/ enthusiastic, whatever.).
It also helps to be familiar with markdown, as good formatting makes the writing more satisfying.
I don’t know, even if I’m extremely prone to write huge walls of text, and need to actually take my time to abridge them.
(And every bloody time that I do abridge it, some reply makes me regret it.)
When someone points out something I deleted or only alluded to for the sake of brevity, it kills me. I want to respond “…yes, I know I actually wanted to write that, but wasn’t sure anyone would care or even read it.”
But knowing everything doesn’t get you any extra credit on Lemmy or in real life. Speaking as a recovering teachers pet my entire academic life, I find it’s best to just remember that it is just a conversation. Especially on Lemmy, responses to comments are pretty rare, so any thoughtful response is welcome.
I’m fine with replies correctly filling what I’ve deleted with actual and meaningful info.
Instead, most of the time, I regret it due to some reply misrepresenting what I said - because the replier is now assuming shit, or interpreting literally a figure of speech that I’ve used for brevity, etc.
Adding to what everyone else has said.
… You know what helped me learn how to write (which I now do for a living)? Yes, talking in comment sections – But specifically.
I spent a lot of time in fandom forums.
Why does this matter?
Well.
TV Show fandoms are very low-stakes, you know? If you’re learning to swim you start at the kiddy pool, not the olympic one. So you can participate in discussions, make up headcanons, and learn how to express your ideas… And if you do get picked apart or something, even if you actually, genuinely, fucked up and were straight up wrong. It’s… Y’know. It’s just a TV show. So you can, in fact, let it go.
It’s different from when you’re talking about something serious, something important. If you’re writing about something technical and you mess up, you can end up spreading misinformation. On a political discussion, being clear on what you mean is important because the stuff being talked about matters. Not so for a fandom.
Oh and – Re-read what you wrote, and use that edit button if you catch something you missed.
Oh and – Re-read what you wrote, and use that edit button if you catch something you missed.
This is a big one. I see social media posts and online comments that are so poorly misspelled and incoherent, that I would swear English was their second language, but I went to school with some of these people. I KNOW they should know better!
Look into technical writing. I took it in college but I’m sure you can find free resources online about it. In short, good technical writing is:
- accurate
- concise
- clear
- usable
- readable
Of course, that’s easier said than done. It makes sense to make a rough outline of what you want to write before you write it. It’s also good to look over what you’ve written afterwards. If you keep these basic principles in mind while planning, writing, and revising, you can make your writing more effective.
What you said immediately reminded me Grice’s “Logic and Conversation”. The author outline what he calls “conversational maxims”, that resemble a lot your five bullet points - except that they don’t just apply to technical writing, they’re more like principles that we “automatically” use in human conversation. They are:
- Maxim of quantity - “be as informative as possible and needed, and no more.”
- Maxim of quality - “be truthful; don’t give false or unconfirmed info.”
- Maxim of relation - “be relevant; say things that are pertinent to the discussion.”
- Maxim of manner - “be clear, brief, and orderly; avoid obscurity and ambiguity.”
Those four maxims are constantly being violated by the speakers, as they’re in conflict with each other. For example, clarity (maxim of manner) often requires simplifying things, to the point that they aren’t as accurate (maxim of quality) as before.
This is relevant here because, if you can’t avoid violating those maxims, you need to reach a compromise. And good writing is about finding a good compromise for the target readers.
Ah the gricean maximes, the bane of my intro to pragmatics class
I did well in pragmatics. My bane was syntax - that professor did a really poor job even to explain the basics, for example I still don’t know why the hell you’re supposed to spam XP, X’ and X in generative trees even if they won’t branch out anyway.
Here the need part: you dont. Because chomskyite grammar sucks sweaty balls.
Tbf, by my second run through Intro to Pragmatics i got the maxims. But our prof had some really strange interpretations of them.
you dont. Because chomskyite grammar sucks sweaty balls.
Well, that explains a lot.
Frankly the way that I handle syntax nowadays is completely heterodox - the tree is just a convenient way to represent some pseudocode-like “rules”, nothing else. My framework is completely proto-scientific and it probably has more holes than a sieve, but it isn’t a big deal since my main area of interest is Historical Linguistics anyway.
On pragmatics: it’s a really amazing field to dig into, but professors with “strange interpretations” are a dime a dozen. Often because they’re too stubborn to ditch their favourite framework even when it doesn’t work for something - for example, trying to explain politeness expressions through the maxims won’t work, and yet some still try to do it.
Tree Diagrams can be useful to structure a sentence, but the UG system of “assume one system fits every language cuz inherent ability” is bad.
If you want to check your understanding of how phrases, clauses and words connect to each other in a certain language, trees can be pretty powerful.
To the latter point: My biggest gripe with linguistics is the tendency to boil everything down to a simple system.
Do you want to elaborate more on how politeness cant be explained by gricean maximes?
Their secret is ChatGPT.
In past, many word impossible, but AI make talk verbose. Shun AI. Talk short.
