StackOverflow for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://startups.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why I'd use this instead of <http://answers.onstartups.com/> \- I'm much more likely to participate in a community founded and managed by intelligent individuals that I respect. The site makes no mention of who's behind startups.com, why I should trust them, and how I know they won't violate that trust.

That said, it's cool that someone has based a megabucks domain name on Stack Exchange.

<comment><USER3> A quick dig shows that these folk are behind it: <http://www.killerstartups.com/>

I'd say that not having their blog linked all over the home page earns them a credibility point.

(The TC post linked from their FAQ says the domain cost 'mid-six-figures'. Ouch.)

<comment><USER4> Our thoughts exactly. We didn't mention the killerstartups.com name because we thought it was more appropiate (mabye it wasn't a good idea.) KillerStartups.com was launched in January 2007 and it's getting a good number of visitors per day (90k). And yes, we did pay mid-six figures for Startups.com (ouch :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks Joel for posting about Startups.com. Awesome to make it here, and it seems there are quite a few people interested on the site. When it comes to design, it's really a subjective issue. We ran some tests and this one came out as the winner. We're tarteting a broad group of people interested in "business" in general, not only on startups. We'll see how it goes. We're the people behind KillerStartups.com, internet entrepreneurs at heart. Matias de Tezanos, currently founder and CEO of HealthCare.com (sold Hoteles.com to Hotels.com back in the day, raised $10M for HealtCare.com, Inc. and funded several other startups), and Gonzalo Arzuaga, who sold GauchoNet to Terra/Lycos in 1999, and wrote 5 books about business on the internet (unfortunately, in spanish)

</comment><comment><USER5> StackOverflow benefits from two things: 1) started by Fog Software who has a reputation, and 2) there's a natural filter in place with its content. Perhaps just perception bias but I think it helps weed out an overload of questions like "how can i get listed on search engines".

At some point there needs to be moderation to maintain quality and define the scope of the site, otherwise I think it will struggle to have merit, IMO. The first question I clicked on is regarding "social media" by a hotel owner. Certainly a valid question but how is this related to startups? Are you assuming that any business getting started = startups?

[http://startups.com/questions/1447/how-can-i-define-my- strat...](http://startups.com/questions/1447/how-can-i-define-my-strategy-to- get-maximum-results-out-of-the-social-media)

<comment> brown9-2 This is not StackOverflow. This is a hosted website that is powered by the same software as StackOverflow. The content here has absolutely no direct relation to StackOverflow.

<comment><USER6> I think pxlpshr is making a comparison here between Stack Overflow and Startups.com, saying he thinks the latter will struggle to have merit since it lacks a couple of crucial traits that make SO successful. He only unintentionally conflates the two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Constructive Criticism: use a softer background color and consider retweaking the logo: glossy, over-stroked, drop-shadowed site logos imply that startups don't know better and are the epitome of bad design that many associate with "web 2.0"

<comment><USER8> i would also make the "# views" text lighter. it is distracting when quickly scanning the left column for answer counts since it's the same size.

<comment><USER9> I agree, the number of views is less important than the number of answers. The font for both of them is too large.

To be honest I think Stack Overflow needs a bit of a redesign. The fonts are all a bit too large, and it's the same on this new site. The size of the font for the questions titles is too large for me to read the titles comfortably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On the right "panel", serif font and sans serif font right after it clash terribly. The thumb tack on top is too corny and cliche, you don't need it. The ad is very distracting and even disregarding that, it breaks the flow of the design.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if I would say it's corny. I would have said it's too tacky.

(Sorry; it's Monday.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't it a waste of money to run AdWords that point to your own site? Or is something else going on here? <http://imgur.com/0RaUa.png>

This is with the pointer over the banner at the top.

<comment><USER13> I think there's a way to cycle in house ads if the space would otherwise be given to those free government ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't quite seem like it's reached that critical mass needed to be really useful

</comment><comment><USER14> This looks like one of the rare stackexchange.com sites that might actually go somewhere. It's a hell of a domain name to use too.

The only real question is if the answers are any good. It looks too soon to tell to me.

<comment><USER15> Yes but I think they have some serious competition by the answers.onstartups.com which has quite some momentum too

<comment><USER4> Competition is great for users, and for competitors too IMHO.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure if competition is great on such sites. You want one place to find answers for one topic, like programming-> StackOverflow, sysadmin -> ServerFault.

How is community going to benefit from two sites based on the exact same framework, on the exact same topic ? It will only be duplicating eachother.

<comment><USER4> Ideally, Programming Questions -> StackOverflow | Business Questions -> Startups.com. Online communities are, in a way, like physical spaces (bar, restaurants, etc). You like one over the other for different reasons: maybe the music, the drinks, the food, the host, maybe your friends hang out there. We'll see how this plays out. Competition is always good because it forces you to think more and more about how to server your customers/visitors better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If I were Spolsky, I'd be a little bothered by the fact that someone called this "StackOverflow for Startups" and also by the fact that it looks so much like StackOverflow. When I went there, the first thing I thought was that the StackOverflow/ServerFault folks had created a third website which isn't the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ummm, they license the software to anyone who wants it for about $120/month to $2000+/month (?) or something.

Seriously, you can go and get a site like StackOverflow; the software is called StackExchange (<http://www.stackexchange.com/>)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just FYI, it isn't my site.

</comment><comment><USER18> view source gave me this (for <noscript>):

Startups.com | Your Business. Your Questions. works best with JavaScript enabled

</comment><comment><USER19> please test it in IE6

<comment><USER5> I meant to downvote that but accidentally upvoted it. Anyhow, I thought it was a bit ridiculous that a startup technology site support IE 6.

<comment><USER20> I think you might be surprised. My blog, which is about technology and startups, has a fair share of IE6 users.</comment></comment></comment>


Write like you talk - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/talk.html <comment><USER3> If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation, you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear. When talking off the cuff, even the most clear minded people tend to ramble, um and ahh, double back, talk across each other, and jump between points and subjects.

When listening to someone in person, our brains seem to edit what they say on the fly to make it comprehendible, focusing on the important bits and forgetting the rest. When it's presented in written form, such as in a newspaper or magazine article, a skilled journalist has usually done the editing for us.

This means that what we consider a "conversational" tone in written language is not a representation of natural communication so much as an idealised version of it. That doesn't mean it isn't useful to strive for it, particularly in business and academic writing that otherwise tends towards the turgid, but it isn't as simple as telling people to "write how you talk". Writing conversational prose that achieves clarity whilst not being oversimplified, patronising or banal requires practice and skill.

I also think, conversely, that while a conversational tone can improve formal writing about complex topics, the reverse can be true. It's possible to enliven mundane topics by being less direct and more playful with language.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, "write like you talk" is not quite the right way to go about it. In my experience that usually leads to a stream-of-consciousness mess.

However, one thing I have found almost universally helps my students is similar: read what you have written OUT LOUD. Is it halting and hard to read? Confusing and obtuse? Then you should probably fix it. There seems to be some magic about actually speaking the words out loud (as opposed to just reading it like normal editing) that helps a lot of people figure out when a piece of writing is bad.

<comment><USER5> Isn't he basically saying use your natural lexicon vs. an artificial one (typically used to make oneself sound more educated).

<comment><USER6> This is funny, perhaps like others here, I find I usually have to reduce the complexity of my speech compared to my internal dialogue: particularly in using more commonplace vocabulary. Sadly barely anyone I know (including my wife) understands half the words I use. Indeed sometimes I don't really grok them myself; my brain just finds them most apposite.

So should I write as I [find I need to] speak or should I write with my natural lexicon?

<comment><USER7> Depends. The main point the author in the OP doesn't seem to understand:

Know your audience.

"Dumb down" your writing, but only if it will help you communicate with the person (or people) you're targeting. Else there's no benefit to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is good advice, but I disagree with his example. The entire paragraph reads[0]:

>The Upper Palaeolithic cave art of Europe was a tradition that lasted for perhaps 20,000 years and it will always be rightly described as primitive. But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders — giants' shoulders — that later masters like Picasso were able to stand. The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: 'After Altamira, all is decadence.'

Sure, for maximum clarity, Neil Oliver could have written more like he talks. But this paragraph is clear enough and written in an appealing style. It might not be Paul Graham's favorite style, but that doesn't make it bad writing.

I also think the sentence he picked is particularly unconversational, which is misleading for two reasons. One, it makes Oliver's style sound more opaque and formal than it actually is. Two, even in a more conversational style than Oliver's, you're occasionally going to include something that's a step more formal.

I think Graham knows this, albeit unconsciously. Would he really say "Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas" in a conversation? Probably not, but it reasonably passed his read aloud test because it's a good distillation of his point.

[0]: [https://books.google.com/books?id=1Uk0AgAAQBAJ&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=1Uk0AgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22A+History+of+Ancient+Britain%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMImOmc8dDeyAIVReEmCh3bugxv#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER9> I actually like this a lot. He uses a conversational/informal style and it almost flows like a rehearsed piece of conversation:

> it will always be rightly described as primitive.

> . But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders — giants' shoulders — > that

He starts a sentence with _But_ and puts dashes in for pause effects. Does he go a bit purply in his prose towards the end? Sure. I think that is the difference between writing and conversation though. You can write well, explain your points and have a simple flow using the a comfortable tone. e.g. not forcing absurd 10cent works into your works and being unnecessarily complex. However, you can use a sentence structure like:

> The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: 'After Altamira, all is decadence.'

For dramatic effect. Author departs from his clean flow to qoute somebody who speaks differently than himself. And it looks like the mercurial spanaird talks funny which is underscored by the authors' change in tone.

<comment><USER10> I agree with your analysis of the first sentence, but the second still sounds awful and stilted to me! I'd rewrite as:

> >The Upper Paleolithic cave art of Europe was a tradition that lasted for > perhaps 20,000 years and it will always be rightly described as primitive. > But it is upon those anonymous artists' shoulders — giants' shoulders — that > later masters were able to stand. Picasso himself declared: 'After Altamira, > all is decadence.'

What's the point of "mercurial" or "Spaniard" being included? Irrelevant detail that, frankly, trips my tongue up when reading (and when my tongue trips, I stumble slightly even while silently reading).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is fairly popular advice, and I heard it at least a half dozen times at my (liberal arts) college. That's not to dismiss this post because its takeaway is commonplace: I agree with the sentiment. However, I think it's important to embrace the full implication of its thesis:

 _Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas._

Athletic clothing is comfortable, it is functional, and it traffics in convenience.

But people wear clothes for aesthetics, for culture, for dozens of reasons.

When you optimize for, say, being as easily digestible by as many people as possible, you may reduce your nuance or your aesthetic or whatever. And words like _mercurial_ tend to have unique depths and distinctions that keep them being used by the Neil Olivers of the world. That's a good thing.

(As a minor aside that doesn't detract from his point: _You 'd feel like an idiot using "pen" instead of "write" in a conversation with a friend._ Really? Some people just feel more comfortable in suits than in sweatpants. There's nothing wrong with that.)

<comment> grey-area Exactly, formality can be part of the message, and sometimes _less is a bore_.

There is certainly a place for more formal language at times, if only to communicate intent and add a bit of pepper to the writing. For example Will Self would not be Will Self without using ten words where one would do, nor would Poe or Henry James (who I suspect spoke much as he wrote).

I think what pg is objecting to here though is probably people putting on airs by attempting a more formal register than they are comfortable with, and thus coming across as a little stilted and a little fake and obscuring their meaning rather than communicating it. This is a particular problem in art criticism, where postmodern art critics adopt a certain stilted, formal, and impenetrable language as a sort of shibboleth; the height of this style is probably someone like Camille Paglia, who gives the impression of saying much about Art without saying much at all (IMO).

Of course you can also do the same by trying to be informal without being intimately acquainted with the particular usage you're trying to emulate, and it depends who you're talking to. What is appropriate (both in speech and in writing) depends on context more than we like to admit.

<comment><USER12> Quite. There is that ghastly put-on cutesy/folksy over-friendly style that a lot of startups use - which is every bit as stilted and ill-fitting as over- formality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Write like you talk" is bad advice twice: It encourages rambling, which - unlike in a conversation - the reader has no means to interrupt, and it offers no clear rules to follow while writing. Orwell's six[1] are, in my experience, much more useful:

      (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which
          you are used to seeing in print.

      (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

      (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

      (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

      (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon
          word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

      (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright
           barbarous.

[1] [https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

<comment><USER14> >(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

If it is possible to cut a word, always cut it.

If possible to cut a word, cut it.

If possible, cut.

But of course "if possible" is implied, he wouldn't be advising you to do anything impossible, so just:

Cut.

<comment><USER15> You're misunderstanding "if possible" here. It means "if it can be done while conveying all that you need to convey, and saying all that you mean." "Cut" doesn't do that.

<comment><USER16> How about "Cut words out, when possible."?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: "How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?" That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro. If something is worth hearing or listening to, it's very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice."

~ Christopher Hitchens

<comment><USER18> This seems much better advice.

I found the opposite of PG. I discovered that when I worked on talking the way I wrote, my speech became much better and more interesting.

Now, PG speaks off the cuff pretty well. So I suppose if people find you well spoken, it makes sense to try to write more like you talk. But if you write better than you speak, make your speech more like your writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The PG headline is really the first half of a larger sentence: Write like you talk, and try to talk in concise, plain language.

If you have trouble doing this, the Hemingway App might help. [http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)

There are a lot of problems with the way people write. Some writers are too writerly, some are trapped in journalese or legalese, most are too vague. But better than any -ese is being able to communicate complex ideas to intelligent outsiders in a shared, common language.

To do that, you have to think a lot about what your main points are, how they connect, and what your readers will probably misunderstand. Then you address that. You answer questions before they are asked.

Sure, there are other ways to write. I like a good dose of purple prose, or 19th-century Russian fiction. But it probably doesn't belong in a memo.

In the end, you shouldn't write like you talk, because as many others have said here, talking is messy. The real trick is to write in a way that makes people think you're talking to them. The writer finds tricks that make it seem like she's talking, even though speech has been translated to the page. Then the reader can hear your voice, and there's nothing getting in the way.

<comment><USER20> > Some writers are too writerly, some are trapped in journalese or legalese, > most are too vague. But better than any -ese is being able to communicate > complex ideas to intelligent outsiders in a shared, common language.

Agred. And this is something that is taught, rather than in-born. Most people pick up their writing skills in school, where big words and long sentences can give you better marks than a simple, heartfelt explanation.

It takes a long time and a lot of practice to shake this off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you're going to do this, edit heavily afterwards.

Most conversation is pretty redundant. Because not everybody hears every word, it's acceptable to say things a couple different ways in order to make sure you're understood. That's less OK in an essay or email, because it's assumed you considered everything you wrote.

If you don't believe me, try transcribing an email instead of typing it. Simple transcriptions aren't good writing.

<comment><USER22> Especially with email I value brevity over "natural" language. I spend time editing my written communications so others don't have to waste time getting to the meat of the message.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It just depends upon your aims. If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load.

If you're a fantasy writer, it would get pretty drab pretty fast if you spoke to me like how most people speak to me. In fact, it'd be downright boring if you structured all dialogue between characters in such a manner. You need the pomp to make sentences glimmer or express significance.

I'm not sure what the thesis of this essay is since it starts out as "If you want more people to read what you write..." Well no, if you're a novelist, I wouldn't recommend this essay to you. And that's not just me being a pedant either; I think this whole essay is simply advice to CEOs who are trying to talk about their idea.

The thing that "comes over most people" is actually them trying to actually express their real selves, which often gets clouded in day-to-day interactions with others. The idea that you should just shut this off is nonsense and a barrier to increased creativity. You can write in a creative fashion while still maintaining a simple delivery. Just look at Larry Wall.

<comment><USER24> > If you're trying to convey an idea in hopes of transferring knowledge then > yes -- write like you would talk to ease the others' cognitive load.

Even for transferring knowledge, it depends a lot on what knowledge you're trying to transfer, and to whom. In scientific writing, the more pop-science the goal of the article, the more conversational the style should be, and vice-versa. In a paper by someone in my field written for other people in the field, a pop-science conversational style isn't helpful, and would increase the cognitive load. In that case, I want clarity, precision, and accuracy, which is often helped by using a more specialized language.

This has been one of the main changes in science writing from earlier centuries. If you read 17th-century mathematics, it's actually trying to explain it all in a jargon-free conversational style, written as if you were having a parlor conversation about numbers. "Consider three whole numbers, such that the sum of the square of the first two equals the third", etc. This does not scale well and is error-prone.

<comment><USER25> > "Consider three whole numbers, such that the sum of the square of the first > two equals the third"

I wouldn't say that in conversation. I'd say something like: "consider three integers, with a squared plus b squared equals c".

And in writing, I'd go for something like: "consider a, b, c ∈ ℤ, such that a² + b² = c". Which isn't far off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This reminded me of an interview of David Foster Wallace

"...here's this fundamental difference that comes up in freshman comp and haunts you all the way through teaching undergrads: there is a fundamental difference between expressive writing and communicative writing. One of the biggest problems in terms of learning to write, or teaching anybody to write, is getting it in your nerve endings that the reader cannot read your mind. That what you say isn't interesting simply because you, yourself, say it. Whether that translates to a feeling of obligation to the reader I don't know, but we've all probably sat next to people at dinner or on public transport who are producing communication signals but it's not communicative expression. It's expressive expression, right? And actually it's in conversation that you can feel most vividly how alienating and unpleasant it is to feel as if someone is going through all the motions of communicating with you but in actual fact you don't even need to be there at all."

"Conversations with David Foster Wallace" (Literary Conversations Series, page 113

A big thing that pg seems to be unaware is that most of us are expressive, not communicative, when we talk. Stylistically, it's true that plain English is the way to go. However, the deeper problem lies in our (in)ability to communicate our thoughts, in writing or in speech.

</comment><comment><USER27> I think this is rubbish advice.

I'd much rather we all spoke on first attempt like we write after thoughtful review.

I'm reminded of the (gradual) removal of all Latin from British legislation with a view to making it more 'accessible', at the obvious expense of the concise preciseness that the language afford: "with having changed the things requiring changing" is rather less economical than "mutatis mutandis".

In a slightly facetious sort of way, I also think the "thanks to .. for reading drafts of this" is rather amusing.

<comment><USER28> > "thanks to .. for reading drafts of this"

What's the Latin for that?

<comment><USER27> Ha! Mine's not strong enough to say, though I suspect it would only be 3-4 words ('with-thanks-to .. for-the-reading-of' if you see what I mean).

I didn't mean that sentence amused me for uneconomical English, but that it was funny to think about a piece titled 'write like you talk' going through multiple draft stages.

<comment><USER29> Why is that funny to you when he suggested putting your writing through draft stages to try achieve the "write like you talk" style?

<comment><USER27> Because when you talk you do not (and indeed cannot) do that.

(I would argue preparing a speech does not count, since you are then by definition talking like you have written).

<comment><USER29> The point is that your written text reads like someone talking. It makes sense to review the text for this aim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "It seems to be hard for most people to write in spoken language. So perhaps the best solution is to write your first draft the way you usually would, then afterward look at each sentence and ask "Is this the way I'd say this if I were talking to a friend?" ..."

The trick that works for me is setting the font-color to be the same as the background color, blak on black for example. Then you can write without being able to go back and correct what you've written. With the result, that you will write almost the way as you speak. Requires touch typing though.

I even made a colorscheme for Vim for this and using it when writing in my diary or personal emails. Does wonders.

</comment><comment><USER31> > _Before I publish a new essay, I read it out loud and fix everything that > doesn 't sound like conversation. I even fix bits that are phonetically > awkward; I don't know if that's necessary, but it doesn't cost much._

This is the key bit. It's not so much "write like you talk" and more "write like you could present it."

So much writing isn't accessible because the author misses this cardinal rule. Even the most dense, formal scientific writing can be made clearer if the author or editor reads it aloud and fixes the awkward parts.

I helped content editing for an academic journal back in the day. A big part of our jobs was helping the authors bring their voice out into the papers. A lot of writers, novice and expert alike, have an idea of what an "expert" in their field should sound like. The result is stiff and manufactured prose that too often ends up being inaccessible for anyone else.

But, as soon as you clue an author in on how their personal voice can come through an article, you see a shift in the quality and clarity of the work.

The articles, text books and other writing I learn the best from, and come back to, ultimately sound in my head as if the author and I are speaking aloud. It's the real differentiator in sounding like an amateur or an expert.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seth Godin said something really similar, and I've drawn on it during periods of writer's block many times:

>No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.

Why then, is writer's block endemic?

The reason we don't get talker's block is that we're in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.

<comment><USER33> ... I think I might have talker's block.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here's a transcript of a Paul Graham speech.

[http://genius.com/Paul-graham-lecture-3-counterintuitive- par...](http://genius.com/Paul-graham-lecture-3-counterintuitive-parts-of- startups-and-how-to-have-ideas-annotated)

So yeah, it's conversational in that he uses words like "noob" and "dude" and "bullshit". And yes, Google finds examples of his written works that use these words too.

But not everyone talks like Paul; perhaps Neil Oliver says things like "mercurial Spaniard" when he talks. It's kind of a nice feature of language that different people can use words differently. I'd rather Paul's examples were more of the corporate anti-speak variety like "maximizing synergies" and the like.

<comment><USER35> Agreed, it seems a really poor example used to make a fair point. I've never spoken to Neil Oliver personally, but on TV programmes he presents (Coast, etc.) he certainly uses flowery, poetic language. I don't think it's an act, it seems to come naturally to him, and it doesn't even clash with the presenters of other segments using a much more conversational tone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The thing keeping me from agreeing with this is a qualifier. If it were "write like you talk when writing a X", where X could be substituted by tutorial, essay, lesson, etc. I think I'd be more inclined not to disagree here. But as it stands "write like you talk" cannot hold true across the board for the set of all writing goals that exists.

For example just watch any Tarantino film (or read the scripts), none of those characters talk like Tarantino does, I really would not want to watch a film where Uma Thurman walks around talking like him either.

Entire fields of writing would not exists if this statement were true: Poetry, Rap, Music, Marketing slogans ("Think Different"), many types of Comedy, etc.

EDIT: After a reread it looks he does suggest a qualifier, which is basically the general use case, which appears to be when "you want people to read and understand what you write" ie. informative essays, tutorials, emails that would occur in normal or every day communication situations, in which case I would agree.

</comment><comment><USER37> PG is on to something here, which is that when most people try to make their prose better, they do it the wrong way. They make the language stilted, they add silly descriptions (such as "the mercurial Spaniard"). But, writing is different from speech, and you can learn techniques specifically to make your writing better. I highly recommend Steven Pinker's new book "The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century" [http://amzn.to/1LVI7eJ](http://amzn.to/1LVI7eJ) He has many concrete tips for improving your writing.

</comment><comment><USER38> Paul Graham says "ummm" a lot. Luckily for us he doesn't write like he talks.

However, as others have said, the important thing is to write naturally and with clarity to get the message across.

</comment><comment><USER39> If you can't say "mercurial Spaniard" to your friends, get new friends.

<comment><USER40> I find that if I need to use a word like mercurial it helps to add a four- letter word in proximity. It seems to aid digestion and thus cuts down on the commentary.

<comment><USER41> Certainly makes it more conversational. If I had a nickle for every time I've heard someone mutter "damn hg"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've heard of this advice before [0] and I really think it's very useful advice. The goal isn't to make your writing literally spoken language and add every "um" and "ah" to your text, but to make it sound like someone _might_ actually say that and that it sounds like natural speech. Like pg said, you wouldn't look at your friends weirdly for that. It's too easy to fall into the trap of trying to "decorate" your text with fancy words and language but as the example shows it feels artificial and alienates the reader. "Write like you talk."

[0] I think it was The Elements of Style, but you should go read that anyways because it's like K&R for English. There's a lot of examples of how the ear is much better at deciding which kind of language to use than you are.

</comment><comment><USER43> If you're interested in becoming a better non-fiction writer, I can't over- recommend William Zinsser's "On Writing Well".

<comment><USER44> The only downside from reading and learning from this book is that you suddenly discover how much bad writing there is out there. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I prefer to write like a man reading his powerpoint slides verbatim

<comment><USER46> Hueh! And that's how I naturally talk, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I had to look up "abstruse". I understood it's meaning from context, but wasn't sure if it was a portmanteau of abstract and obtuse, or an actual word. I've honestly never heard it in my life, and wouldn't stop someone saying it in a sentence, but it did stop my reading.

That made me wonder, does the fact that you sometimes have to listen to the spoken word over-estimate the impact the same words will have when written?

<comment><USER48> Abstruse - Big in the early 1800s according to the Google Ngram Viewer. [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=on&content=abstruse&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cabstruse%3B%2Cc0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's good that PG didn't follow his own rule, otherwise we would have seen lots of "hmm" in his texts.

<comment><USER50> Sounds like you've heard him talk, then. Listen to where he says "umm", and the tone, and how the audience reacts: those are _punctuation_. In writing they become paragraph breaks or dashes or periods or commas or just strongly implied pauses after emphasized words.

It's an unusual way of punctuating things, but it seems to work okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I feel like us Swiss german people have a leg up here. We grow up writing anything personal in our dialect (a language that doesn't officially exist in written form), so we're used to writing like we talk. I wonder if it has an effect on our more formal, business-related writing.

</comment><comment><USER52> Writing style is an aesthetic: It should suit the subject matter. I wouldn't want to read Tolstoy in _the athletic clothing of ideas_. The article feels like an overgeneralization.

</comment><comment><USER53> > But just imagine calling Picasso "the mercurial Spaniard" when talking to a > friend.

Consider the UK talking heads landscape is filled with individuals with a formidable command of the English language and pg's example comes across as very parochial and culturally ignorant.

Perhaps the essay should be 'Write like _I_ talk', because I can't imagine how he would deal with an episode of QI with Stephen Fry holding forth.

</comment><comment><USER54> > You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas.

I think that precision and clarity are top concerns, but I don't conflate precision and clarity with simplicity or colloquialism. It's strictly true that you don't _need_ complex sentences to express complex ideas, but I think that complex sentences provide more precision and clarity for complex ideas. As always, know your audience—I don't dispute that there will always be demand for simple digestible explanations of extremely complex ideas (e.g. theoretical physics).

> When specialists in some abstruse topic talk to one another about ideas in > their field, they don't use sentences any more complex than they do when > talking about what to have for lunch.

No, but I suspect that when they need the utmost precision and clarity, they _write_ , and I suspect they write rather complex sentences. I saw a recent interview where a U.S Supreme Court justice mentioned that a huge portion of the work that goes on while deliberating a case is _written_ , even though the justices are presumably on speaking terms and are quite capable of getting together and discussing things verbally.

</comment><comment><USER55> Writing and talking are two very different things; it's bad advice to tell people to write as they talk. What makes talking and writing so very different are, at least, that:

1) Writing is a monologue; talking is a conversation. It's extremely rare one would talk in the form of monologue, except when giving a speech (and even in that case, the audience can usually ask questions).

2) When talking with someone, you have an immense array of non-verbal communication tools at your disposal (body language, eye contact, hands movements, speed of talking, pauses, etc. etc. etc.); in writing you have none of those, so everything you want to say, you have to write down.

Of course one should use simple, usual words, and (maybe) short sentences. But that has to be the oldest "tip" there is, in any language; there's even a .gov website dedicated to it: [http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/FederalPLGuide...](http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/FederalPLGuidelines/writeShort.cfm)

</comment><comment><USER56> One important difference between written and spoken language is that in the former case readers have the luxury of looking words up in a dictionary if they don't know them. When speaking, I'm careful to avoid words I suspect might not be understood by my listeners, but when writing [1] I generally use the most precise word I can think of, even if I expect some readers won't know it. (Indeed, for particularly tricky words I'll often link the dictionary definition myself.)

[1]: Examples include [http://railstutorial.org/book](http://railstutorial.org/book), [http://tauday.com/tau-manifesto](http://tauday.com/tau-manifesto), and [http://learnenough.com/command-line-tutorial](http://learnenough.com/command- line-tutorial)

</comment><comment><USER57> On the contrary, I write _because_ I don't talk so well. When I try to explain an idea in person, it usually comes out jumbled and half-formed. In contrast, when I sit down to write it out, it becomes much more clear on both sides of the conversation, even if it sounds a bit robotic.

Many people I know are exceptionally good at talking precisely and at length about their interests. Sometimes I envy them. I've always wished I could spin out my thoughts at their speed. But I don't really think in sentences. Many of my ideas exist in a sort of impressionistic cloud that takes a lot of energy to translate into conversation. In that sense, writing is as much a form of physical thought as it is a tool of idea dissemenation.

Nonetheless, it's an interesting exercise to record a first draft of a long essay into a microphone and mine it for intersting bits of prose. I should really try it more often!

</comment><comment><USER58> Rather than taking writing advice from a programmer/venture capitalist, I recommend Steering the Craft, by Ursula Le Guin, which will help ground any writing you might do in solid understanding of the "tools" you have available as a writer-- pace, grammar, the sound of words, and so forth

<comment><USER59> pg was a published technical writer and widely read essayist before Y Combinator.

<comment><USER58> which is perhaps why he can "write as he talks", and get away with it. He honed his craft. I work with a few programmers who write exactly as they talk, and it is littered with misplaced, dangling modifiers, and misspellings of things like "bury the lead" vs "bury the lede". The overall structure of arguments is haphazard too. Writing is hard, and I think the best way to get better is to write things that you _want_ to get taken more seriously than just as if you were talking.

<comment><USER60> He can get away with it because he founded the company that owns this well- respected discussion forum; he can say whatever he wants and people will at the very least read it. It is a credit to his hard work in the industry and the even harder industry of online community-building that the community surrounding Y Combinator can sniff out a truly bad essay like this one (especially difficult when so many of his essays are so excellent) and call him out on it as they generally have here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> PG is writing about getting people to read your nonfiction words. There is a place for other things, but he's talking about getting across a simple message, or making comprehensible more complex ones. In this, the advice, old as the hills, is sage and useful.

However, he omits to say that for other purposes, and other audiences - <USER2> this one, for example - if you want a nuances, thoughtful and colourful conversation, exploring more layers of meaning and implication, don't just use the ten hundred words people use the most often. [https://xkcd.com/1133/](https://xkcd.com/1133/) For if you do, once the XKCD comedy is over, we end up in a very dull Newspeak place indeed.

</comment><comment><USER20> The best part of PG's advice is actually this:

> "After writing the first draft, try explaining to a friend what you just > wrote. Then replace the draft with what you said to your friend."

This is the single best thing you can do to improve your communication skills, whether it be in writing or speaking. You're forced, out of courtesy and respect for your friend, to find the heart of the matter and you make it accessible.

(I'm currently in the middle of a 1,000,000 words stream-of-consciousness writing project, where I write exactly whatever's coming to my mind with as little editing as possible. I'm approaching 500,000 words now. It's pretty enlightening.)

</comment><comment><USER62> In fairness, Neil Oliver talks like that all the time. If I were having a chat with him over a pint and he described someone as a "mercurial Spaniard", I wouldn't bat an eyelid.

</comment><comment><USER63> Writing something (that is worth reading) in simple words is very hard. I believe that clear thinking plays a bigger role than semantics. When I am confused about a topic, I tend to write about it using complex arguments with long sentences and long words.

PG speaks and writes about startups with more clarity than most people. It is because his thinking on startups has greater clarity/conviction than most people. From my perspective, there seems to be no shortcut or semantic trick to clear writing.

</comment><comment><USER64> The hardest thing about communication is clarity.

<comment><USER46> Yes. Clarity can creep up on you, and before you know it people can find your mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I've always written essays on ideas, but it wasn't until when I wanted to start publishing my writing on a blog that I found this idea true. Often times flowery language can sacrifice the clarity of your prose for attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are.

It's a lot like the Richard Feynman idea that if you can't distill something to a freshman lecture, you don't really understand it.[1]

[1]: Feynman, Six Not-So-Easy-Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time

<comment><USER24> Opposite to you, I'm often wary of conversational writing for exactly that reason: "Attempting to appear more thoughtful than you are". Especially a certain style of very breezy, self-assured conversational writing, that doesn't have any nuance or caveats, and hand-waves over anything too technical or specific.

Writers use that style to lay things out "like they really are". Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters. No Harvard footnotes and overcomplicating things here, just straight talk. Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks are effective users of that style of writing. Quite a few bloggers are, too. It produces this strange style that on the surface seems thoughtful, but doesn't really have much there.

<comment><USER65> > Let's boil down all this egghead complexity and get to what matters.

You actually be may be right - this Gladwell style of writing is usually quite dangerous, because it does give the reader the sense that they really know what they are talking about, because they are "getting to what matters" (which is obviously very subjective).

The one thing I will argue though is that simple writing communicates the author's point more effectively than using flowerly language. The writer may be wrong, but at least I have much clearer sense of what they mean. By getting to "what matters", I find it easier to determine that they have "what matters" wrong. It is easier to refute the central thesis if the argument is presented without cruft, rather than an argument where flowery prose clouds the thesis.

I find that a mix of a conversational tone followed by technical details is usually the most effective for me. It's one of the reasons I appreciate mathematics within writing - it tends to be much more clear.

Although I do think you are right about Gladwell & Co, I am refering more to MBA-speak - which tends to use large empty words to convey ideas which pretend to have more depth than they really do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Unless you are naturally a great speaker, writing like you talk is bad advice in my opinion. I, for example would sound erratic and incoherent if I wrote how I talked. I sometimes say things without thinking quite a lot. At least when I write, I can think about things more clearly, research what I am saying and get my facts straight.

I usually agree with most of what you say PG, but in this instance I think you're wrong. Still, it was an interesting read nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER67> Spoken language is backed by other optional channels of information:

* Audio: speaker controls tone, speed and emphasis

* Video: body language

* Feedback: listener can acknowledge reception or ask for repetition

Written language has more time to be composed and it usually has the possibility of being ammended before submission.

Therefore, I always considered natural the difference between spoken and written language styles.

On a less picky opinion: agreed, complex ideas should not be written in complex language.

</comment><comment><USER68> This whole idea and article leave me speechless (sic).

Talking and writing are two different mediums. Never heard of Marshall MacLuhan?

I curse a lot, at home, where I live alone. As soon as I step out the door I talk differently to my neighbors. I also adopt a different voice when I visit my family in another state. And then another when talking to co-workers.

So which of those should I write in?

Try putting "fucking" in the HN search bar. The top article I get is "Fucking Sue Me" with 689 points. Great.

I can't begin to express how irritating it is to read such articles/blog posts with "fucking" all over the text, even thought at home I probably say that word 10-20 times a day. But I'm not _writing_ that for others to read.

And then we have this gem from PG:

"Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas."

Really? If I talked like that to my friends or co-workers they'd be laughing at me for days.

To "write like I talk" I'd say: "what an arrogant fucking stupid shit statement."

Good bye HN.

<comment><USER20> Bye! All the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> "Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas" The irony in this sentence from the article is breathtaking.

<comment><USER70> Do you mean because it's a great sentence in the context of this essay (maybe the best one in it), but you judge that you couldn't get away with saying it verbatim in conversation?

(If you were explaining the idea in this essay?) Or please explain.

<comment><USER69> I actually love the sentence but I wouldn't expect it in spoken english. (That part is ironical in the sense that it goes against the core of the article.. Seems like an exception that proves the rule). Written word gives the reader more time to absorb the content than spoken word and hence I feel it is OK to use metaphorical language to make the point and make the reading experience delightful. But Paul's point is well taken that it's better not to use flowery language for most of the time. It takes a lot of skill to not go overboard with that thing.

<comment><USER70> Yes, you make a good point. Also, since the reader can glance up and down the page, you don't have to repeat parts you have just stated very clearly, to make sure they're still with you, as you might while you talk. (You can do it briefly however.) In all, I expect my books to sound quite different from spoken conversation, for a variety of reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I often keep revising until a text-to-speech program is able to read my writing in a way that sounds natural. Following that approach led to great results in university writing courses and, recently, got me through the process of writing and officiating a wedding.

I share this because many of the comments respond to the "write like you speak" advice with statements similar to "I don't speak well, so 'write like you talk' won't work for me". We spend every day of our lives consuming spoken language and reading written language to ourselves and, as a result, we are able to recognize speech that sounds clear and well spoken. Even if you struggle to speak improvisationally, listening to what you've written can help to evaluate the understandability and flow of your writing.

</comment><comment><USER72> Depends on the tone that you want to set. For a blog etc I think conversationalist tone is fine. Even fast design docs can benefit from a conversationalist tone. Trying to write a big technical design doc w/ that tone wouldn't fit though IMO so you have to evaluate case by case.

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Warren Buffett – he's a great 'write like you talk' role model. He explains complex ideas in a folksy, down to earth way. I studied 50 years of his annual letters, and there's probably 13 or 14 techniques he uses to make people read what he writes. (If you're interested, my short book Write Like Warren is free on Leanpub: [https://leanpub.com/writelikewarren](https://leanpub.com/writelikewarren))

Edit: Dropbox link – [https://www.dropbox.com/sh/um4djdcdb5isw6y/AAAzF6Xm- PGrkJT3Z...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/um4djdcdb5isw6y/AAAzF6Xm- PGrkJT3ZuJw6LQca?dl=0)

</comment><comment><USER74> I agree with pg, but I do think he could be more open minded to critical theory kind of stuff in the humanities. Yeah a lot of it is truly terrible to read, just following some weirdly abstract chain of logic that leads nowhere... but some of it is actually pretty enlightening or at least makes you think about things more critically, in ways that are ultimately useful. For me the good stuff are the thinkers fleshing out the position that Hegel introduced, which arguably is still the shadow that philosophy lives in. I'm CS, not humanities, but even so I see a lot of connections between developing philosophy and improving society, and a lot of these contemporary thinkers blend in philosophy of mind which could be useful for AI.

</comment><comment><USER75> Funny, I just wrote "The Out-Loud-To-Your-Friend-Constraint For Writing" \-- [http://expost.padm.us/outloud](http://expost.padm.us/outloud) (It's kind of self-indulgent musing on the idea of constraints for writing.)

And for customer support we call this the BFF Heuristic -- [http://blog.beeminder.com/curtain](http://blog.beeminder.com/curtain)

Excerpt: "If you read what you've written to a user out loud and it's possible to tell that it's not being spoken to your best friend, rewrite it. No exaggeration -- I treat that as a hard rule. It also helps get replies out quicker, once you're used to it."

<comment><USER76> This is really great advice and I meant to hit tbe up arrow friend, but I'm not sure which arrow I tapped and now I can't see or correct it :/

I really like the idea of the BFF heuristic, but I also think people should try to read writing, especially emails, as though they are coming from a BFF too! I've seen time after time where a friend reads an email, and each time they reread it theh get more angry, but when I look at it there's no offense to be found. If you have a negative opinion of somebody its easy to read everything theh write as a personal attack

<comment><USER75> Absolutely. In fact, that's the next piece of advice in that blog post. Excerpt:

"The best-friend heuristic has another benefit: If a user is ever frustrated or annoyed or hostile, put on rose-colored glasses and willfully reinterpret their tone as helpful and constructive -- something your friend would say because they genuinely want to help you improve -- and respond with the appropriate tone of gratitude."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Write like you think, not like you talk.

I do not talk like I think. Something is broken in that pathway. I'm better at writing. I've watched my son, who has trouble writing, express himself for papers via Dragon Dictate. Literally "write like you talk". And it is a mess. Stream of consciousness, betting on the reader picking up social cues, etc.

It is rare to find someone who can both write and talk with the same words and phrasing.

Although I do agree with the post in the sense of "don't stilt your prose". Don't adopt someone else's written voice, or a perceived style. (If you have the skills to do that, you have the skills to write better...so do that instead.)

</comment><comment><USER78> How about documentation? I was thinking about this the other day, as I was documenting an api, and I was writing as if I was speaking, explaining how I thought about the problem rather than just the end-point details.

How do people feel about this.

Here's an example, but I didn't push the updates I made yesterday. [https://github.com/favor/it](https://github.com/favor/it)

When I wrote for the high school paper, people always commented on how my writing was as if I was just having an conversation with them, so I've always tried to write that way, but I'm not sure it works for all formats.

<comment><USER79> The linked documentation bounces between using 'I' and 'you' as subjects for examples. Get rid of the references to yourself in the docs -- the documentation should be neutral. Take the reader's perspective if a subject is required. In day to day business like setting development priorities or responding to issues on Github, you can use 'I'.

<comment><USER78> thanks for the feedback, I just wasn't sure about tone in docs, it's the first time I've really had to document something like this for public consumption. I will redo it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I like this sort of conversational writing style and it's my preferred style as well. But it's not actually much like natural speech. Anyone who's tried transcribing a recording of a conversation knows that they need to be cleaned up quite a lot to be readable. We don't actually talk in essay format.

Writing this way takes practice and probably a lot of reading as well to understand what you can get away with. People don't start out just knowing how to do it. Many people's native dialects are pretty far away from this style, so "write like you talk" wouldn't have the same results for them.

</comment><comment><USER81> Like pg, I'd recommend you read your writing out loud to yourself. _Not_ read it back to yourself, but literally read it out loud. I find this to be, by far, the easiest way to catch awkward turns of phrase and the like.

Jargon and highfalutin words should also be avoided whenever possible. For instance, if you have the choice of using either "abstruse" or "obscure," I recommend choosing "obscure" every time. Plain-spoken English ftw.

(I also find it wonderfully ironic that pg chose such an obscure synonym for "obscure" to represent the word obscure. bravo.)

</comment><comment><USER82> I think it always depends on what your intention of communication is. Like it is said in the article. Most of the time you want to communicate to others what you are thinking. The simpler the better. I guess there is a similarity to writing code. Your machine can only handle exact commands for communication. But in human-to-human interaction there is more. Sometimes you want others to start thinking about something. Put an image in their head. Draw a comparison to let them think of the bigger picture.I dont think for that purpose spoken language is always the best way.

</comment><comment><USER83> More useful would be "talk like you write".

The best speakers are the ones who are best at that because of the mental discipline it imposes: no uh, er, ah or pauses, just grammatically correct sentences, all the time.

</comment><comment><USER84> The crux of this argument was explored with more eloquence and substance by Orwell in his essay Politics and the English Language[1].

I also agree with some of Orwell's critics, that these rules only hold water for pursuasive and/or [mildly] polemic writing, which is largely the style of tech blogging. Personally I would like to see more tech writing in the Joycean tradition.

1: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Lan...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language)

</comment><comment><USER85> I think a lot of people are missing the point. The point isn't to be redundant and write in verbatim transcriptions. The point is to speak simply, as most people would out loud. Communication is about getting your point across.

A lot of people will write in a very formal "I am fluffing up my school essay" style which distances the reader, makes the topic more boring, and in my opinion actually makes the writing harder for most people to comprehend. You have to pause and think as opposed to just naturally getting through what you're being told.

</comment><comment><USER86> "And it's so easy to do: just don't let a sentence through unless it's the way you'd say it to a friend."

Well no, it is very hard to write a text in "spoken language". This has been analysed by many writers, and the master of this operation in French language is Céline. He says that a lot of minute tweaking is required in order to produce the effect of spoken language in the reader's mind.

And this has not very much to do with removing the "litterature" from one's script, which is obviously much easier.

</comment><comment><USER87> At first I thought of a talk as in presentation. That would be funny advice considering how terrible speaker he is (which is a shame because it's just the form that's bad, not the content). But going off from that, I think people tend to talk like that in general conversations and it only stands out in presentations.. or on a paper. So not the best advice in my opinion. What I would take from it is to just not overdo it when you are writing.

</comment><comment><USER88> I found a very useful tool for writing clearer: [http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER89> "Any story hits you harder if the person delivering it doesn't sound like a news robot but, in fact, sounds like a real person having the reactions a real person would." [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/fashion/npr-voice-has- take...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/fashion/npr-voice-has-taken-over- the-airwaves.html)

</comment><comment><USER90> A quite common way of saying in Italy is: "Parla come magni", which literally means "Speak the way you eat" [1], and it is used in conversations to mean exactly what Paul says, to "keep it simple".

[1]: [http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/parla-come- mangi.1975...](http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/parla-come- mangi.197573/)

</comment><comment><USER91> Perhaps a reason why this works so well is due to most people's way of _subvocalizing_ [1] material that they read.

If you're saying an article out loud in your head as you read it, then it sure does make sense for it to sound like an actual voice is saying it!

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization)

</comment><comment><USER92> He talks as if fiction and all kinds of literature don't exist, as if writing is only useful for conveying advice and commentary. This particular kind of writing might suit him well but this is not how it works in general. His idea that only "poetry" and some "bogus end of humanities" need complex prose is narrow. Also formal reports are more formal than usual for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER93> I wish I could talk like I write. When I have a lot to talk about, I have a hard time not jumping around and end up being a little incoherent.

</comment><comment><USER94> For general day to day stuff we all write, yes I agree. Hate reading emails and articles with a lot of unnecessary jargon. However, Writing- as in writing fiction,poetry,drama etc is an art. Just like a great painting, it is complex and it gives people an idea of the great mind of the author and what he thought of the book from his perspective.

Imagine war and peace written in spoken language.:(

</comment><comment><USER95> Well "if truth was self evidence, eloquence wouldn't be needed."

Most of the time, we should write simply, but there are many times when we should be more colorful.

Also the fact that we must choose simple writing is a shortcoming and a lack of proper education. If the only word I know to express a romantic feeling is "love," well that is going to seriously limit me.

</comment><comment><USER83> > Here's a simple trick for getting more people to read what you write: write > in spoken language.

Speaking of doing what you preach: stop adding manual <br> in your articles, it makes them unreadable on mobile and wide monitors and it basically displays a total ignorance of how the web is supposed to work (let readers control how your articles appear to them).

<comment><USER96> "How the web is supposed to work" changes every five seconds. <br> is one of the oldest tags in HTML. Maybe it's wrong this year. I remember the year when Tables were wrong, too.

<comment><USER83> The point remains that you should let the browser reflow the text based on the width of the browser.

<br> makes this impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york To the contrary, I explicitly do not write the way I talk; they are very different mediums! Each is better suited to communicate different things / emotions.

Writing gives me the freedom to edit, iterate and polish; something speech cannot do.

I love both writing and speech/presenting - do not be reductionist and reduce writing to mere "written conversation".

<comment><USER97> I think you are taking the article too literally.

It's not that you must say something orally, use a computer automatic transcript and publish that, with all the errors and fillers.

You should edit it heavily to fix errors and increase clarity, but the style should be like something you would say oraly. An uninformed reader must feel that it's just the transcript of an informal talk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Paul Halmos in _How to Write Mathematics_ says: "A good attitude to the preparation of written mathematical exposition is to pretend that it is spoken. Pretend that you are explaining the subject to a friend on a long walk in the woods, with no paper available; fall back on symbolism only when it is really necessary."

</comment><comment><USER99> I would say this is true, because whenever i read a PG essay, i think of his voice, thinking his talks. His uniqe voice, tonality and speed of spoken language into his writings, which in turn helps me to better understand what he syas. I always wanted to hear PG essays from his voice. Like an Audible for PG essays.

</comment><comment><USER100> I understand where this is coming from. All the same I find its devaluation of the variation of language one can naturally access when writing both dangerous and simpleminded in its utilitarian assumptions. It's a strawman argument. Writing is a creative act and not simply a matter of communication.

</comment><comment><USER101> I think that, like, um, when you... when you write things like, uh, you know, fantasy novels or, uhhh.. things that are literature, that you should probably ignore this advice.

On the other hand, if you're writing nonfiction, with the goal of conveying information effectively, then this is probably good advice.

</comment><comment><USER102> Considering that communication can be just as much about what you say as how you say it, I'd say that I appreciate artistic liberties like 'mercurial Spaniard'. Writing can be a form of direct communication as well as a refined art form. I enjoy the departure from the usual lexicon.

</comment><comment><USER103> Just ran Paul's article through Anonymouth [https://github.com/psal/anonymouth](https://github.com/psal/anonymouth) Considerably changed and mangled beyond all recognition. It even sounds less persuasive in tone.

</comment><comment><USER104> Generalizing: "Representation of ideas done in any form should be done in a way that impairs as little cognitive load as possible on the reader".

This principle goes in programming, as well as in writing. But not all writing is done to transmit ideas, there is also aesthetic side of it.

</comment><comment><USER105> Something that helps a lot with achieving a conversational tone is to actually record "spoken drafts" of what you want to write about, then transcribe the audio.

For optimal results, have a point-form plan of what you want to discuss so you will stay on topic and avoid rambling.

</comment><comment><USER106> my favorite advice on writing form Scot Adams:

[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html)

</comment><comment><USER107> when i first read Saramago [1], i was impressed how he wrote with no punctuation or even capital letters, and how enjoyable and easy to read it was, it was definitely a breath of fresh air, only a few times it was hard to follow the story, mainly on dialogues i sometimes got lost who was saying what, overall his writing style made reading his novels a lot of fun, my feeling was more like listening to someone tell me a story directly, rather than having to get hold of the rhythm and style of the writer.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago)

</comment><comment><USER108> Ugh, I agree with the sentiment, but the proposed solution is almost as awkward as the prose he descries. I agree with Paul that "fancy", "formal" prose like this is (randomly chosen example) does no one any favors:

        > This work aims to address the disconnect between object-oriented design
        > and implementation by rethinking the way object-oriented languages are
        > structured. We have developed a set of requirements with which to identify
        > good relationship models, and used these requirements to develop a
        > new model for the object-oriented paradigm which focuses on relationships
        > rather than objects. We will test the effectiveness of the model by designing
        > a language which uses it, along with a formal specification and a
        > practical implementation for the language. We will measure the effectiveness
        > of our model by conducting case studies comparing development in
        > existing languages with development in our relationship-based language.

But saying that the _only_ solution is to write how you speak informally to friends also eliminates prose like:

        > The tide climbs. The moon hangs small and yellow and gibbous. On the rooftops
        > of beachfront hotels to the east, and in the gardens behind them, a half-dozen
        > American artillery units drop incendiary rounds into the mouths of mortars.

I don't think Anthony Doerr uses phrases like "mouths of mortars" when having beer with his friends, but his prose is an absolute work of art. Every single word and dollop of punctuation there is perfect.

The key part is not to write like you are speaking to your friends. It's to write _like you are speaking to a specific audience._ Have a picture in your mind of yourself speaking in a venue to one or more people. The image you have will dramatically affect the way you right.

Picture yourself giving a hollering a rousing speech to a platoon of soldiers about to enter into battle and your reader will hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic by the time they reach the end of your paragraph. Whisper your words into the ear of a lover and your reader will get the shivers.

For most of the writing we on HN do, sure, "explaining something cool to your friends over lunch" is exactly the right image to get your style in line. But it's a massive over-simplification to say _all_ prose should be written with tat venue in mind.

Personally, I think "mercurial Spaniard" is a great description of Picasso.

</comment><comment><USER109> I don't know about "write like you talk", precisely, but I've noticed that some very good writing on technical subjects reads like you could give it as a talk, so there's something there about clarity.

</comment><comment><USER110> On an unrelated note - orthography... [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_Adelung](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_Adelung)

</comment><comment><USER111> this is true in general, but it bears noting that highly specialized fields need jargon. there's nothing wrong with using a word "in a technical sense," nor is there anything wrong with leaning on connotation to help orient your interlocutor.

writing and speaking are like anything else: use the right tool for the job. when i talk to people outside of analytic philosophy, i can't use various technical terms to talk about wittgenstein's thoughts on language. i _can_ talk about them, but it takes longer. like, a lot longer.

</comment><comment><USER103> So I should talk in Legal English all day? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_English) which is the reverse of writing as one talks, because the Rule of Law surrounds us always, except for the criminals who flout it repeatedly throughout their day.

When I write, I self censor all the time, and it is no different when I talk. We forgive and forget. We silo only certain words to certain areas of the world. "What happens in Vegas" etc. Language only becomes a problem when it is committed permanently to the footnotes of the web. You can't overlook the law aspect. You also can't so easily withdraw a statement said online.

</comment><comment><USER112> Hemingway had a thing or two to say about this.

>I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written.

</comment><comment><USER113> I think there is absolutely a place and time for writing the way you talk and that the same goes for writing formally.

The discussion of when and where for either case is a topic in and of itself.

</comment><comment><USER114> Considering how many people now say the work "like" at least twice per sentence (especially young people), I don't think this is good advice without some caveats.

</comment><comment><USER115> It's not _exactly_ how you talk.

It's just not flowery and embellished and wandering.

People really don't read. They don't care. They don't have time.

Keep it simple and they might read part of it.

</comment><comment><USER116> The funny thing is that Neil Oliver really does talk like that.

</comment><comment><USER117> You can use Google-Translate to read your writing back to you.

<comment><USER46> Good point. Sounds obvious now that you point it out but I hadn't thought of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> Please don't write like you talk. It's bad enough having to listen to them, I don't want to have to read the expletives as well.

</comment><comment><USER119> This x 10 for legal documents. Simplify them please.

<comment><USER120> I agree, simplifying would be great. You do realize, however, that a large part of the legal profession is to intentionally write broadly, imprecisely, and flexibly to avoid traps. Other kinds of legal writing are intentionally precise in some clauses so as to add complexity to deliberately avoid immediate comprehension.

<comment><USER115> In the manner of discourse such as you have exemplified with your comments under your current pseudonym, it is difficult to ascertain your intended trop, voice, or topic. Thus, I hereby request that you rephrase in a more course or colloquial or blunt manner.

<comment><USER120> Your sense of humor is dizzying and perhaps difficult to find.

If you want more blunt - I speak multiple languages at native or near native level, including two since birth. Spoken English, especially by your average American is rarely to the point, clear, and pleasant. Don't write like you speak, because the average person sucks at it. Instead, know your subject and audience and write to them. Avoid overgeneralizing because it's easy to make an ass of yourself like PG.

Regarding legalese, it is hard to understand and that is intentional. Could it be any clearer for you or will you down-vote again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To all the valid criticisms of the actual advice in the article, I'd like to add that pg's gratuitous poke at gender studies, of all things, was unnecessary. He could have made his same (wrong) point about academia without including that term. His inclusion of "gender" as a marker for "bogus" humanities shows more about his privileged, white cisgender male perspective than about his subject.

This guy is a "thought leader" for the startup community. Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER121> If anything, I need to talk like how I write. I'm a writer, not a talker: I'm verbose in speech, but concise in text.

</comment><comment><USER122> Yes, as long as you aren't writing about emotion or sensation or philosophy or psychology or anything deeply human.

</comment><comment><USER123> I'm really torn on this one. In the abstract, I agree with the main argument of this essay. However, it saddens me to see PG planning to write more like he speaks. His writing is so good that it's been life changing for me, but I only find his talks mediocre. It truly would be a pity if he took his own advice to heart and lost some of the essay-writing awesome sauce.

</comment><comment><USER124> This is a no-brainer.

At first, I thought it's not worthy of an essay because it's so obvious.

But then I read the comments.

<comment><USER124> To clarify:

I don't think Paul Graham meant ramble, use "uhs" and "ums" and expletives as some commenters have said.

I think the point was to use common and simple wording so that people can understand without doing a lot of work. People have a lot more practice understanding common and simple words. So it's much easier for them to read, no matter how smart they are.

Using uncommon or complicated words makes you feel smart, and might make some people think you're smart, but it makes your writing miserable work to read.

I think this was pretty clear in PG's essay, but the headline probably threw people off. Maybe he should have said it differently, such as "Make your writing as simple as your speech."

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> "Write like I talk" would be the most surefire social-media-suicide method I could think of.

</comment><comment><USER126> What's wrong with "mercurial Spaniard"?

</comment><comment><USER127> "Write how you _WISHED_ you talked."

</comment><comment><USER128> i would love to! once technology actually allows me to do it. Dragon dictate hasn't delivered yet. So who will?

</comment><comment><USER129> I couldn't disagree with this more.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sound advice.

</comment><comment><USER130> _Write_

Writing for the audience is secondary to writing[1]. Graham's good at it after 25 years developing his writing _and_ cultivating an audiance.

Everything else is secondary to this when it comes to getting people to read what I've written. The first writing I did that I thought was any good was on _Critique of Pure Reason_ and I wrote that paper in the style of translated Kant, which is to say that there were a lot of "which is to say that" which is to say that "which is to say that" is not something I normally say in everyday conversation, but that I find very helpful when I'm trying to explain something complicated (and generalizes to a useful strategy at the end of meetings to help insure that everybody talked about some of the same things and hopefully it was the same things that were important).

And reading Kant shows that sometimes reading is hard work and that some people enjoy it, and bringing pleasure into the world by writing is possible. These days I sort of look to do that since why else would I write? Besides as a way of thinking, of course.

I guess that means that perhaps Matz is on to something, write what makes you happy. It sort of goes without saying that being nice is part of that and I've come to realize that the part of being an internet asshole that was pleasurable was the writing part and the part of that that was at the core of being happy was _writing effectively_.

Now for some kinds of writing, being effective means using short blunt sentences in the Hemmingway style. But fuck the man shot himself in the head, and Shakespeare and Faulkner didn't. Not that it's statistical proof that writing that way made him unhappy, but it obviously didn't make him happy enough if it even made him happy at all.

Of course, I'm not PG, so people don't expect the sage advice about startups; a good thing since his advice is really good. I'm just not sure his advice to beginning authors is particularly sage since the works from his early career as an author have the same "clam ice cream with reluctance" cleverness for the sake of being clever that impedes simplicity but gives authors the joy of playing with words that keeps them going forward like the nine iron over the tree from the deep rough that sticks close to the hole brings bad duffers back for more misery.

In other words, there's something to be said for stream of consciousness writing and against being self conscious. Writing is a soliloquy, it's a speech not a conversation: a sermon for the choir with only the hope that people won't walk out as the level of attention that should be paid to the non-audience.

For what it's worth, I had fun writing this, typos and all. I hope someone had fun reading it. I also enjoy Graham's essays and books. I'd just simplify this one.

[1]: [http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm](http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm)

</comment><comment><USER131> tl;dr

</comment><comment><USER120> This has to be some of the worst advice I have seen on HN, an achievement in itself. I have lurked here a long time and this article is so stupid and poorly written I actually am taking the time to register.

Simplifying your writing is an effective technique for certain styles and genres. Moreover, it is indeed true that some people speak more eloquently than they write. Conversely, one must acknowledge that the opposite is true. Advising people to write as they speak is overgeneralizing and even harmful in many cases.

Anecdotally, I find most people do not speak very clearly. I grew up bilingual and I find the average spoken English to be particularly imprecise and sloppy, especially compared to other languages. Written English, on the other hand has many subtleties, rules, structure, and formalities that aid most kinds of writing. On a personal level, written English is far more pleasurable, efficient, and expressive to me.

Again, there are some types of writing that can benefit from disregarding formalities and drawing from spoken English. Dialogue is one obvious example where the benefits of writing as one might speak can be an asset, however Graham's article I suspect is not really trying to make you a better novelist. Ironically, writing dialogue in ways that it might not be spoken often produces more engaging content to anyone with even a passing appreciation for skilled writing. It is precisely because characters might say something we would never that we might find them intelligent, interesting, or find another quality that makes us react strongly and in a polarizing way to a character. The same holds true to other types of writing - we write a certain way to make content clear, but also at times interesting, engaging, and fulfilling.

The problem with a lot of written English is that most people do not know basics, let along actual writing techniques. Notice in Graham's article he manages to commit dozens of mistakes despite revealing that someone else proofread. For instance, Graham uses the same word twice in a row in his first paragraph, writes redundantly in a crafted article about writing, and abuses paragraphs. There are other mistakes as well, but the larger point is that Graham is presenting himself as an authority on writing technique, and yet would have received a poor grade from any of my teachers.

Lowering your writing standards and abusing the English language to address inept or illiterate readers is not quality advice. Every writer must think of their intended audience and indeed write towards them. Insulting your audience by assuming they are stupid is not a solution. Rather, writing clearly by reducing complexity is a well-explored topic that has few direct linkages to spoken English and general vernacular, colloquialisms, and informalities. You can find dozens of books on the subject and even algorithms that will process your writing, searching for complexities.

As a final note, I now live abroad most of the year and encounter many Americans, Brits, Aussies, and other "Anglo" ex-pats. I have fluency in the local language and I often play the role of translator from spoken English to non-Anglos, in English to people with near native level proficiency in English. In other words, I translate English to English because so many people do not speak clear, understandable, and engaging English. I rarely am asked about written English from anyone remotely competent as writer. There is often overlap between the two, such as in the workplace.

Paul Graham should be ashamed for providing such bad advice. I am sorry, but this article comes off as lordly pseudo-academia from someone who may be a decent investor but is surely not a good writer. I have been reading things from Paul Graham for years and while the subjects sometimes are not bad, he is a terrible writer. I can respect certain things about Graham, but his writing and desire to abuse his position to spout nonsense is not one of them. Please stick to investing hoards of cash and stop planting dangerous seeds in your younger audience members in particular.

<comment><USER132> >Paul Graham should be ashamed for providing such bad advice. I am sorry, but this article comes off as lordly pseudo-academia from someone who may be a decent investor but is surely not a good writer. I have been reading things from Paul Graham for years and while the subjects sometimes are not bad, he is a terrible writer. I can respect certain things about Graham, but his writing and desire to abuse his position to spout nonsense is not one of them. Please stick to investing hoards of cash and stop planting dangerous seeds in your younger audience members in particular.

This is very harsh. How is he abusing his position? You are taking this literally. If we are reading the same essay, Mr. Graham is not asking people to slip to lower standards, relax their language skills, etc. But rather write like they "sound". This sort of writing style will all come down to the kind of audience being catered to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER133> I think better advice is to know your message, know your audience, and write appropriately. If you're skilled enough to write flowery prose in the first place, then you're skilled enough to detect the appropriate level and write to it.

For example, there is a world of difference between troubleshooting a user problem verbally, directly in email, or writing a guide for the problem on a wiki. They all take different conversational styles.

</comment><comment><USER134> Most of the comments, here, are taking the statement too literally. What he means is to write sentences in a way you would in normal conversation and not try to be a writer of linguistic elocution. Don't use abbreviations, long words we may not know, pretending to be Hemingway.

Too many pretend to be Hemingway when they should write like Brian Kernighan at least.

<comment><USER135> > Don't use abbreviations, long words we may not know, pretending to be > Hemingway.

You keep using that name, but I don't think you have read any of his works.

<comment><USER134> I keep using that name? I think that's the first time I've done that in decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER136> Read Strunk & White: Elements of Style

[http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William- Strunk/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Style-Fourth-William- Strunk/dp/020530902X/)

There are many examples about how to write clearly.

<comment><USER137> Every good writer has a copy of Strunk & White within arm's reach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> It really depends. Paul illustrates a clear difference between the way people write and the way people talk. I would argue that while this is true, there are cases where people write better than they talk.

</comment><comment><USER139> Haha...is he suggesting Satya Nadella?

</comment><comment><USER140> This is exactly how I write. It works great. Except in college where English teachers mark down your paper for stupid reasons.

Many good, powerful speeches have repetition. Using the same word to end three sentences in a row. This can make for a great speech. It does not make for a good school grade. Oops.</comment>


Germany tells Google to tidy up auto-complete - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22529357?a=1 <comment><USER2> My theory is that the German Government is jealous. They would like to have the all the user data the people are giving to google for free. But actually it's pretty sad. I am a German guy and I am totally annoyed by all this internet laws in my country. The Government has no idea how the internet is working. They should more focus on other problems. For example Banks!</comment>


He Has Driven for Uber Since 2012. He Makes About $40k a Year - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/technology/uber-driver-ipo.html <comment><USER2> He played a part in making Uber what it is today. I think it's valid to give him and the other thousands of drivers a share of that success. Uber could set a wonderful precedent and make a significant impact in the lives of many people.

<comment><USER3> [https://mashable.com/article/uber-ipo-driver-cash-reward- sto...](https://mashable.com/article/uber-ipo-driver-cash-reward-stock- program/)</comment></comment>


Education, Intelligence, and Attitude Extremity (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2145529 <comment><USER2> Attitude extremity is measured by a questionnaire on three dimensions: economic, social, and environmental.

I notice that of the 8 economic questions, three are essentially the same question rephrased (labeled "eqwlth", "eqincome" and "goveqinc") and two additional questions are very closely related ("helpsick" and "helpoor"). It's not clear how these 8 questions do a very good job of measuring attitude extremity along the economic axis.

Questions along the other axis also seem too nuanced for a simple 1-5 answer (agree-strongly to disagree-strongly). For example are nuclear power stations "extremely dangerous" to the environment. Well, in my mind, of course they pose some danger, but less so than the coal plants they often replace. I'd have to disagree strongly that they are "extremely" dangerous (i.e. be classified as having an extreme attitude). I'm not trying to start an argument over the pros and cons of nuclear power here, but just wanted to point out that the questions selected by the researchers introduce their own bias where shallower answers seem more centrist.

Perhaps I'm too sensitive about these kinds of classifications. I consider myself a libertarian and usually feel poorly categorized by surveys.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, really. I have _extremely_ left-wing opinions, to the point that most Americans would indeed consider me a left-wing extremist. _However_ , these questions seem to me to fail to capture the interesting degrees of variation. For example, there's no option given for the right-wing position that poor people are not merely poor due to their own faults, but that in fact government policy should be used to appropriate what little they have and make them _even poorer_ , or that foreigners should not merely be left outside the United States via restrictive immigration, but bombed into oblivion. Neither is there an option for saying that we should not merely use taxation to redistribute wealth to the poor, but actually seize the means of production and abolish wage-labor. The statement about Irish, Italian, and Jewish Americans fails to capture what really happened in the post-WW2 decades to integrate those minorities. The questions on science versus religion contain no options for fundamentalist religion or transhumanism (despite the fact that Evangelical Christians make up 20% of the total population!). The question about marriage doesn't ask whether husbands should be able to beat or rape disobedient wives. I can't even answer the question about driving a car, because I don't.

The interesting thing about studies of extremism lies in finding out exactly which views are considered the normative mainstream, and which views are considered "out-of-sight".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The measurement of the target variable, here attitude extremity, seems a little shaky to me.

First of all, using min and max values is not very smart because of outliers and complete disregard of the "coherence" of the opinions, i.e., if standard deviation is small or big (comparatively).

Secondly, the formula is not symmetric. Maybe that's ok because the distributions aren't but using the maximum in the denominator of the attitude extremity formula just increases the effect my first point.

I think a definition in terms of percentiles would have been probably much better. This would implicitly define attribute extremity in terms of non- conformity but that's IMO exactly what it is, it would just sound less dangerous and more 'revolutionarish'.

</comment><comment><USER5> This topic roughly reminds me of Jeff Schmidt's book "Disciplined Minds"[1], where he argues that professionals are likely to be more conservative and trusting of the government that other people, in part due to the process of professional education. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter:

> Evidence that professionals are not independent thinkers has been around for > a long time but has generally been ignored, in part because people don't > know how to make sense of it. The Vietnam War produced some revealing > examples, which are worth looking back at.

> On 12 January 1971, the federal government indicted Philip Berrigan and > other East Coast antiwar activists on felony charges of plotting to impede > the Vietnam War through violent action. The activists' agenda supposedly > included blowing up underground heating pipes in Washington to shut down > government buildings, kidnapping presidential advisor Henry Kissinger to > ransom him for concessions in the war and raiding drafting boards to destroy > records and slow down the draft.

> The Justice Department prosecutors chose to hold the conspiracy trial in > Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a conservative area where a randomly chosen jury > would be heavily against the defendants. However, before the jury was > selected at what came to be known as the Harrisburg-7 trial, a group of > left-leaning social scientists supporting the defendants interviewed a large > number of registered voters in the area to try to figure out how to get a > sympathetic jury there. They discovered, amongst other things, that college- > educated people were more likely than others to be conservative and trust > the government. Thus, in court, during the three weeks that it took to > examine 465 potential jurors and pick a panel of 12, lawyers for the defense > quietly favoured skilled blue-collar workers and white-collar workers > without a lot of formal education -- nonprofessionals, although the > sociologists and lawyers never used that term.

> The lawyers were uneasy about doing this, however, because it went against > their intuition. The notion of closed-minded hard hats and open-minded > intellectuals is widespread and is reinforced by mass-media characters like > dock-loading worker Archie Bunker and his college-student son-in-law, > "pinko" Mike. In fact, All in the Family made its television debut the very > day of the Harrisburg indictments, 12 January 1971; by the time the trial > and jury selection started, it had been on air for over a year.

> Ignoring these false stereotypes paid off. The government put on a month > long, $2 million extravaganza featuring 64 witnesses, including 21 FBI > agents and 9 police officers. The defense called no one to the witness > stand. After seven days of deliberation, the jury was not able to reach a > unanimous decision, and the judge declared a mistrial; but with 10 of the 12 > carefully selected jurors arguing for a not-guilty verdict, the government > dropped the case.

It is a book worth reading.

[1] [http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/](http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/)

<comment><USER6> > more conservative and trusting of the government

Don't American conservatives tend to distrust gov in general? Or is it more like nonprofessional + conservative = distrusting of gov?

<comment><USER5> I am not sure. That said, it does seem that people from the US place an unusually large degree of trust in business, and less trust in government [1]. I have read that there has been a great deal of money spent in the US on pro- business propaganda over the last century [2], so perhaps results like these are not so surprising!

[1] See the graph in this Forbes article: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/05/america...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/05/americans- trust-business-more-than-government-infographic/)

[2] This is discussed at length in the book "Collision Course" by Kerryn Higgs. See: [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/collision- course](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/collision-course)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The field of economics really has done itself a disservice in its relevance as a science by becoming so intertwined with politics.

Wait- what? The authors' credentials on the abstract page are different from their credentials in the pdf (which the site won't let me re-open). Hmmm.

Also, early on the authors fail to include an apostrophe that is needed to make the word 'individuals' a possessive plural. A detector is starting to go off in my mind.

<comment><USER8> I suspect that the PDF states the authors' positions when the paper was written and the SSRN page states their current positions.

According to [http://www.michaelmakowsky.com/about/](http://www.michaelmakowsky.com/about/) Michael D. Makowsky is currently a professor at Clemson University (as listed on the SSRN page) and was previously a professor at the Center for Advanced Modeling at Johns Hopkins University (as in the PDF).

<comment><USER7> Ah, yes- thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


How Gmail loads JavaScripts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3.org/2012/11/webperf-slides-hundt.pdf

<comment><USER2> Slowly, that's how. Even when I revisit the page after just checking my email, it still shows the progress bar and I have to wait.</comment>


Drone.coffee: A drone noise generator using the Web Audio API. - <AUTHOR> http://meleyal.com/drone.coffee/

<comment><USER2> This is neat, it reminds me of the app 'Bloom' that Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers created a few years ago. It would be nice to have some sort of interface where the user could modify characteristics of the audio as I noticed that on refresh the engine is generating different tonalities.

One thing to watch out for is the CPU load on this, my Google Renderer process was pushing 100% when I ran the generator.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers :) Yes, I was definitely inspired by Bloom, I used to listen to it a lot while working.

The original JS version ([http://matt-diamond.com/drone.html](http://matt- diamond.com/drone.html) ) has some control over the parameters, I was going for something a bit more minimal.

About the CPU usage, yes it's doing a lot of processing, or better to say, it's doing a few simple calculations very often. On my machine (Macbook Pro) it tops out at about 55%. Performance is on my todo list as it should be possible to leave it running for long periods without draining your battery. I'm sure there's plenty of room for optimisation.</comment></comment>