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I find myself disagreeing with many of the examples. E.g. according to the article: Bad: It is quite difficult to find untainted samples. Better: It is difficu

I find myself disagreeing with many of the examples. E.g. according to the article: Bad: It is quite difficult to find untainted samples. Better: It is difficult to find untainted samples. Bad: We used various methods to isolate four samples. Better: We isolated four samples. Something being quite difficult reads significantly differently than just being difficult. You haven't made the sentence better, you've changed the meaning. And the fact that you used various methods instead of a single method is information missing from the second sentence.

t8sr 2y ago
And this is why I now have to read 30 page design docs that could have been 3 pages and said the same thing. Please try to understand why people have such strong dislike of floral writing, especially in technical texts. If you read a lot of papers or designs, it makes your life miserable.
- perching_aix 2y ago
  When it comes to technical writing the only thing I can really discuss is documentation, and the key thing I'm personally looking for there is structure. It could be about basically anything, just please, pretty please, for the love of god, make it structured. And I don't mean sections with catchy headings, I mean as structured and reference-like as possible. I want to minimize the amount of time I spend reading prose and searching around, as well as the chance of missing things. I want to hit CTRL+F and be put where I need to be stat and have that be enough. Structure alone can convey a lot of the idea behind how something works - please trust me to able to utilize it to make basic leaps in logic. A bad example for this is AWS documentation. It's a mish-mash of prose and structured reference. A good example is the AWS CLI documentation (although if they lead with example usages first, that'd be even better).
- deleted 2y ago
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- maccard 2y ago
  Writing good technical text is an art. There is a certain amount of fluff that helps, and it’s almost unnoticeable when it’s there. Without it, it’s too terse. Quite often, my complaint of technical documentation is “it did exactly what the docs said it would do, except in a situation that I didn’t expect it to do that”.
- vharuck 2y ago
  Yes, it's the usual advice of how artists/authors/scientists make something: 1) Make the thing, 2) Try removing each part, 3) If the work fails without that part, put it back. For example, adverbs are good when readers might have the wrong image without them. E.g., "Alice [quickly] walked." Most of the time, writing is better without words like "very" or "quite."
dspillett 2y ago
> Something being quite difficult reads significantly differently than just being difficult. You haven't made the sentence better, you've changed the meaning. The problem there is that the meaning quite carries can vary significantly depending on the reader or the context where the word is read (so it can read differently depending on how previous sentences have primed the reader, which means the same person might read it differently with that context than if they start at that sentence. Quite differently, in fact! This is because in spoken form the word changes a lot with tone of voice. Technically "quite difficult" means "slightly difficult" but in many places actually means "damn near impossible". I'd day that while removing the word isn't wrong, replacing it with a more specific comparison would be better.
- mindcrime 2y ago
  And as I understand it, Brits are particularly fond of using "quite" in a sarcastic fashion, so "quite difficult" in England might mean "not difficult at all, you sodding idiot" or something along those lines.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - n4r9 2y ago
    Brit here, this isn't something I'm familiar with. "Quite" usually means "somewhat" as in "I found the test quite hard". In upper class speech it can mean "very" as in "that was quite the challenge" or "agreed" when said on its own as a response to a statement.
    - mindcrime 2y ago
      Interesting. Maybe it's a regional thing, or a generational thing. Or maybe I'm just flat out mis-remembering. Or maybe some of my British friends told me that, but they were just taking the piss. :-) It's something I've come across references to more than a few times over the years though. EDIT: OK, FWIW, I can't find any solid reference at a quick glance to the form I was thinking of, but Google's "AI Search" GenAI thing does reflect what I was getting at, so I don't think it's completely something I made up. Unless me and the Google AI both hallucinated the same thing. Here's what Google has to say: In British English, when someone says "quite" with a slightly sarcastic tone, it usually means they are implying something is "not at all" or "very much the opposite" of what they are describing, essentially downplaying a positive quality to express mild disapproval or skepticism. Example: "Oh, that new restaurant was quite good." (Meaning: it was actually pretty bad) "He's quite the brilliant mind." (Meaning: he's not very intelligent at all) I probably did overstate the degree of emphasis of this though.
zaptheimpaler 2y ago
Yeah most of his examples looked terrible to me. It's actually part of why reading papers is so damn difficult even when the paper says something simple. They're obsessed with this stilted formal tone that no one actually likes and leaves out subtle but important context clues.
seanhunter 2y ago
Strong disagree. If you want to make a point about using different methods, say what you did. “We isolated four samples using the following methods…”

t8sr 2y ago

And this is why I now have to read 30 page design docs that could have been 3 pages and said the same thing. Please try to understand why people have such strong dislike of floral writing, especially in technical texts. If you read a lot of papers or designs, it makes your life miserable.

perching_aix 2y ago
When it comes to technical writing the only thing I can really discuss is documentation, and the key thing I'm personally looking for there is structure. It could be about basically anything, just please, pretty please, for the love of god, make it structured. And I don't mean sections with catchy headings, I mean as structured and reference-like as possible. I want to minimize the amount of time I spend reading prose and searching around, as well as the chance of missing things. I want to hit CTRL+F and be put where I need to be stat and have that be enough. Structure alone can convey a lot of the idea behind how something works - please trust me to able to utilize it to make basic leaps in logic. A bad example for this is AWS documentation. It's a mish-mash of prose and structured reference. A good example is the AWS CLI documentation (although if they lead with example usages first, that'd be even better).
deleted 2y ago
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maccard 2y ago
Writing good technical text is an art. There is a certain amount of fluff that helps, and it’s almost unnoticeable when it’s there. Without it, it’s too terse. Quite often, my complaint of technical documentation is “it did exactly what the docs said it would do, except in a situation that I didn’t expect it to do that”.
vharuck 2y ago
Yes, it's the usual advice of how artists/authors/scientists make something: 1) Make the thing, 2) Try removing each part, 3) If the work fails without that part, put it back. For example, adverbs are good when readers might have the wrong image without them. E.g., "Alice [quickly] walked." Most of the time, writing is better without words like "very" or "quite."

dspillett 2y ago

> Something being quite difficult reads significantly differently than just being difficult. You haven't made the sentence better, you've changed the meaning. The problem there is that the meaning quite carries can vary significantly depending on the reader or the context where the word is read (so it can read differently depending on how previous sentences have primed the reader, which means the same person might read it differently with that context than if they start at that sentence. Quite differently, in fact! This is because in spoken form the word changes a lot with tone of voice. Technically "quite difficult" means "slightly difficult" but in many places actually means "damn near impossible". I'd day that while removing the word isn't wrong, replacing it with a more specific comparison would be better.

mindcrime 2y ago
And as I understand it, Brits are particularly fond of using "quite" in a sarcastic fashion, so "quite difficult" in England might mean "not difficult at all, you sodding idiot" or something along those lines.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- n4r9 2y ago
  Brit here, this isn't something I'm familiar with. "Quite" usually means "somewhat" as in "I found the test quite hard". In upper class speech it can mean "very" as in "that was quite the challenge" or "agreed" when said on its own as a response to a statement.
  - mindcrime 2y ago
    Interesting. Maybe it's a regional thing, or a generational thing. Or maybe I'm just flat out mis-remembering. Or maybe some of my British friends told me that, but they were just taking the piss. :-) It's something I've come across references to more than a few times over the years though. EDIT: OK, FWIW, I can't find any solid reference at a quick glance to the form I was thinking of, but Google's "AI Search" GenAI thing does reflect what I was getting at, so I don't think it's completely something I made up. Unless me and the Google AI both hallucinated the same thing. Here's what Google has to say: In British English, when someone says "quite" with a slightly sarcastic tone, it usually means they are implying something is "not at all" or "very much the opposite" of what they are describing, essentially downplaying a positive quality to express mild disapproval or skepticism. Example: "Oh, that new restaurant was quite good." (Meaning: it was actually pretty bad) "He's quite the brilliant mind." (Meaning: he's not very intelligent at all) I probably did overstate the degree of emphasis of this though.

zaptheimpaler 2y ago

Yeah most of his examples looked terrible to me. It's actually part of why reading papers is so damn difficult even when the paper says something simple. They're obsessed with this stilted formal tone that no one actually likes and leaves out subtle but important context clues.

seanhunter 2y ago

Strong disagree. If you want to make a point about using different methods, say what you did. “We isolated four samples using the following methods…”