Literary style manual beef! "Strunk and White are mummies of the Lost Generation, bound in typewriter ribbon and pickled with scotch…”
A cheeky and thoughtful survey of the field and review of Farnsworth’s new manual: themillions.com/2020/08/humble (via )
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I figured Pinker’s book was now the one to beat, but it wasn’t considered in the survey.
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Yes, I was bummed to see that.
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Any favorite takeaways from the article?
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I was struck by Farnsworth’s central fixation on explanatory power: “have a reason for whatever you do." It’s very similar to how we think about “rules” in design: “I like bright cyan” is a poor explanation; “this intense cyan guides the eye to the call-to-action” could be fine.
Love this. Reminds me of something I heard awhile back from the Edge (of U2) that's really stuck with me: "notes are expensive". I generalize this to "violations of style heuristics can deliver value, but are expensive; use them wisely!"
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Exactly. One should take care finding le mot juste and even more care deciding when to say it in French.
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One of Karl Popper’s measures of good writing was how easily it could be criticized and scrutinized.
So, your thesis and arguments should be clear.
A question to ask is: “Assuming I’m wrong, but I don’t know how, how can I make it easy for others to detect my error?”