Comments on: Condensed: 'Care, constraint, concise, cut, character, clarity, and charity.'

Condensed: 'Care, constraint, concise, cut, character, clarity, and charity.'

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:35:00 -0800

How to Write With Style.

By: number9dream

number9dream — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:47:49 -0800

Nice article. Who is this Vonnegut guy?

By: swift

swift — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:54:52 -0800

I am tired.

By: Foci for Analysis

Foci for Analysis — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:58:38 -0800

He was tired.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:53:38 -0800

So why didn't he do it?

By: clockworkjoe

clockworkjoe — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:02:15 -0800

Third base.

By: fantabulous timewaster

fantabulous timewaster — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:11:42 -0800

So it goes.

By: Dizzy

Dizzy — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:12:50 -0800

RAMJAC.

By: Hollow

Hollow — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:17:26 -0800

MetaFilter: We are tired.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:30:08 -0800

Before he was a noted author, Kurt Vonnegut was a POW in Nazi Germany. A letter from those years.

By: decoherence

decoherence — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:30:59 -0800

I suppose I only notice it because it's one of my own writing tics, but really, Vonnegut's overuse of em-dashes is stylistically rather clunky.

By: nudar

nudar — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:38:22 -0800

Poo-te-weet.

By: wendell

wendell — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:39:17 -0800

We need a rapper who's entire act is about proper punctuation whose handle is M Dash. Or did The Electric Company do that 20 years ago?

By: Kinbote

Kinbote — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:44:45 -0800

Thanks for that link, homunculus. God-hell.

By: oddman

oddman — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:06:24 -0800

I really like em-dashes.

By: bwg

bwg — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:16:13 -0800

Conjunction Junction, what's your function?

By: sonic meat machine

sonic meat machine — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:17:00 -0800

The real tragedy is the sad neglect of the en-dash. Everyone always just uses a hyphen. Doesn't 103–152 look better than 103-152?

By: afflatus

afflatus — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:28:32 -0800

A good article, all in all, but I am not sure I entirely agree with him on a couple points. He says that people care about what is being said, not how it is said, that a reader doesn't fall in love with the language of a writer. Yet the way things are said is exactly what I like about Shakespeare. When I first read Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet as I recall), I thought to myself "What melodramatic tripe. This is a fucking soap opera." And so it is. But then I learned to love it for the way in which is was written. The music in the prose, coming to understand that it is meant to be spoken, not read. I love Shakespeare for the beauty of the language, the way in which it is written. The content? Meh, not so much. I also am not entirely in agreement with the point he makes about readers needing to understand what they are reading. The notion that you must try and write in a way that will be understandable to your audience in order to communicate what you are trying to say is very important and laudable. The exceptions to that rule, however, are transcendent. Curiously enough he mentions Joyce in that article as well, which is a fine example of a writer that emphatically did not write in a way which was meant to be easily understood by his audience. He challenged them to come to his work on his terms, not on the readers terms. My favorite example of that is Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. I read that and I hated the way in which it was written because it was a struggle to read. It ignored most conventions on style and structure. But it did it for a good reason and the work was of a high enough quality to make it worth the struggle. In essence, he brought me into his world and presented a story on his terms and made me happy to have made the effort. That is a rare thing indeed. Still, a fine article and Vonnegut is a hell of a writer. Far better than I shall ever be. So I'll keep his points in mind as I write. Except, of course, about economy of words. This comment makes it obvious that I have no facility for that one.

By: turgid dahlia

turgid dahlia — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:31:41 -0800

Listen.

By: wobh

wobh — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:33:07 -0800

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:52:52 -0800

* Fuckin' robots

By: myweightinfo

myweightinfo — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:16:44 -0800

This article gives a great outline for writing. Having left school some years ago, this refresher was refreshing.

By: vitia

vitia — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:52:02 -0800

Misplaced modifier, myweightinfo. Unless this refresher left school some years ago.

By: MrMerlot

MrMerlot — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:21:57 -0800

I love how his elaboration on point two

By: RavinDave

RavinDave — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:13:17 -0800

I'm pretty sure I've read this before and if memory serves it was one of a series of short "How to Write" articles -- part of an ad campaign for something like whiskey (I'm fuzzy on the exact details). I recall that Micky Spillane did one too. Maybe Saul Bellow.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:38:09 -0800

My favorite example of that is Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. I read that and I hated the way in which it was written because it was a struggle to read. It ignored most conventions on style and structure. But it did it for a good reason and the work was of a high enough quality to make it worth the struggle. Not to be snarky, but from genuine interest, could you elaborate on that? What good reason did he have in not making it less strugglesome to read?

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:12:50 -0800

Vonnegut's overuse of em-dashes is stylistically rather clunky. That's the editor's fault, not Vonnegut's. Unless you mean you don't like—and I really can't understand why—the stylistic use of said em-dashes—at least in small doses.

By: Kabanos

Kabanos — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:28:30 -0800

Funny how "em-dashes" actually utilizes an en-dash. But anyway, I'm not so sure that it was just the editor's doing. Vonnegut did not like semicolons: "If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." (quoted in a Guardian article about the possible demise of the semicolon)

By: fantabulous timewaster

fantabulous timewaster — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:14:37 -0800

"em-dash" and "en-dash" are hyphenated. A nice example construction from A List Apart:

Hyphens are Not Dashes Stop! Go back and re-read the subhead above—at least 2–3 times—then let it sink in before continuing.

Also, onomatopoeia and palindromes aren't; semicolons, like transvestites, are not without their uses.

By: dirtdirt

dirtdirt — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:30:01 -0800

God DAMN it's nice to bump into a few minutes of good sense on a Monday morning..

By: humannaire

humannaire — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:08:53 -0800

Geez, I miss KV. At least James Brown is still alive.... ...wait, what?

By: decoherence

decoherence — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:35:03 -0800

I personally dislike em-dashes because I think they give the thought that follows a sort of inelegant, "bolted-on" quality. And too many of them can make your prose sound choppy. I think it's usually best to weave those thoughts seamlessly into the rest of your prose, using complete sentences when you can, rather than shoehorning them in with em-dashes and parentheses. I'm sure others will disagree, but the prose I find the most pleasing to read typically has a minimum of the more "exotic" punctuation devices.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:41:55 -0800

Funny how "em-dashes" actually utilizes an en-dash. No it doesn't. That's a hyphen. "em-dash" and "en-dash" are hyphenated. No they're not. Chicago 6.80: "The hyphen, the en dash, and the em dash are the most commonly used..."

By: Artw

Artw — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:45:35 -0800

Haven't you lot got a misplaced apostrophe to complain about or something?

By: oddman

oddman — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:46:12 -0800

So, deco, you don't actually dislike em-dashes, rather you dislike in-line digressions? I don't see how em-dashes have any effect on the sound of a sentence. You wouldn't read them any differently than you would commas denoting an unnecessary phrase.

By: fantabulous timewaster

fantabulous timewaster — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:12:11 -0800

languagehat, thanks' for the pointer's. Careful, constrained, concise: that's us!

By: decoherence

decoherence — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:16:53 -0800

Oddman, it's the em-dash clause that comes at the end of a sentence that I find particularly clunky. Often it's just authorial commentary on what was previously said, or a rephrasing of it--the author taking a "second stab" at expressing a thought. It indicates that the sentence it's appended to probably could've been written better in the first place, as in my last sentence of mine. Ideally I could've thought of a single precise way to say exactly what I wanted to say, rather than adumbrating it with three different descriptions. It just smacks of laziness..