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Comment by swyx | Hacker News Reader

disagree - writing advice has skewed too much towards pg-style "write for a 5th grade reading level" making everything sound plain and bland. while thats an appropriate style for clear communication, sometimes you just want to flex your literary muscles, and English offers so many wonderful ways of self expression that are slowly being lost due to boiled down business writing.

Coda's technical chops are undisputed AND is a well known technical communicator, dont cramp his style, there are few enough of him as it is

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Eh, as the sibling comment says, it's about the ROI of the new word. If you're defining something with it that would otherwise take many words to explain, or if you want to introduce a new idea, or otherwise use it as shorthand, great. If you're using a new word only once, then why even use it?

Is ROI in this case a measure of comprehension? What about the enjoyment and playfulness of metaphor and expressive language - do these have a negative ROI if they aren't sufficiently terse?

How far do you take efficiency as a measure of communication quality?

Did Kevin have it right when he asks "why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K-L9uhsBLM

> sometimes you just want to flex your literary muscle

If so, then you usually don't want to mix it with profanity.

I mean, you can, but it's a style that went out of fashion years ago.

Who cares if it's out of style? Sounds like an excuse to kill creativity.

All I will say is if I need to use the dictionary on every paragraph it is probably a bit too much! Props for where he linked to definitions though.

If your goal is to flex your literary muscle, then write poetry, but don't waste people's time.

I find there is a time and a place for this in your work though. You don't have to use obscure words nonstop, use them where people can learn or figure out just from context. Sometimes thats not possible but it usually is. If you think it isn't, maybe you've got a new writing skill to learn and improve on.

Writing for the reader is important if you want your work to be read.

Write to think all you want but don't expect other people to read your unedited drafts.

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