The modern formatting addiction in writing

furyofantares

I haven't seen a lot of excessive formatting in human-written text. These are all much more LLM-isms to my eye.

ezekg

Seriously hate how young people write these days. Like the OP covers, every sentence is on a new line, emojis everywhere, and too many memes. Does that make me old?

abadar

> First write with lots of formatting. > Then figure out how to remove it. > Then put it back, if you want. In the fifth grade, we were required to write an outline for our research project essay. Imagine my delight when writing the paper was as easy as copying the outline and adding a couple extra words. That value of formatting into bulleted lists reminds me of the McPhee method of writing, which was shared last year on HN. He manipulates physical note cards to write, and I was manipulating digital ones.

michael1999

I wind up using this kind of formatting while writing in Google Docs. It's easier to jump around with the nav bar if the structure is legible to the app. But it does make the document less readable.

datacynic

I like this Tufte quote from https://www.edwardtufte.com/notebook/book-design-advice-and-... : It is also notable that the Feynman lectures (3 volumes) write about all of physics in 1800 pages, using only 2 levels of hierarchical headings: chapters and A-level heads in the text. It also uses the methodology of sentences which then cumulate sequentially into paragraphs, rather than the grunts of bullet points. Undergraduate Caltech physics is very complicated material, but it didn’t require an elaborate hierarchy to organize. I think about it a lot when reading markdown feature-driven writing or catching myself doing it.

zahirbmirza

Summary * Use prose more

mitchbob

Related: How Users Read on the Web, a classic of web usability research. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/

hyperhello

Let me point out that in the first section you had radically different goals than in the second section. Try rewriting the “look how confusing this meaningless slop” is in prose and “look how clear this communication is” in outline and see what variable you’re actually illustrating.

nlawalker

>I’m not really looking for something to read. I just want to skim an overview of the main theories. I’ve experimented with asking AIs to give the same information in various styles, and I reluctantly concede that the formatting helps. But that’s not reading. [...] >Namely, why do so many people today seem to write more like Exhibit A than Exhibit B? Because they're writing for an audience that's not really looking for something to read. See Axios and Smart Brevity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axios_(website)#Content https://www.axios.com/smart-brevity

ekjhgkejhgk

I never needed more than sections and paragraphs. But then again, I'm not a professional writer.

bitwize

Some things I noticed: • When writing for myself, I tend to open a buffer and just ramble. I write like I speak, which is how someone I know irl clocked my Hackernews account. • My wife appreciates the writing I produce this way. Sometimes I just sit and read aloud to her. • When presenting material for work, it tends to go across much more clearly when I write like a damn AI. Inferences that can be drawn: • Reading for pleasure is a thing • Some of us prefer long-form when reading for pleasure • However, when on the job we prefer parsimony and preset structure

Ajakks

You have a great site! I really enjoyed the articles I read - especially the one about your friend replacing you, that was absolutely fantastic and is one my favorite reads about AI thus far. I hope your friend, having trained one of his personal AI to be you, at least consumes more dynomight content now! I wish all us were as reflective as you are here: "I keep finding myself unconsciously treating AI as an anomaly—as a weird thing that’s happening right now before the world goes back to being “normal”. But we aren’t going back. This is how it’s going to be. Like this but more so."