How to Write English Prose
by geneticdrifts on 7/26/2026, 5:29:35 PM
https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/how-to-write-english-prose
Comments
by: skobes
We are fortunate that this individual's stylistic perspective is out there adding spice and variety to the world. I think, however, that most of us would be ill-advised to emulate it.<p>Orwell's maxim, "never use a long word when a short one will do", is something the best writers have always freely ignored. But it's a reliable guardrail for the writer of merely average skill, steering them toward something passable rather than vomit-inducing.
7/27/2026, 1:56:56 AM
by: GCA10
Kept out of sight in this rogue essay is the classic question: Who's your audience?<p>If you're writing for yourself (and maybe a very small number of equally erudite readers) cut loose! Embrace "anfractuous density and heedless flamboyance." But if you're trying to change people's minds, or share knowledge widely, everything in this essay is defiantly at odds with what's necessary to get the rest of the world to pay attention.
7/26/2026, 7:01:47 PM
by: Animats
This guy hates Strunk and White’s <i>Elements of Style</i>, the famous "omit needless words" book. He's plugging for a baroque style that would be unreadable today.<p>We do have baroque styles today, but they're different from classical baroque literature. They're the postings that start with a bio and cover the author's hobbies before getting to the point, perhaps including an anecdote from the author's past. There are writers who can make that interesting, and you can read them in the New Yorker. But the serious magazines have editors. In blog postings, you're reading the slush pile.
7/26/2026, 7:43:07 PM
by: A_D_E_P_T
> <i>8. If you must choose between elegance and perfect clarity, allow yourself a period of decorously agonized indecision, and then always choose elegance.</i><p>I believe that this may be true of prose (it depends on the style of the author and the nature of what's being written,) but that it's untrue of every other form of written communication, and acclaimed prose stylists are often very poor letter-writers for just this reason. In writing non-prose, I find that there are only two rules:<p>1. Be as clear as possible.<p>2. Be as brief as possible, but do not veer into the intentionally laconic or abbreviated.<p>I also am absolutely certain that attempting to attain <i>maximal</i> elegance is a trap that leads directly to purple prose, to works of literature that cannot naturally be read out loud, and to other unfortunate outcomes.
7/26/2026, 7:53:58 PM
by: doodaddy
Look, I am in no position to seriously critique the author’s writing. He clearly has linguistic chops. But what kind of bunk is this? We get it, the flowery, overdrawn language of yore is more expressive. But that kind of writing gets in its own way. Words seem to trump concept. But reading that sort of writing feels like being in a museum; sure that Victorian gown looks pretty but does anyone actually want to wear it?<p>And then, while arguing against monotony, this piece spends all its time repeating the same structure: a ten-dollar adjective followed by a ten-dollar noun. Ironically, the five passages cited as “good writing” mostly avoid the wordiness that the piece spends all its time arguing for.<p>> Do not use a thesaurus.<p>Oh now he’s just taking the piss.
7/26/2026, 9:42:53 PM
by: starkshift
I hate to say it, but the reactions in this discussion indicate to me a lack of imagination and literary thinking ability in the Hacker News audience. That is my overall impression anyway, I don't understand the hate!
7/27/2026, 1:58:26 AM
by: Finnucane
As a production editor at a uni press, who has to occasionally translate jargon into English, I find Orwell's essay to still be entirely relevant. The kinds of writing Orwell warned about still flourishes in the pablum emails we get from HR, the management reports with roundabout justifications for more layoffs, the political speeches that use a lot of words to say nothing. I just had a manuscript where the author was very fond of using trite filler phrases that added very little. It kind of made me miss the days of red pencils, a somewhat more satisfying way of cutting.<p>Strunk & White, I have to agree, is mostly not very useful.
7/27/2026, 1:59:00 AM
by: specproc
So much hate for this piece in the thread, I'm seeing almost no positive comments. I'm tempted to be unkind, but will exercise restraint; we are here, for the most part, technical writers, for whom parsimony is a professional virtue.<p>I loved it.<p>We're in an age where matrix multiplication can yawn out endless passages of trite, dull, sludge. The author, to my mind, makes a powerful and inspiring case for a future for human-written prose. The ability to effectively and creatively deploy a rich and complex vocabulary is the flex (in the parlance of our times) that distinguishes the craftsmen from the clankers.
7/26/2026, 10:28:06 PM
by: tolugenius
English prose is one of those things I never quite got well; I grew up having read different versions of the Bible (like King James), old English versions of books, and found it to more "overtly wordy" (found it funny to imagine people talking like that about grocery shopping). I am curious how prose may change in 20-30 years given how cemented internet/social media talk becomes the norm, as well AI (and however education goes during that time). I agree with the author on some points but it depends on the material and subject matter where each matters.
7/26/2026, 6:22:32 PM
by: Exoristos
I'm surprised to note -- if the discussion here is any evidence, then anger and literacy are inversely correlated.
7/26/2026, 10:32:19 PM
by: thataccount
There is something distinctly different from people speaking and writing in English prose in the 1600's versus someone trying to do so today. The person from today is infinitely more likely to be putting on airs than the person who is not commanding attention as an anachronism in the past. To be sure, Royal Societies were all about impressing each other to a certain extent, but also, there were some clever fellows/ladies that hovered and flitted about them.
7/26/2026, 6:28:27 PM
by: hbarka
> A good part of our sleepes is peeced out with visions,<p>Because of current slang, I read this as “peaced out” then realized it’s “pieced out”. Peace out
7/26/2026, 6:31:19 PM
by: midnightbobarun
normal person: "I like to yap."<p>Sir Baroquesly Yappington, Esq., an intellectual: <i>writes a whole article about it</i>
7/26/2026, 11:16:03 PM
by: gammalost
As someone with english as my second language this style is just too much to bother. Sure, I get that it is elegant and precise. But for me it results in stilted reading.<p>Hence I disagree with the "Never write for your audience" part of the essay.
7/26/2026, 10:01:08 PM
by: kimjune01
i learned that no matter how good i am at writing prose, it doesnt matter if nobody reads it. so i write for AI agents instead, hoping that it'll get picked up by an agent and find propagation that way
7/26/2026, 8:57:17 PM
by: jp0001
The flatulence of text in that prose smells of rotting roses from an apology gone bad.
7/26/2026, 8:27:15 PM
by: Myrmornis
> How to Write English Prose<p>> There are few if any passages in the works of Sir Thomas Browne that I do not find thoroughly delightful; but two afford me particularly intense pleasure.<p>> To my mind, each is in its own way a perfect, exquisitely faceted gem of English prose from an especially glorious literary epoch. The music of the one has haunted me for most of my life;<p>Oh come on. Sir Thomas Browne looks well worth reading but the author of this article is unreadably pretentious.
7/26/2026, 9:39:07 PM
by: juleiie
For me there is only one rule of writing: Reader must enjoy reading what you wrote. They are ultimately the final judge - the very reason to write anything at all.<p>Anything else is just huffing your own farts for the kick of it. No matter how flowery the words are in your book or how intricate nuances of language. Such things can be outright counterproductive.
7/26/2026, 9:11:50 PM
by: Atlas667
Damn, so pretentious.<p>I agree with many things, in particular his sentiment about styles and "rules", but his demeanor is uninspiring.<p>He doesnt provide much clarity around good writing and just comes off as rationalizing his own taste.<p>You cant scorn popularity and accesibility, you gotta understand it and work with it to the extent that its important for what you want to achieve.<p>Art, history and social contexts fold in on themselves, if you're using a baroque style of writing then understand where it belongs and do something cool with it. Be conscious of it.
7/26/2026, 9:08:02 PM
by: Ozzie-D
[flagged]
7/27/2026, 1:31:06 AM
by: boznz
Writing styles like this actually gets in the way of reading a story in my opinion and, I also assume, is also some high-brow writers way of getting around for the need for an actual story anyway. Many of the books I had to read at school, and that "cultured" friends read are like this, but truthfully they put me off reading, and is the type of writing I (as an author) go out of my way to avoid unless the character implicitly demands it.
7/26/2026, 9:05:01 PM