I’m puzzled as to why people think formulaic writing is good writing.
Thesis statements tell the reader whether they agree with the work or not in advance. I disagree firmly with their use, as they encourage a lazy style of reading in which you decide before you begin reading whether or not you’re going to discard the evidence before you, or consider it.
Schoolteachers teach formulaic writing because (1) it’s easy to teach formulas and hard to teach actual clear thinking and good writing style, (2) it’s easy to assess writing against a formula and hard to assess actual clear thinking and good writing style, (3) writing to a formula is relatively easy to do, compared with writing well without one, and (4) most schoolchildren’s baseline writing skills are so terrible that giving them a formula and saying “do it like this” makes for a considerable improvement.
Schoolteachers suffering from déformation professionelle may think formulaic writing is good writing. Their pupils may think the same, having been taught that way; hopefully those who end up doing much writing will learn better in due course.
Aside from that—does anyone actually “think formulaic writing is good writing”? I don’t see anyone here saying it is. What I do see is some people saying “this article was hard to read and would have been improved by more indication of where it’s going, the sort of thing that writing-by-formula tends to encourage”. I hope you can see the difference between “formulaic writing is good” and “this specific element of one kind of formulaic writing is actually often a good idea”.
I disagree firmly with their use
Fair enough. But note that buybuydandavis’s complaint isn’t really “there isn’t a thesis statement” but “after a couple of paragraphs, I have no idea where this is going”: a thesis statement would be one way to address that, but not the only one. (And your own articles on LW, thesis statements or no, seem to me to have the key property BBDD is complaining casebash’s lacks: it is made clear from early on where the article’s going, and there are sufficient signposts to keep the reader on track. Possible exception: “The Winding Path”, which you say was an aesthetic experiment.)
Aside from that—does anyone actually “think formulaic writing is good writing”?
Yes.
What I do see is some people saying “this article was hard to read and would have been improved by more indication of where it’s going, the sort of thing that writing-by-formula tends to encourage”. I hope you can see the difference between “formulaic writing is good” and “this specific element of one kind of formulaic writing is actually often a good idea”.
The title tells you exactly what the article is about and where it was going.
And your own articles on LW, thesis statements or no, seem to me to have the key property BBDD is complaining casebash’s lacks: it is made clear from early on where the article’s going, and there are sufficient signposts to keep the reader on track.
The article isn’t ambiguous, however. If anything, it’s overextended and overwritten in support of that point—yes, we get it, everybody in the construction is suspicious of everybody else’s incentives and for genuinely good reasons, and everybody is engaging in motivated reasoning.
The only “confusing” aspect is if you read the body of work looking for a hidden purpose.
The title tells you exactly what the article is about and where it was going.
Except that most of the article makes rather little contact with the idea stated in the title, and instead concerns incidental details of the squabble between the As and the Bs. Or, to put it differently:
it’s overextended and overwritten
This is exactly why …
you read the body of work looking for a hidden purpose.
The article reads very much like other articles I have read before that have a hidden purpose. So I think there may be one. Why is that unreasonable?
Except that most of the article makes rather little contact with the idea stated in the title, and instead concerns incidental details of the squabble between the As and the Bs.
The incidental details are the point of the article, however; they’re an in-depth example of how the incentives of the two groups interact and intersect.
The article reads very much like other articles I have read before that have a hidden purpose. So I think there may be one. Why is that unreasonable?
Instrumentally, it detracted from your understanding of the article.
The incidental details are the point of the article [...] in-depth example [...]
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as “overextended”.
it detracted from your understanding of the article.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as “overextended”.
Quite, yes. I don’t think it’s a perfect article—indeed, my primary issue with the criticisms of it are that they are criticizing the wrong things.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
I have no idea. But you’ve indicated, if not in those exact words, you found it difficult to read.
you’ve indicated, if not in those exact words, you found it difficult to read.
I’ve indicated that I found it harder to read than it should have been because of the barrage of incidental details and the constant feeling that it’s really about something else besides its surface meaning.
I was (as you will readily see if you read my original comment) perfectly well able to extract what in your view was the entire point of the article. I just felt like I had to do more work to do so than was warranted.
[EDITED to add:] It seems that you actually had the same experience. So apparently we are agreed that casebash’s article was stuffed with unnecessary incidental details, that it gave the impression of having some kind of hidden meaning, and that these made it harder to read; the difference is … what? That you have decided, I know not on what basis, that I was “mindkilled” whereas you “treated it as practice in dealing with mindkilling”. Except that you haven’t offered any actual evidence that I was mindkilled (I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, for what it’s worth) or that I was any less successful than you were in understanding the article.
You do make one specific complaint about a line of criticism that, e.g., buybuydandavis and I have made. We say that it’s not clear where the article is heading and it could have used more signposts up front; you say no, there’s a thesis statement right in the title and that’s all anyone needs. (And you suggest that this indicates a failure to make sense of the article, which you blame on mind-killed-ness.)
But you are missing the point. The title, considered as thesis statement, is manifestly insufficient to explain what’s going on in the article, because most of the article consists of (what you yourself describe as) overextended elaboration of details of the argument between the As and the Bs. This is what readers could use some help in navigating. With only the title to go on, the best we can do is to pay careful attention to each paragraph and analyse the motivations of both As and Bs therein. But that’s a lot of work for very little payback, because then basically every paragraph is telling us more or less the same thing in more or less the same way.
What would have helped with this is some framing material at the start indicating one or more of the following: (1) This story is functioning as a metaphor for such-and-such a thing in the real world; you will follow the details more easily if you match them up with reality. (2) The details of this story aren’t terribly important in themselves; if you ignore some of the details you will lose nothing. (3) The really important bit of this story, as far as the point of the article goes, is such-and-such; the rest is there just to give it context.
… Or, of course, just losing about half of the incidental details. But buybuydandavis and I were both willing to give casebash the benefit of the doubt and assume there was a reason why all those details were there.
They enable a lazy style of reading. They also enable the reverse: a style of reading where the reader knows ahead of time that certain of their buttons are about to be pushed, and takes measures in advance to minimize the effect.
For my part, I find both helpful. Sometimes it’s clear that something is unlikely to be worth my time to read because it’s entirely based on premises I don’t accept. Sometimes it’s clear that while the author’s position is very different from mine, they have interesting things to say that I might find helpful. Sometimes their position is very different from mine and I read on in the hope that if I’m wrong I can be corrected. All of these require different attitudes while reading.
(Of course one can do without. But the more mental effort the author kindly saves me from expending in figuring out whether their piece is worth reading, whether I need to be reading it with an eye to revising my most deeply held beliefs, etc., etc., the more I can give to the actual content of what they’ve written.)
You find it helpful for the following cases:
1.) You’re not going to agree no matter what evidence is presented, so it’s not worth reading their evidence.
2.) They might have interesting things to say.
3.) They might be right, and you might be wrong.
The issue, of course, is that you can’t actually distinguish between these three cases from the thesis statement; a properly-constructed thesis statement offers no information to actually tell you which attitude you should come into reading the work with, it only states what conclusion the body of evidence reaches.
Again, I am not concerned solely with thesis statements as such, but with the practice of beginning an article with an indication of where it’s headed. Something that merely says what the conclusion is going to be, indeed, is unlikely to help much with distinguishing 1,2,3; but something that does a better job of indicating what’s ahead may do much better.
Suppose, for instance, I am interested in some question about the morality of abortion in certain circumstances, and suppose my current opinion is that it’s unproblematic. Article One begins “I shall argue that abortion is in all cases unbiblical and contrary to the traditions of the church”. That might be a very useful article for Christians, but it’s unlikely to offer me any useful guidance in thinking about abortion if I am not among their number; I reject some of their key premises and this article is unlikely to be justifying them. Article Two begins “The purpose of this article is to argue against abortion in circumstances X, not on the usual grounds that Y but because of the often-neglected Z”. I’ve thought a bit about Z before and decided that it doesn’t actually affect my opinions about abortion which are dominated by other considerations P,Q,R; but it hadn’t previously occurred to me that Z is the case in circumstances X, so it might be interesting to read the article. Article Three begins “Abortion is widely held to be permissible in circumstances X because P, Q, and R; I shall argue that this is a mistake because P and Q don’t actually hold and R is irrelevant because S.” This speaks directly to my reasons for holding the position I do; if there are other indications that the author is intelligent and sensible, they may have compelling arguments and persuade me to rethink.
There are a great many things available for me to read and I would prefer to figure out whether I want to read a particular piece before finishing it. There are way too many idiots who managed to figure out how a keyboard works.
Formula’s are quite helpful in achieving an end. If someone has already achieved an end in a certain way, you can use that way too, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Given the general limits of pedagogues, what is taught is the formula, and not the ends. That was how I was taught when young. Do this. That’s the right way.
In grad school, my advisor gave both the end to be achieved, and a formula for doing so. The end was getting people to read and understand the article. The formula was a means to do so.
If you want people to read your articles, you need to motivate them to do so. They need to anticipate a payoff of value to them, which will we weighed against the anticipated cost.
If you want people to understand, you should help them to do so.
I want to use my time efficiently getting value for me, and appreciate it when writers help make that happen. Help me assess the value of their article to me up front. Help me to extract the value from their article.
they encourage a lazy style of reading in which you decide before you begin reading whether or not you’re going to discard the evidence before you, or consider it.
I prefer the ultimate lazy style of reading—to not read at all if I don’t see value. I don’t think I’m alone in that.
I’m puzzled as to why people think formulaic writing is good writing.
Thesis statements tell the reader whether they agree with the work or not in advance. I disagree firmly with their use, as they encourage a lazy style of reading in which you decide before you begin reading whether or not you’re going to discard the evidence before you, or consider it.
What people are you talking about?
Schoolteachers teach formulaic writing because (1) it’s easy to teach formulas and hard to teach actual clear thinking and good writing style, (2) it’s easy to assess writing against a formula and hard to assess actual clear thinking and good writing style, (3) writing to a formula is relatively easy to do, compared with writing well without one, and (4) most schoolchildren’s baseline writing skills are so terrible that giving them a formula and saying “do it like this” makes for a considerable improvement.
Schoolteachers suffering from déformation professionelle may think formulaic writing is good writing. Their pupils may think the same, having been taught that way; hopefully those who end up doing much writing will learn better in due course.
Aside from that—does anyone actually “think formulaic writing is good writing”? I don’t see anyone here saying it is. What I do see is some people saying “this article was hard to read and would have been improved by more indication of where it’s going, the sort of thing that writing-by-formula tends to encourage”. I hope you can see the difference between “formulaic writing is good” and “this specific element of one kind of formulaic writing is actually often a good idea”.
Fair enough. But note that buybuydandavis’s complaint isn’t really “there isn’t a thesis statement” but “after a couple of paragraphs, I have no idea where this is going”: a thesis statement would be one way to address that, but not the only one. (And your own articles on LW, thesis statements or no, seem to me to have the key property BBDD is complaining casebash’s lacks: it is made clear from early on where the article’s going, and there are sufficient signposts to keep the reader on track. Possible exception: “The Winding Path”, which you say was an aesthetic experiment.)
Yes.
The title tells you exactly what the article is about and where it was going.
The article isn’t ambiguous, however. If anything, it’s overextended and overwritten in support of that point—yes, we get it, everybody in the construction is suspicious of everybody else’s incentives and for genuinely good reasons, and everybody is engaging in motivated reasoning.
The only “confusing” aspect is if you read the body of work looking for a hidden purpose.
Except that most of the article makes rather little contact with the idea stated in the title, and instead concerns incidental details of the squabble between the As and the Bs. Or, to put it differently:
This is exactly why …
The article reads very much like other articles I have read before that have a hidden purpose. So I think there may be one. Why is that unreasonable?
The incidental details are the point of the article, however; they’re an in-depth example of how the incentives of the two groups interact and intersect.
Instrumentally, it detracted from your understanding of the article.
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as “overextended”.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
Quite, yes. I don’t think it’s a perfect article—indeed, my primary issue with the criticisms of it are that they are criticizing the wrong things.
I have no idea. But you’ve indicated, if not in those exact words, you found it difficult to read.
I’ve indicated that I found it harder to read than it should have been because of the barrage of incidental details and the constant feeling that it’s really about something else besides its surface meaning.
I was (as you will readily see if you read my original comment) perfectly well able to extract what in your view was the entire point of the article. I just felt like I had to do more work to do so than was warranted.
[EDITED to add:] It seems that you actually had the same experience. So apparently we are agreed that casebash’s article was stuffed with unnecessary incidental details, that it gave the impression of having some kind of hidden meaning, and that these made it harder to read; the difference is … what? That you have decided, I know not on what basis, that I was “mindkilled” whereas you “treated it as practice in dealing with mindkilling”. Except that you haven’t offered any actual evidence that I was mindkilled (I’m pretty sure I wasn’t, for what it’s worth) or that I was any less successful than you were in understanding the article.
You do make one specific complaint about a line of criticism that, e.g., buybuydandavis and I have made. We say that it’s not clear where the article is heading and it could have used more signposts up front; you say no, there’s a thesis statement right in the title and that’s all anyone needs. (And you suggest that this indicates a failure to make sense of the article, which you blame on mind-killed-ness.)
But you are missing the point. The title, considered as thesis statement, is manifestly insufficient to explain what’s going on in the article, because most of the article consists of (what you yourself describe as) overextended elaboration of details of the argument between the As and the Bs. This is what readers could use some help in navigating. With only the title to go on, the best we can do is to pay careful attention to each paragraph and analyse the motivations of both As and Bs therein. But that’s a lot of work for very little payback, because then basically every paragraph is telling us more or less the same thing in more or less the same way.
What would have helped with this is some framing material at the start indicating one or more of the following: (1) This story is functioning as a metaphor for such-and-such a thing in the real world; you will follow the details more easily if you match them up with reality. (2) The details of this story aren’t terribly important in themselves; if you ignore some of the details you will lose nothing. (3) The really important bit of this story, as far as the point of the article goes, is such-and-such; the rest is there just to give it context.
… Or, of course, just losing about half of the incidental details. But buybuydandavis and I were both willing to give casebash the benefit of the doubt and assume there was a reason why all those details were there.
They enable a lazy style of reading. They also enable the reverse: a style of reading where the reader knows ahead of time that certain of their buttons are about to be pushed, and takes measures in advance to minimize the effect.
For my part, I find both helpful. Sometimes it’s clear that something is unlikely to be worth my time to read because it’s entirely based on premises I don’t accept. Sometimes it’s clear that while the author’s position is very different from mine, they have interesting things to say that I might find helpful. Sometimes their position is very different from mine and I read on in the hope that if I’m wrong I can be corrected. All of these require different attitudes while reading.
(Of course one can do without. But the more mental effort the author kindly saves me from expending in figuring out whether their piece is worth reading, whether I need to be reading it with an eye to revising my most deeply held beliefs, etc., etc., the more I can give to the actual content of what they’ve written.)
You find it helpful for the following cases: 1.) You’re not going to agree no matter what evidence is presented, so it’s not worth reading their evidence. 2.) They might have interesting things to say. 3.) They might be right, and you might be wrong.
The issue, of course, is that you can’t actually distinguish between these three cases from the thesis statement; a properly-constructed thesis statement offers no information to actually tell you which attitude you should come into reading the work with, it only states what conclusion the body of evidence reaches.
Again, I am not concerned solely with thesis statements as such, but with the practice of beginning an article with an indication of where it’s headed. Something that merely says what the conclusion is going to be, indeed, is unlikely to help much with distinguishing 1,2,3; but something that does a better job of indicating what’s ahead may do much better.
Suppose, for instance, I am interested in some question about the morality of abortion in certain circumstances, and suppose my current opinion is that it’s unproblematic. Article One begins “I shall argue that abortion is in all cases unbiblical and contrary to the traditions of the church”. That might be a very useful article for Christians, but it’s unlikely to offer me any useful guidance in thinking about abortion if I am not among their number; I reject some of their key premises and this article is unlikely to be justifying them. Article Two begins “The purpose of this article is to argue against abortion in circumstances X, not on the usual grounds that Y but because of the often-neglected Z”. I’ve thought a bit about Z before and decided that it doesn’t actually affect my opinions about abortion which are dominated by other considerations P,Q,R; but it hadn’t previously occurred to me that Z is the case in circumstances X, so it might be interesting to read the article. Article Three begins “Abortion is widely held to be permissible in circumstances X because P, Q, and R; I shall argue that this is a mistake because P and Q don’t actually hold and R is irrelevant because S.” This speaks directly to my reasons for holding the position I do; if there are other indications that the author is intelligent and sensible, they may have compelling arguments and persuade me to rethink.
I’ll merely point at the title, which says exactly what the article is about and what it is conveying.
Laziness is a virtue :-P
There are a great many things available for me to read and I would prefer to figure out whether I want to read a particular piece before finishing it. There are way too many idiots who managed to figure out how a keyboard works.
Winner.
Yep. Motivate the reader early that reading the article will be worthwhile.
I think I’m going to be using that one someday.
It takes about one paragraph to figure out whether or not a piece is worth finishing, with or without a thesis statement.
Often, yes. Not always.
Formula’s are quite helpful in achieving an end. If someone has already achieved an end in a certain way, you can use that way too, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Given the general limits of pedagogues, what is taught is the formula, and not the ends. That was how I was taught when young. Do this. That’s the right way.
In grad school, my advisor gave both the end to be achieved, and a formula for doing so. The end was getting people to read and understand the article. The formula was a means to do so.
If you want people to read your articles, you need to motivate them to do so. They need to anticipate a payoff of value to them, which will we weighed against the anticipated cost.
If you want people to understand, you should help them to do so.
I want to use my time efficiently getting value for me, and appreciate it when writers help make that happen. Help me assess the value of their article to me up front. Help me to extract the value from their article.
I prefer the ultimate lazy style of reading—to not read at all if I don’t see value. I don’t think I’m alone in that.