Over 80% of the world's languages are classified as SVO or SOV, actually, and probably over 90% of all first language speakers today speak one of these two. Their overwhelming dominance compared to the other four possibilities have led researchers to conclude there may actually be a cognitive benefit to putting the subject first.

    add %rdi, %rax

  01001000 00000001 11111000

I had the same thought, glad you phrased it so succinctly! Surprisingly, a Holocaust-denying white nationalist is not someone you should trust on matters concerning global anthropology.

I think the counterargument to this simplistic assertion is that "The boy was hit by a ball" seems equally legible to me to "A ball hit the boy". If you're quickly reporting the details of an accident to a doctor and it's crucial to get the information across quickly, I think many speakers would still start with "He was hit by a ball", not "A ball hit him." We're not interested in assigning agency to the ball here, we're interested in the effects on the boy. We're focusing down on the boy first, then talking about what is happening. Is he hitting a ball? Getting hit by a ball? Nobody cares what the ball's doing, it doesn't need to be prepped for surgery.

I weirdly learned this by chance. Most, if not all, Indian languages (as far as I know) are spoken/written in the passive voice. It sounds more respectful that way. Hence, the default way for us Indians is to speak English in the passive voice.

Early on, I forced myself to write and speak in the active voice. Now, I believe, it comes naturally to write or speak English the “right” way.

> Both sentences mean the same

Not really. The first sentence is about a boy, the second is about a ball. The best one to use depends on context.

Imagine how boring literature (or really most sorts of writing) would be if we optimized it around theories of linguistic efficiency rather than taste. I'm left entirely unconvinced.

> I think the processing effort is likely a side effect of English mainly using sentence constructions that go subject->verb->object. Not all languages do that, so I suspect that your brain has an easier time processing whatever's most common in the language.

This isn't true at all. Passive voice is extremely common in everyday speech, and sentences constructed with linking verbs are almost certainly more common than either active or passive voice.

And that accounting of the language considers only utterances consistinf od grammatically correct, complete main clauses, which constitute by far the minority of the sentential constructions a native speaker of English will produce in a day.

If everything you said in a normal day were a complete sentence, let alone uniformly or predominantly active voice, you'd sound completely deranged and unhinged.

If whatever's most common in the language really were easiest for readers or listeners to understand, then active-voice constructions should be the most cognitively challenging. They aren't.

The Hemingway editor is great for word pruning [0].

[0] https://hemingwayapp.com/

This is great advice if you want to write like Hemingway. Most of the great authors are not so sparing with their words, though. And I often find that people who excessively prune their writing end up with quite generic paragraphs that seem like they were written for elementary school children. I've personally found a better tip for writing is to not use two "cheap" words when one "expensive" one will convey your meaning more fully. To use your example, "He was very happy" doesn't convey as much feeling as, "He was ecstatic". But depending on what you want to say, "He was restlessly giddy with barely contained joy" could be even better.

PG is not influential because of his writing though. His name is what gets his writing circulated, so I'm not sure if it's a good couter example.

Y Combinator came after his essays; though I don’t agree with everything Paul Graham says, those essays profoundly shaped me.

Here's pg's writing advice, published in 2005:

https://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html

Graham writes in punchy sentences. But I often find the overall thrust uncompelling. He has a habit of waffling whilst glossing over nuance. I suspect you're right: writing for entrepeneurs is a slightly different skillset.

You mean, "Omit words".

Or maybe I mean "Omit."

Or maybe if I didn't even post a reply, I would have added the same value to this thread.

> "the boy hit the ball"

In this sentence, boy=subject, hit=verb, ball=object.

> All brains work that way.

If language sentence structure reflects how brains think, then that's not entirely true. While most languages are SVO (subject-verb-object), not all are. Japanese is SOV (subject-object-verb), while biblical Hebrew is/was VSO (verb-subject-object). I'm sure there are other variations.

EDIT: it just occurred to me that Japanese SVO is syntactically similar to Forth/RPN.

Not to mention passive contructions are way overused (oops, I just used one). At least if the sentence mentions the acting subject, an active construction is shorter and less stuffy.

Huh? It's trivially easy to write a Reddit post that gets thousands of readers. A mid tier YouTube scriptwriter can reach tens of millions of readers/listeners every week. A well-written Instagram comment can receive millions of views in a matter of days.

If you're content to remain nameless then you can reach millions of readers.

There are benefits to writing well besides increasing your audience.

Paul Graham illustrates in his post, “Good Writing”.[1]

“How does that help the writer? Because the writer is the first reader.”

This is also supported by Graham’s post “Writes and Write-Nots”[2]

“To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.”

I don’t take Paul Graham’s word as gospel, but I have yet to find any contradictory stance, let alone one that’s been useful to me.

1: https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html 2: https://www.paulgraham.com/writes.html

Writing isn’t about being remembered. It’s about helping others remember the ideas themselves.

Ah yes, the Ozymandias approach to writing.

Well he is certainly remembered by many.

PG's essays are optimized to be persuasive, and probably this choice of title contributes to that. Your alternative title would indeed be more informative.

Agreed, and rehashing Strunk & White sucks because Strunk & White wasn’t a great guide in the first place. Strunk & White boiled down the advice to aphorisms and you have to kind of understand what good writing is before you read it. The aphorisms don’t make sense if you don’t already understand them.

Meanwhile, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace gives concrete advice, examples, and exercises.

+1 for Style: TCAG

It's one of the few books that approaches the topic in a systematic, structured way. Not a rehash of platitudes like "try and be concise".

I know I need to "omit needless words". What I don't know is which words are "needless". Style answers that with linguistics and cognitive psychology.