The issue with this article is that it is very imprecise.
Are the standards for whether something “sounds bad” based on the average person’s reading or the intended audience.
In its most general form (how the median article sounds to the median person), the argument is pretty vacuous.
Most writing discusses simple ideas and they should sound good (familiar, easy, pleasurable) to the median person.
But the most valuable kind of writing could sound tedious and filled with incomprehensible terminology to the median person but concise and interesting to the intended audience.
The current way the idea is stated doesn’t sound correct because you can convincingly defend all 4 quadrants of the truth table.
> Are the standards for whether something “sounds bad” based on the average person’s reading or the intended audience.
As pg describes it in the article, it's neither; it's based on the writer's judgment. The writer of course is writing for some intended audience, and their judgment of what sounds good or sounds bad should be influenced by that. But pg is describing the writer's process of judging what they write.
> The reason is that it makes the essay easier to read. It's less work to read writing that flows well. How does that help the writer? Because the writer is the first reader
Note that the writer's judgement only serves as an initial proxy for how well the essay reads. This implies that the reader, whoever that is, is the true judge of how well it reads. My point is that that group is ill defined.
If it were sufficient for the writer to be the only judge of how well something reads, surely PG wouldn't feel the need to have other proofread his essays. And surely it is not sufficient for someone who lacks taste to judge their own writing as good.
The way I read that statement is the same as the startup advice of "build what you would yourself want". However you still have to validate that the market exists and is big.
There is really nothing profound in that paragraph anyway, all it is saying is that a writer should edit and proofread their work. That whole paragraph could be deleted honestly. It is obvious table stakes for one to edit their work. What differentiates good from bad is a matter of taste + who is judging it.
Thanks. The way you describe the topic, a dimension is missing in the article: who am I writing for?
Related: I think pg would benefit from graphics here and there. Creating visuals like the 2x2 matrix you describe help tremendously to make ideas more comprehensible.
Are the standards for whether something “sounds bad” based on the average person’s reading or the intended audience.
In its most general form (how the median article sounds to the median person), the argument is pretty vacuous.
Most writing discusses simple ideas and they should sound good (familiar, easy, pleasurable) to the median person.
But the most valuable kind of writing could sound tedious and filled with incomprehensible terminology to the median person but concise and interesting to the intended audience.
The current way the idea is stated doesn’t sound correct because you can convincingly defend all 4 quadrants of the truth table.