Writing with Less Writing

This is the final post I'm re-publishing from Zappable (for now).

Ideas discussed:

• People think all writing needs to be paragraphs, but that's not always the best way to express something.
• What's the Appeal of Twitter? + Idea for new platform
• At least include an outline in your article!
• Bonus: What writing can learn from programming

My chart on learning programming did quite well and got upvoted on Hacker News and Reddit. I realized that one chart was able to encapsulate the important information from 3 previous blog posts. This makes me think there might be too much of a bias to write content in a specific form and style with paragraphs and connecting sentences, when sometimes another form would work better. A chart or diagram can display certain information in a faster and clearer manner than long paragraphs, making the paragraphs unnecessary. Different diagrams and styles can be used for different types of information.

Ways of presenting content

Even if content doesn't fit into a chart, it does not mean that standard paragraphs are necessary. Sometimes an Outline-style could do the trick.

Outline vs. Paragraphs

• I often start with ideas in note-form before writing a post
• Before publishing notes, need to refine and clarify ideas.
• Also includes "textification" into paragraphs, which consist of things like:
  • Keeping to a writing-style (varying words, paragraph format)
  • Putting in filler words to build and connect sentences

• This turns writing into nice essay, but it can obscure points for both the writer and reader
  • It becomes harder for the writer to revise essay when each change affects the continuity of the sentences and paragraphs. (Maybe writers should also aim for looser coupling!)
  • Certain articles (e.g. academic ones) may be so complicated, readers may feel need to create their own outline or diagram to follow it
• Notes need to be refined before being published, but they can still be kept in an outline style, with several benefits:
  • Often quicker to write than figuring out how to "textify" content.
  • Easier for reader to follow overall flow of argument
  • Lets reader skip certain sections or examples and still follow argument (In fact, maybe the reader should be able to understand the argument heading without even reading the implementation!)
• Outline-style can be better for reader and writer, though not sure about this example

Obviously, people know that concise writing or charts are often helpful. However, I think people still feel constrained by standard style expectations. That's why they need things like Twitter and even Powerpoint to permit them to write in shorter form.

I guess Twitter gives people an excuse to write things in short. o/wise they would feel the need to write multip P's. 140 seems a bit xtrem

— Ariel Krakowski (@arikrak) November 28, 2011

While Twitter's limits may be overkill in cases where you actually want to say something, the fact that its so successful shows the power of letting people get to the point. Maybe someone should create a blogging platform that enforces a posts that are concise and include a diagram, outline or chart. This could help popularize a new style of writing.

I'm not arguing for eliminating essay-style text, I just think it might be worth putting more outlines and charts within writing. Even if most of an article needs to be written as paragraphs, perhaps some of it would be clearer or more effective as a chart. And more articles should come with short outlines (or diagrams) that says what their main points are. This would let people decide if they want to read it or review what it said afterwards. Why should some one need to construct their own outline or argument diagram to analyze an argument?

Charts and outlines are really just a minor step. For more challenging material, one can go beyond such static content and create more interactive content. But that's for another post...

Update

At Learneroo, we hope to change the format of education. We will have:

• charts
• outlines

• diagrams
  ...to make it easier for people to:

• quickly get an idea

• reference it later

• or skip it entirely!

We are experimenting with more navigable text, such as encapsulated paragraphs.

For the larger step of interactivity on Learneroo:

• Currently - challenges so people can learn through discovery.
• Future - Interactive features to let people "explore" difficult concepts, such as math formulas.

Update Summary:
We want to let people:

• have more choice over what (and how) they read.
• quickly view and reference the information.

More importantly, we will add interactivity to our content...