I’ve heard this sort of statement repeatedly about pjeby’s writing style, from different people, and I have a theory as to why. It’s a timing pattern, which I will illustrate with some lorem ipsum:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec pharetra varius nisl, quis interdum lectus porta vel...
Main point!
Nullam sit amet risus nibh. Suspendisse ut sapien et tellus semper scelerisque.
The main points are set off from the flow of the text by ellipses and paragraph breaks. This gives them much more force, but also brings to mind other works that use the same timing pattern. Most essays don’t do this, or do it exactly once when introducing the thesis. On the other hand, television commercials and sales pitches use it routinely. It is possible that some people have built up an aversion to this particular timing pattern, by watching commercials and not wanting to be influenced by them. If that’s the problem, then when those people read it they’ll feel bothered by the text, but probably won’t know why, and will attribute it to whatever minor flaws they happen to notice, even if unrelated. People who only watch DVDs and internet downloads, like me, won’t be bothered, nor will people who developed different mechanisms for resisting commercials. This is similar to the “banner blindness” issue identified in website usability testing with eye trackers, where people refuse to look at anything that looks even remotely like a banner ad, even if it’s not a banner ad but the very thing they’re supposed to be looking for.
If this is true, then fixing the style issue is simply a matter of removing some of the italics, ellipses and paragraph breaks in editing. It should be possible to find out whether this is the problem by giving A/B tests to people who dislike your writing.
This is a fascinating suggestion and might well be correct. Certainly, my inability to read more than a paragraph of PJ Eby’s writing definitely has something to do with it “sounding like a sales pitch”. May be a matter of word choice or even (gulp) content too, though.
I’ve heard this sort of statement repeatedly about pjeby’s writing style, from different people, and I have a theory as to why. It’s a timing pattern, which I will illustrate with some lorem ipsum:
The main points are set off from the flow of the text by ellipses and paragraph breaks. This gives them much more force, but also brings to mind other works that use the same timing pattern. Most essays don’t do this, or do it exactly once when introducing the thesis. On the other hand, television commercials and sales pitches use it routinely. It is possible that some people have built up an aversion to this particular timing pattern, by watching commercials and not wanting to be influenced by them. If that’s the problem, then when those people read it they’ll feel bothered by the text, but probably won’t know why, and will attribute it to whatever minor flaws they happen to notice, even if unrelated. People who only watch DVDs and internet downloads, like me, won’t be bothered, nor will people who developed different mechanisms for resisting commercials. This is similar to the “banner blindness” issue identified in website usability testing with eye trackers, where people refuse to look at anything that looks even remotely like a banner ad, even if it’s not a banner ad but the very thing they’re supposed to be looking for.
If this is true, then fixing the style issue is simply a matter of removing some of the italics, ellipses and paragraph breaks in editing. It should be possible to find out whether this is the problem by giving A/B tests to people who dislike your writing.
This is a fascinating suggestion and might well be correct. Certainly, my inability to read more than a paragraph of PJ Eby’s writing definitely has something to do with it “sounding like a sales pitch”. May be a matter of word choice or even (gulp) content too, though.