jimrandomh comments on Consider Representative Data Sets - Less Wrong
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Comments (15)
So, what's wrong with this article? Is it bad prose, or too hand-wavy assertions, or overly obscure presentation/inferential distance, or too much text, or too obvious a point? Please leave a comment, I really don't understand.
In general, I think that getting a custom of writing some formal review-like comments would be valuable as feedback, not about the subject of the article, but about presentation, especially if the article looks bad and there is much for the author to work on improving.
I think it's a stylistic issue: there are too many function words. After finishing a draft, do a second pass deleting as many unnecessary words as possible. If changing the tense or person lets you eliminate a few pronouns, do so. I applied my personal editing procedure to your second paragraph, and went from this:
To this:
I didn't change anything in the actual content, but to my mind this reads much better.
This comment made me wish I'd asked this question on every article I've written. I shall do next time!
Thanks, I'll reedit the article in place, following this and other suggestions, and post a comment announcing the second revision.