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Viliam comments on A Medical Mystery: Thyroid Hormones, Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia - Less Wrong
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Comments (159)
"I am going to tell a story .. "
Please, no.
Not to pick on you, as this is a pet peeve of mine, but I don't know how people are being taught to write anymore.
Three paragraphs in, and I don't know what you're talking about yet. And now it's story time! Somebody put a bullet in me!
Particularly if you're trying to convey a thesis, how about an abstract, or a brief description of the question you're trying to evaluate?
Give me a frame to start hanging information on as I read the article. What are we trying to accomplish here?
Otherwise, the article washes over me like a drive in the country. An annoying drive, because I spend my time wondering where the hell we're going.
EDIT: And whaddya know? Looks like it's all about thyroid hormones. I happen to be hypothyroid, am currently taking medication, and have done a bunch of reading about it.
It occurs that I could just delete the first three paragraphs. Anyone else think that's a good idea? All I'm trying to say there is 'don't trust me', 'this is interesting, important and hard', and 'it's mostly John Lowe's ideas'.
That's a good rule for editing in general; if you can remove something without losing any value, remove it. (Apply this on multiple levels: a chapter in a book, a paragraph in a chapter, a word in a sentence.) Sometimes instead of thinking too much when one writes, it is better to just write, and delete the unnecessary parts afterwards. Sometimes I reduce my e-mails to half or less, when I have enough time to write them.
However, what gjm said: adding an abstract is even better. You can do both, of course.