Plain Words
by Rebecca Gowers, Sir Ernest Gowers · first published 2014
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I can't remember where I came across it (possibly Gowers' Plain Words), but I like the rule that you should hyphenate to avoid ambiguity but not otherwise. E.g. is "a red head scarf" a red scarf for the head or a scarf for red heads? From context, it should be obvious,…
on “Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation” ↗If anyone is interested, there is an excellent "plain style" guide which is recommend for much of the British Civil Service. It's called "Plain Words", and is by Sir Ernest Gowers. It's received an updated version in recent years.
on “How to Write in Plain English” ↗This stuff reminds me of the classic writing style guide Plain Words by Gowers which advises against all of the above nonsense. I absolutely hate the magazine writing style that LLMs seem to love to regurgitate. It's even worse when it's used not for entertainment but…
on “Various LLM Smells” ↗