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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 08/05/2013 18:02, Gordon wrote:<br>
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<div id="yiv1429403356">Interesting. Dennett's observation
about "surely" in turn reminds me of some sage advice
given me by a retired English professor and personal
friend of mine. In his view, all sentence adverbs should
be avoided.</div>
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...<br>
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<div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york',
times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">The author Stephen
King takes it a step further, advising his fellow
writers to avoid not only sentence adverbs, but all
adverbs. In his view, similar to Dennett's observation
about "surely," adverbs are almost always evidence of
laziness in thinking and writing.<br>
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<br>
They have a point. It is surprising how much better text reads when
you avoid overexplaining things. If you need extra words to get your
point across, maybe your core words are not the right ones. In fact,
it is a great exercise to try to even avoid adjectives - think of
Lovecraft: his adjectives rarely explain anything. You will feel
like Hemingway when you get it right. <br>
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One useful piece of advice I got in an undergrad writing course was
to search for 'quite' once you have finished the text. Then just
delete them. <br>
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<br>
Ob transhumanism: training oneself in using language well seems to
be one of those everyday skills that really improves one's life
chances. It is not just about being suitably grammatical or writing
good prose, but also things like being able to churn out text as
needed - getting used to writing things seems to be a core skill for
not just authors but most professions... including professional
influencers. <br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University </pre>
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