This guy hates Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, the famous "omit needless words" book. He's plugging for a baroque style that would be unreadable today.

We do have baroque styles today, but they're different from classical baroque literature. They're the postings that start with a bio and cover the author's hobbies before getting to the point, perhaps including an anecdote from the author's past. There are writers who can make that interesting, and you can read them in the New Yorker. But the serious magazines have editors. In blog postings, you're reading the slush pile.

Writing styles like this actually gets in the way of reading a story in my opinion and, I also assume, is also some high-brow writers way of getting around for the need for an actual story anyway. Many of the books I had to read at school, and that "cultured" friends read are like this, but truthfully they put me off reading, and is the type of writing I go out of my way to avoid unless the character implicitly demands it.

Kept out of sight in this rogue essay is the classic question: Who's your audience?

If you're writing for yourself (and maybe a very small number of equally erudite readers) cut loose! Embrace "anfractuous density and heedless flamboyance." But if you're trying to change people's minds, or share knowledge widely, everything in this essay is defiantly at odds with what's necessary to get the rest of the world to pay attention.

> 8. If you must choose between elegance and perfect clarity, allow yourself a period of decorously agonized indecision, and then always choose elegance.

I believe that this may be true of prose (it depends on the style of the author and the nature of what's being written,) but that it's untrue of every other form of written communication, and acclaimed prose stylists are often very poor letter-writers for just this reason. In writing non-prose, I find that there are only two rules:

1. Be as clear as possible.

2. Be as brief as possible, but do not veer into the intentionally laconic or abbreviated.

I also am absolutely certain that attempting to attain maximal elegance is a trap that leads directly to purple prose, to works of literature that cannot naturally be read out loud, and to other unfortunate outcomes.

For me there is only one rule of writing: Reader must enjoy reading what you wrote.

Anything else is just huffing your own farts for the kick of it.

i learned that no matter how good i am at writing prose, it doesnt matter if nobody reads it. so i write for AI agents instead, hoping that it'll get picked up by an agent and find propagation that way

> A good part of our sleepes is peeced out with visions,

Because of current slang, I read this as “peaced out” then realized it’s “pieced out”. Peace out

English prose is one of those things I never quite got well; I grew up having read different versions of the Bible (like King James), old English versions of books, and found it to more "overtly wordy" (found it funny to imagine people talking like that about grocery shopping). I am curious how prose may change in 20-30 years given how cemented internet/social media talk becomes the norm, as well AI (and however education goes during that time). I agree with the author on some points but it depends on the material and subject matter where each matters.

The flatulence of text in that prose smells of rotting roses from an apology gone bad.

Damn, so pretentious.

I agree with many things, in particular his sentiment about styles and "rules", but his demeanor is uninspiring.

He doesnt provide much clarity around good writing and just comes off as rationalizing his own taste.

You cant scorn popularity and accesibility, you gotta understand it and work with it to the extent that its important for what you want to achieve.

Art, history and social contexts fold in on themselves, if you're using a baroque style of writing then understand where it belongs and do something cool with it. Be conscious of it.

There is something distinctly different from people speaking and writing in English prose in the 1600's versus someone trying to do so today. The person from today is infinitely more likely to be putting on airs than the person who is not commanding attention as an anachronism in the past. To be sure, Royal Societies were all about impressing each other to a certain extent, but also, there were some clever fellows/ladies that hovered and flitted about them.