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How I Write

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How I Write

survey says: constraints can be a blessing

Alex Power
Jul 7, 2023
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How I Write

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I write in two very different ways.

The first method takes me about a minute per word. I chew on the words at breakfast, dream about them on a long run, wrestle with them during a sleepless night, and, eventually, have a vision of them in their final form. Then, I type it up.

For straightforward topics, the typing and publication can be swift once I sit at the keyboard. For more difficult essays, the words must first sit for days and weeks before a final effort can be made to make it word-perfect.


A place that I am not writing from. CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons

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The second method is very different.

I write much faster, at least 10 times the output

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per hour of effort, and sometimes 50 times the output. But, I do so in my own style.

  • I occasionally switch to kanji

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    . There are two main reasons for this.

    • For effect. The jarring context-shift conveys meaning in a way that a running text could not provide. It also makes it easy to skip over that content.

    • To refer to complex concepts in a single “word”. For most readers, something like 用两种语言说复杂的词

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      will be a single “token” in processing that they don’t understand.

  • I have a few of my own words. For example, I have found need for 容易的 words to replace “infrared” and “ultraviolet”, and I have settled on xantham and mogue for those new

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    names.

  • I use color-tones. They are referred to as colors, but “linguistic register” is probably the more accurate term for them.

    • xantham (infrared) - overconfident. and often wrong as a result of that

    • red - emphasized. “red for angry”, but also red for “yes, I did check the historical record”

    • orange - starts every response with "well, actually,". sometimes points out a fatal flaw in the previous argument. other times, it is a non-sequitur objection that is, technically, true.

    • yellow - doggerel. often straw-man arguments, non-sequitur famous quotations, etc. possibly misleading, either by accident or by design.

    • green - "technical" information. explanations of unusual syntax.

    • blue - reserved for post production. information that is “more correct” than the other text because it was added in post-production.

    • violet - material spoken

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      aloud.

    • mogue (ultraviolet) - material relating to the state of the world.

    • gray - material relating to the past. detached and nostalgic


What does it look like? I’m working on a public version at https://shragafeivel.com/ …

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As the old adage goes: “if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”.

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The English word “kanji” is a borrowing from the Japanese kanji = 漢字 (汉字)

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Right now, there aren’t good browser tools to be able to highlight a CJK ideograph and get the rough definition and 普通话 pronunciation.

用两种语言说复杂的词 means “using two languages to express complicated concepts”.

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The food name you vaguely remember is xanthan·gum ( C35H49O29 ).

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It is an underrated skill to be able to talk as you type.

Which means “to say the words as they are typed”, not “an ability to have an unrelated conversation on a different topic”.

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