A Brief Look At Paul Graham's Writing Habits (with Charts)

More interesting albeit difficult to quantify would be PG's writing style.<p>If you've read a PG essay and found yourself agreeing because you're gradually taken towards a conclusion yourself instead of having it preached to you, you'll know what I'm referring to.<p>Turns out there is a style for that.<p>I am no writing expert, but I feel PG's style is (intentional or otherwise) most akin to Classic Style as outlined in the book "Clear and Simple as the Truth" (overview from Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias here: <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/deceptive-writing-styl.." rel="nofollow">http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/deceptive-writing-styl...</a>. ).<p>Most telling excerpt: "Classic style is in its own view clear and simple as the truth. It adopts the stance that its purpose is presentation; its motive is disinterested truth. Successful presentation consists of aligning language with truth, and the test of this alignment is clarity and simplicity."<p>CaSatT homepage: <a href="http://www.classicprose.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.classicprose.com/</a>

I had no idea I never wrote anything in June.<p>What happened in the first half of 2010 I wrote about here: <a href="http://paulgraham.com/top.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/top.html</a>

I don't take taking advice lightly. It really takes a lot to convince me that what you are preaching is something I should thoroughly consider. Despite this fact, I find most of PG's essays to really hit the spot.<p>I've realized that one of the reasons why I trust PG essays, besides the fact that they are written with the general tone of discovering the truth, rather than inventing the truth, is because a lot of them are old. Well, relatively old. And quite plain. A few years ago when I first started reading them, my instinct was to think less of them for this. But that the essays I like most are over 5 years old, yet still highly relevant, only adds to their credibility. I don't think a lot of stuff I read on blogs today will stand the test of time as well, though I admittedly don't read enough.<p>Anyway, I realize this is slightly off topic. So, um, nice charts, and keep 'em coming Paul.

I would have enjoyed this more if you published a literary analysis of essay content.

I know the these are "essays," and not blog posts or articles, but it always niggles me that they aren't precisely dated.

I'm a bit loopy after a long day juggling work-from-home and caring for a sick child.<p>I think it would be fun to see:<p>- number of foot notes written (total and per essay)<p>- word cloud(s)<p>- number of words written (total, per essay)<p>- word lengths<p>there were a couple of others but I'm too tired to remember them now.

One thing that always struck me about his writing: he is the freakin master at metaphors.

For me, what has been most noticeable is his shifting focus. When he started out, he mostly wrote about Lisp and programming languages. Now he primarily writes about startups. Since I'm a lot more interested in the former than the latter, I've gradually stopped reading his newer essays. (Usually a paragraph or two is enough.)

Related: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1811518" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1811518</a>

I just updated the post to include PG's latest essay. There's a link to the source data at the end of the post now, too.

Great Analysis..impressive. I do find PG's essays inspiring.