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Esras | 1 year ago

This feels like an overly-complex treatment of the Inverted Pyramid in journalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism), or Bottom Line; Up Front: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication).

Start with the important statements, then expand. Doesn't have to be the "Tell you what I'm telling you, tell you, tell you what I told you" format that many (American) students were taught, but starting with your thesis statement does help ground it.

On the other hand, the topic blog is somewhat of a story, and I can hear the presentation being given behind it. It's just translated 1:1 to a blog, which is a different medium.

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ragall|1 year ago

BLUF is bad, it's precisely a technique borne in the the world of newspaper publishing for writing catchy articles (what is now called clickbait). Classical philosophical writing is the exact opposite: start with some problems, elaborate in high detail and finish with a conclusion (the name says it all).

catalypso|1 year ago

Clickbait is BLUF with a deceptive bottom line (BL). Clickbait is bad. You can choose to write in BLUF style without that.

In my experience, I only prefer "Classical philosophical writing" when I'm already convinced of reading the content (e.g. know the author, interested by the subject).

In almost all other cases, I prefer BLUF format: i.e. "get to the point, I'll read more if I'm intrigued".