A Style Guide

I first became infatuated with the diaeresis when I used to read The New Yorker. Archaic in modern English it consists of two dots (¨) placed above a “normal” letter like the in the word naïve or coöperate.

There are legitimate reasons to prefer the diaeresis, but I merely do because it is rare. I am a natural hipster — I shall not deny it — but I do think standing out from the crowd is becoming more and more important these days as people yearn for genuine information and dead internet theory becomes more and more real.

This is exacerbated by the fact that I like using em-dashes¹ — something that has apparently become a “sign” of ai (artificial intelligence) authorship. To rebelliously use the diaeresis (even though spellcheckers and ai resist) acts as a proof that the text is legitimate. I am not saying that this is a sustainable approach — adding some ¨’s to your text is of course trivial to do — but that does not really matter. The problem with ai is not really a matter of trusting if it has been used or not. Instead it is a problem of saturation.

Writing is something that necessarily requires effort. Not because it is hard to come up with grammatically correct sentences or to press buttons on a keyboard fast enough, but because it requires you to actively challenge your ideas and to present them in a way that communicates the essence of that idea, not of the words representing it. llms allow for the production of lots of pieces of writing that are not the product of writing. Showing that you have actually thought about the subject and actually care is your most important job as an author in the post-llm world. The diaeresis is a (small) step toward that.

I expect most acronyms are understood by most readers (take for example the “ai” that I have already used in this text) but there is always someone who has not encountered any given acronym before.² I therefore think it is polite to specify, even when it may seem obtuse.

It helps that I “read out” most acronyms whenever they come up — even in person — both because I like thinking about what they mean contextually and to avoid writings things like “ssd drive”.³

I generally try and avoid contractions in written text. This is for a similar reason as with acronyms, if makes me think through what I am actually writing on a more detailed level. It is however fine to use when quoting or trying to imitate spoken language — such as in rhetorical questions.

Finally there is the question of brand names. These I deliberately choose to swim against the grain on. Capitalization of certain forms is anathema to any degree of respect for the reader. The word “Iphone” is a description of an object (both physical and cultural) in the world; the word “iPhone” is an advertisement. In a few cases this form of strange writing is required for the sake of clarity or to retain meaning — Openai instead of Open ai — but oftentimes the end result is the perpetuation of a consumer society that worships the idea of objects or services above their actual function.

There is nothing more frustrating than reading a text where the author has translated Chinese terms or phrases in parentheses (像這樣) but written it — not even just in pīnyīn, but in pīnyīn sans-diacritics. This tells the reader next to nothing about what the original word actually was for all but the most common words, but also does inform the reader that the author does not even possess a limited understanding of Chinese (what one might learn in an hour or two of inquisitive study). This is why I try and always offer translations in Chinese characters whenever a concept shows up, and allow the reader to understand the meaning and choose the pronunciation themselves (in whatever Chinese dialect or language they may choose).

Language as a concept is however beautiful. While I am not a master of languages I do find that using phrases and terms from other languages (even from ones that I do not speak) enriches the text and gives a more multifaceted quality. For these I do not usually offer a translation and merely challenge the reader to try and learn new things about the world, its history, and the people that reside within it.

Latin is a particular favourite of mine. When writing in Swedish it is naturally looked down upon to fall back on an English phrase. It shows how one does not fully command the Swedish language in order to express oneself fully. But latin has, in practically all European languages owing to its ecclesiastical use, formed an exception to this. It acts as a sort of extension of alternative words or phrases that can be bothered to create another meaningful and interesting layer to a text.

This is partly covered in the colophon, but I this website is written in Org mode, and as such its structure is somewhat decided by the medium. Like in markdown or pdf-files each text is a two-dimensional stand-alone work. Said work may exist in an advanced intertextual context, but each (most) work is not a film, audio file, or video game.

But the website is also not a pdf, and treating it as such would be incorrect.⁴ Writing for the web requires a different style; one that is easier to follow and uses shorter paragraphs. Not so short as the recoiling style of Linkedin would expect, but shorter than that of a printed book — perhaps a few sentences.

I also have a sense of pride for my writing, and so I treat its presentation with a corresponding level of respect. The design and appearance of the website is important to me, as I believe it should be important to you. An example of the opposite would be the former Swedish prime minister and later also foreign minister Carl Bildt’s blog Alla dessa dagar (“All these days”). It has a horrendous appearances in my opinion, and is only saved by the ability to be read through and rss reader instead of web browser. At the risk of seeming a bit narcissistic I will quote myself:

If you care about your text you have to care about its presentation. […] This is what is required of you as an artist; as an artist in the sense of a creator of new, radical ideas. If you do not believe that your work is […] “the best in the world” you will not have the confidence to venture out into the world and present it.

Tinkering with the site appearance is therefore an important part of the writing process. They are however still quite separate activities, and I do not often mix the two. Rather it is the case of treating your own text at the level of which you want it to be treated.

There are of course numerous occasions when you are not in control of the presentation. In those cases nothing can of course be done. But you should nevertheless try and be deeply involved in how the work will appear when presented. Looking it over, ideally with fresh eyes, is the least you can do before publishing.

The biggest take away from this text should not be to copy or emulate any of these recommendations (but you are of course free to do so). Instead it is the idea that the content of writing and the style of it are inseparable. Even matters as different as using one or two spaces at the end of sentences⁵ creates a small difference.

Perhaps the choice itself is impossible to be noticed in the writing process, perhaps it is even stripped away by an editor or export process, but the deliberate choice made by the writer still matters. It does so by subtly influencing the content by deliberate choices made. ❦