Comment by gammalost
1 day ago
As someone with english as my second language this style is just too much to bother. Sure, I get that it is elegant and precise. But for me it results in stilted reading.
Hence I disagree with the "Never write for your audience" part of the essay.
As someone who generally liked the article, this is perhaps the strongest argument against it. Prose like this requires even native speakers to really focus. I wouldn't write this way for anything intended to be read by an unknown person.
It's less precise than it pretends, in my opinion. At least, it gleefully drops precision in favour of artful insinuation. For example, in reference to Orwell and Strunk & White it uses the word "decrees" to mean "advocates", implying a sort of pompous authority.