> At first blush, “no” does not appear to be the kind of word whose meaning you can monkey with. For one thing, there is its length. At just two letters and one syllable, it lacks the pliable properties of longer words. You can’t stuff stuff inside it. [...]
I guess these 'long form' articles have to be long, but some of these paragraphs seem pretty forced.
This article seems particularly bad (I stopped reading halfway through), but a lot of articles published in The New Yorker seems to do this kind of meandering. The other day I was reading a story about Jake Leg[0], and if you compare it to the corresponding Wikipedia article[1] the difference is really striking---the Wikipedia article tells you straight away what caused the contamination, while the New Yorker story somehow tries to keep you in suspense.
I guess I just don't see what these authors are trying to do. If someone started reading an article about "no, yes", probably they want to know about "no, yes". Why intersperse a bunch of unrelated fluff?
I respectfully disagree. I thought this "no, totally" article was entertaining and enjoyable.
It's strange to me that you're comparing The New Yorker and Wikipedia. One publishes stories. The other publishes reference articles. I appreciate suspense in a story; I appreciate a quick summary of the facts in a reference article. They are very different forms of writing.
I guess these 'long form' articles have to be long, but some of these paragraphs seem pretty forced.