Cognitive load optimization (writing rule)
Part of Writing principles.
What the rule is
Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller) treats working memory as a scarce budget. The writing rule: short sentences, shallow dependency trees, at most one new term per paragraph (defined immediately), and sequenced comparison instead of simultaneous contrast until both sides are established.
What good looks like
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One idea lands before the next begins.
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Definitions adjacent to first use.
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Lists only when they reduce load, not as a default essay shape.
Failure modes for LLM writing
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“Clarity” that is actually a wall of short undefined nouns.
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Premature compare-and-contrast before either concept is stable.
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Parenthetical forests and semicolon chains.
Micro-example
Weak: “Unlike stop-the-world collectors, which pause all mutators, concurrent collectors, while more complex due to read/write barriers, reduce pause times.”
Stronger: “Some collectors pause every thread that mutates the heap, then clean, then resume. Those pauses are simple to reason about and easy to feel. Other collectors clean while threads keep running. That design needs extra bookkeeping so the cleaner and the threads do not disagree about what is still alive.”