Ask HN: How to level up your technical writing?

Post by setgree » Wed, Jun 29, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #72

setgree wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's really hard to find fiction books, that are less than 500 pages. To play editor for a moment — your sentence needs no comma, and it’s easy to find fiction books with fewer than 500 pages ;) Was a clause omitted?

Fair point. I look for books in a certain genre, though. I find myself retreating to classics that are over 30 years old, because the new stuff is so unreadable. I'll probably start The Black Company (for like, the twentieth time), soon.

In the great short books category, Willa Cather’s plains trilogy books are like 150-200 pages each, they’re fast reads and the prose is excellent — I’d start with ‘O Pioneers!’

Post by randomcarbloke » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 10:03 AM UTC

warrenm wrote: post #142

randomcarbloke wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, depends...as you point out it is becoming a "lost art". The average quality of editors is utterly abysmal, so if you're pretty handy with style, or have lived under the cosh of an academic style guide for long enough you can probably get by without an editor.

>lived under the cosh of an academic style guide for long enough you can probably get by without an editor. I'd say the opposite As someone who's recently been put back under the "cosh of an academic style guide", I can definitely say the "academic style guide" does NOTHING to help with editing ... it's all about FORMAT Format is nice, and all ... but almost 100% irrelevant to the content

Then it's a lost cause, you can't expect an editor to understand content, their function is to impose style, any reasonable exposure to formal language should be sufficient (but actually I disagree completely).

If major publications can't employ decent editors what hope have you?

Re: Ask HN: How to level up your technical writing?

Re: Ask HN: How to level up your technical writing?