Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen. • Hacker News Board

Re: Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen.

#71

Post by oofoe » Wed, Apr 07, 2010, 12:57 PM UTC

cracki wrote: post #66

hxa7241 wrote: post #33

The other important thing needed is: Make your message concrete and specific. It is no use reading a first sentence that says something like: "We created a novel abstraction to improve software development.". Yes, it is concise, but it says nothing. "We used wavelet analysis to find and factor-out the most modified aspects of our code." -- that I can see I want to know more about.

hm, wavelet analysis on (source) code... strange notion, and intriguing. i've long thought that language is a fine tool to deliberately construct notions beyond our horizon. composing such nonsense sentences feel like fuzzing the brain's pattern recognition.

You might enjoy the topic of the Professor's symposium in the "Futurological Congress", by Stanislaw Lem.

Re: Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen.

#72

Post by antauth » Wed, Apr 07, 2010, 2:02 PM UTC

JeremyStein wrote: post #11

Groxx wrote: post #6

In a newspaper article, the paragraphs are ordered by importance, so that the reader can stop reading the article at whatever point they lose interest, knowing that the part they have read was more important than the part left unread. I never knew that, though now that I've seen it said, it does seem accurate. Articles do lose importance as the article goes on. But I'd argue that it's a much older method, known as a…

Actually, the main reason for putting the important parts first is to give the newspaper editor flexibility for fitting stories onto the page. The end of a story can be left off if there's not enough room.

I actually just read that the telegraph has something to do with it. Because messages would often get cut off, the important content had to come first.

Re: Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen.

#73

Post by assemble » Wed, Apr 07, 2010, 6:22 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #6

In a newspaper article, the paragraphs are ordered by importance, so that the reader can stop reading the article at whatever point they lose interest, knowing that the part they have read was more important than the part left unread. I never knew that, though now that I've seen it said, it does seem accurate. Articles do lose importance as the article goes on. But I'd argue that it's a much older method, known as a…

It's called the "Inverted Pyramid" and anyone who has taken a journalism class worth anything learned it.

It's there so that editors can cut down the story easily if it doesn't fit on the page. Page design is really hard if you can't change the size of some of the stories.

Re: Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen.

#74

Post by hxa7241 » Thu, Apr 08, 2010, 4:49 PM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #64

hxa7241 wrote: post #33

The other important thing needed is: Make your message concrete and specific. It is no use reading a first sentence that says something like: "We created a novel abstraction to improve software development.". Yes, it is concise, but it says nothing. "We used wavelet analysis to find and factor-out the most modified aspects of our code." -- that I can see I want to know more about.

I actually kind of find myself often wanting the opposite, especially in the first sentence or two of a paper's abstract. If the first sentence has details about their method, I'm often still trying to figure out of it's even on the broad subject I'm looking for. Your first example would let me say, "oh ok, their goal here was improving software development, not what I was looking for", without being distracted by de…

It is true that some useful information is missing from a specific statement, but I would probably expect much of it would be supplied by the context of where or how you found the document . . .

Re: Best Writing Advice for Engineers I've Ever Seen.

#75

Post by alan-crowe » Fri, Apr 09, 2010, 12:20 PM UTC

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #2

aka "How to write a high school essay."

In real life you have a lot of information about your audience. You can guess whether jargon and equations will help or hinder communication. You are probably not reduced to guessing, you can go and ask your audience. They may come to you. This is probably not the first time you have written for them, you probably have valuable knowledge from last time.

Today's audience is not your only audience. Although you have valuable knowledge it may be in a bit of a jumble, with considerations that apply differently to different audiences clearly labelled as to whether they worked but not so clearly labelled as to the particular audience that delivered its verdict.

This deficiency is likely because high school essay writing has no audience, which trains you to ignore the most important question about writing: who is this for?