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A preposition is a very bad word to end a sentence with. But only a fool would begin or end a sentence with the word but. And only a total idiot would begin or end a sentence with the word and. Anyway, you should never use the word 'anyway'. Even worser to use 'anyways'. And never utilize the word 'utilize' when you could utilize the word 'use' instead. Your doing it wrong if you're sentences confuse the words your a…
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Thanks, how often would you send out an email for this newsletter?
My plan is to send it weekly, but with shorter texts than this first one. The idea is to be more specific, like: "Tips for a good Pull Request description", "Tips for a good feature deploy announcement email", "Tips for a good user story". What do you think? Any topic you are particularly interested?
Edit to say : Tips on effective email communication would be good. I seem to either be too brief and appear curt or waffle on where I shouldn't.
A preposition is a very bad word to end a sentence with. But only a fool would begin or end a sentence with the word but. And only a total idiot would begin or end a sentence with the word and. Anyway, you should never use the word 'anyway'. Even worser to use 'anyways'. And never utilize the word 'utilize' when you could utilize the word 'use' instead. Your doing it wrong if you're sentences confuse the words your a…
Agreed. Also complete sentences.
1. Every first draft is crap. Edit. Edit again. I do this for everything — design docs, doc comments, HN comments, email, tweets. Writing is editing.
2. Have a clear audience in mind that you are writing for, ideally a single person, sympathetic to your topic, but choose whatever audience makes sense.
3. Treat your audience with respect and try to give them as much value as you can in return for the effort, time, and attention you are asking of them. When you edit to distill and clarify your concepts, you are transferring effort from them onto yourself, and they'll thank you for it.
4. Unless you're writing for a venue that explicitly requires it, formality is overrated. People will remember your writing better if they have some emotional connection to it, and that requires an informal human element.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My plan is to send it weekly, but with shorter texts than this first one. The idea is to be more specific, like: "Tips for a good Pull Request description", "Tips for a good feature deploy announcement email", "Tips for a good user story". What do you think? Any topic you are particularly interested?
I'm very interested in this - will be signing up. I've been told my specification writing style is good if just a little repetitive. I appreciate it's a technical document and somewhat dry, however keen to see ways I could improve sentence structure. Edit to say : Tips on effective email communication would be good. I seem to either be too brief and appear curt or waffle on where I shouldn't.
Hopefully these reading materials are still useful!
- "Science of Scientific Writing" https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~swanson/papers/science-of-writing.p...
- "Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace" https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Clarity-Grace-10th/dp/0...
The only other rule I really use is to write for as low level of an audience as I can. This helps to reduce confusion for the readers, not all of whom may have the same vocabulary or "state" as you. You don't want to write about concepts from CS 401 when your readers are in CS 101, especially if the CS 401 concepts are not required for understanding.
Oh, and avoid un-delimited sarcasm. It travels really poorly through the internet; someone will always take it at face value.