Elements of Style is full of little nuggets of good writing. Start a blog/journal to continuously practice the techniques in the book
Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#12read paul graham's essays, he specifically has an essay on writing. assuming you're a hacker yourself, should'nt be difficult to understand them.
try rewriting them, helps immensely.
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#13Read anything by George Orwell. Seriously.
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#14The best book I have ever read (and continue to re-read) on writing is "On Writing Well" by William K. Zinsser. Mostly the first half of the book - it's incredibly valuable.
Do you also have some another suggestion that might be on Kindle store? "On Writing Well" only seems to have a CD audio collection.
It's also available in paperback (for $10!). If you're serious about learning to write well, it's well worth putting down the Kindle and going "old school" on this one.
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#15Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#16Can you share a link to Jason's post about writing essays that you mentioned?
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#17Norman Ramsey gives some brief, practical advice on learning technical writing: http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/two-abstract.html
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#18The best book I have ever read (and continue to re-read) on writing is "On Writing Well" by William K. Zinsser. Mostly the first half of the book - it's incredibly valuable.
Yup, I second this.. "on writing well" is great
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#19"Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew" by Ursula K Le Guin
The advice therein extends beyond stories.
http://www.amazon.com/Steering-Craft-Exercises-Discussions-N...
Re: Ask HN: Good books for English writing?
#20General advice: read as much (english) literature as you can. As someone already pointed out, this will help you to improve but will of course take some time and is a process that has no end.
Personally I can recommmend also books like "on writing" (by Sol Stein) which gives you advices on general writing (fiction and non-fiction).