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E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

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Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#21

Post by libraryofbabel »

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill.

Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it has its problems (as the article discusses). I wouldn’t really recommend it anymore. Instead, have a look at:

Williams and Bizup, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace

And, for everything you ever wanted to know about standard American English usage (and how it’s shifting over time!), there is Garner’s Modern English Usage, which sounds dry but is actually fascinating (and inspired this brilliantly controversial review by David Foster Wallace: http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...).

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#22

Post by Alex3917 »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #21

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it ha…

> And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill.

Probably because it is, as you said, quite literally undervalued.

Coding is just a writing job, so if you don't think that someone would get hired as a staff writer for The New Yorker then I don't see why you'd hire them to write in your codebase. But most companies don't think like that, much less put any actual weight on writing skills during the hiring process.

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#23

Post by hcrisp »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #21

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it ha…

If you like that kind of thing, also check out "Revising Business Prose" by Lanham. Avoid passive-voice sentences with long prepositional phrases, and instead use action verbs. For example: “The history of the new regulatory provisions is that there is generally an immediate resistance to them.” becomes “People usually resist new regulations.”

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#24

Post by fennecfoxen »

Alex3917 wrote: post #22
libraryofbabel wrote: post #21

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it ha…

> And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Probably because it is, as you said, quite literally undervalued. Coding is just a writing job, so if you don't think that someone would get hired as a staff writer for The New Yorker then I don't see why you'd hire them to write in your codebase. But most companies don't think like that, much less put any actual weight on writing skills during the hiring process…

Occasionally it is appropriately valued. A good tech writer, one who reaches out to engineers and figures out the hard stuff and plans an information architecture and documents your hardware product or your service's external APIs and tells people exactly how they work in a clear and systematic manner, can do fairly well at a company that needs this.

(But they're hard to find, and many shops are just YOLO about that sort of thing.)

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#25

Post by sokoloff »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #21

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it ha…

My ability to write English has almost surely had more influence on my career after age 35 than my ability to write code.

I wish I could go back and apologize to my English teachers along the way for how little effort and respect I offered to them/their courses.

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#26

Post by sokoloff »

njarboe wrote: post #19
mwcremer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. --B.Pascal (I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.)

This was especially true when everything was written out by hand. Editing on a computer changes the time to rewrite something by at least a factor of 10, maybe 100.

Based on writing I read professionally, I’m not sure that people are regularly re-reading what they’ve re-written.

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#27

Post by clockwork-dev »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #21

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it ha…

Nothing has impacted my writing more than that book. There are several versions now, the one I have is titled "Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace".

I chose it over White's book because of this passage from Clear and Simple as the Truth:

> The best-known teachers of practical style are Strunk and White, in their ubiquitous Elements of Style. The best teachers of practical style are Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb, in Williams’s Style: Toward Clarity and Grace and a series of academic articles and technical reports. Williams and Colomb present an incomparably deeper and more orderly treatment of practical style. The style they present is consistent and mature; it makes decisions about all the major questions that define a style, and is fully developed.

I almost can’t overstate how much it’s changed how I read and write. Before that book, some writing just felt “clear” and other writing didn’t, but I couldn’t explain why. Now it’s much easier to see how that sense of clarity is created. Even though I don't write for a living and mainly do technical write ups, it was easily worth the time investment.

This video is also good. It has a ton of interesting points, but the part about creating instability in your writing I found particularly useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM&ab_channel=UChic...

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#28

Post by hazz99 »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #21

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it ha…

I really enjoyed “Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student” also. A very in depth look, it’s a well-written textbook intended for later-year literature courses.

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#29

Post by munchbunny »

bsder wrote: post #20
munchbunny wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly I've found it useful to know the rules well in order to understand when and why they should be bent or broken. I think this is a key point. In my favorite writing course in college, the professor chose to teach composition from the perspective of legal argumentation. We wrote 4-8 pages per week in the most economical and intentional way possible, poring over every word, every sentence, and every paragraph t…

> That wasn't going to teach any of us beautiful prose or how to craft good plots, but it got us very quickly to the point where our writing style became deliberate. I would argue precisely the opposite. You can't build beautiful woodworking until you can do a joint reliably and repeatedly. You can't play jazz on your musical instrument until you can play scales reliably and repeatedly. You had a really excellent wri…

You had a really excellent writing professor. He completely anchored the fundamentals that you needed. Now you can actually proceed to actually write.

Not going to speak for my own writing, but I completely agree with your point. The better you understand the fundamentals of composition, the better you understand what makes good writing good, how to hone your own style, and how to tailor your writing to the situation.

I think of The Elements of Style as one of those attempts to break writing (in English) down into its mechanical elements. Whether or not I agree with its advice, I respect the approach it tries to take.

Re: E. B. White’s “Plain Style” at 75

#30

Post by libraryofbabel »

sokoloff wrote: post #25
libraryofbabel wrote: post #21

Good writing matters. One of the most undervalued skills in engineering, especially at the Senior+ levels. Being able to write a clear, concise, well-argued design doc will be useful to you long after the hot framework of the moment has become obsolete. And yet, few people take the time to hone the skill. Strunk and White is a classic, sure, which this article helps to put in context. But it’s 75 years old, and it ha…

My ability to write English has almost surely had more influence on my career after age 35 than my ability to write code. I wish I could go back and apologize to my English teachers along the way for how little effort and respect I offered to them/their courses.

Conversely, I had no idea skills picked up when going to grad school in the humanities would prove so useful in getting promoted to and performing in the upper levels of the IC career track. (That said, I too was bored in high school English.)

It is distressing how much emphasis is placed on mastering toy Leetcode-style algorithm problems in software career-building (for obvious reasons - they're used in interviews) and how comparatively little we emphasize the skills like writing and public speaking that actually count for some of the most successful tech folks.

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