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Steps to Improve Your Writing

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Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#31

Post by codingdave »

DrBazza wrote: post #25

Definitely these two: 1. Good writing is clear 4. Good writing is concise Use a simple, reduced vocabulary, as your readers are likely to have English as a second language (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44569277 ). And as Richard Feynman pointed out, try explaining it to a child. If you can't go back and rewrite it. Don't use (modern) slang, and avoid writing 'conversational' English. It's "lessons" not "lear…

This feedback presumes that all writing is intended for a specific, professional audience. Good writing is not limited to a single audience, and good writers will consider their audience when making choices. If a writer goes against the 'rules' you've just shared without much thought into whether or not they apply to their current goals... there is a problem. But there is likewise a problem in blindly following rules.

The rules change based on what you are writing, why, and to whom.

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#32

Post by jasode »

DrBazza wrote: post #25

Definitely these two: 1. Good writing is clear 4. Good writing is concise Use a simple, reduced vocabulary, as your readers are likely to have English as a second language (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44569277 ). And as Richard Feynman pointed out, try explaining it to a child. If you can't go back and rewrite it. Don't use (modern) slang, and avoid writing 'conversational' English. It's "lessons" not "lear…

I'm glad I'm more of a language descriptivist instead of prescriptivist because none of your examples bother me.

>It's "lessons" not "learnings". How much have you eaten How many eatings have you had? Ugh.

Does the word "drinks" also bother you? (As in "How many drinks have you had?") (My previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020434)

And what about everybody including today's English PhDs incorrectly using plural "you" as singular you? The word "thou" was already the correct word for the singular and intimate relation. The famous song title should be "Thou Art My Sunshine" not the incorrect "You Are My Sunshine". :-)

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/did-english...

Does a language get to change and evolve at all? If yes, who should decide? A language committee or bottom-up crowdsource language speakers? When does the previous "incorrect and criticized" usage become "correct and accepted"?

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#33

Post by martin-adams »

geocrasher wrote: post #29

I've been writing for several years, and the more I blog, write training materials, or just write to customers, three things keep helping me improve: 1) Less is more. A) Write all you like, and then cut out all the stuff that doesn't matter. Like the way you just said the same thing 3 times in a row. B) The less you say the less someone has to argue with. The opposite is also true C) Stick to main points and save gor…

I use the text to speech in my articles as a 'read it out loud' exercise.

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#34

Post by geocrasher »

meerita wrote: post #12

As a non native english-speaker, my struggles in my original language is finishing sentences early instead doing long ones. Sometimes I write long phrases, full of commas, semicolons, etc. I found that in enlish people tend to be more conservative when writing sentences.

Native English speaker here. For me, any sentence with more than one comma is telling me that it's not one sentence. It's two, three, or four sentences. And to be clear, I'm talking about sentences that are very long, not sentences that contain a list of items such as the previous sentence. Example:

-----------------------------------------------------------

The more I write, the more I realize that sentence structure matters, as does grammar, and even spelling, and also choice of words, which affects some readers for whom English is a non-primary language.

As I write more, I realize that sentence structure, grammar, and spelling matter. My choice of words is important because unnecessary complexity may negatively affect some readers.

-----------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't always this way. 50 years ago, it was common for sentences to be much longer. I often read stories to my wife that were written in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. They are personal accounts, not professional writing. Life stories. They quite often include sentences that take more than one breath to read aloud, because they are so incredibly long that they deplete me of oxygen before I can finish reading the sentence, which I do find quite difficult to read since I am now concentrating on my breathing instead of on the written word, which is not just awkward but also distracting.

YMMV.

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#35

Post by swiley »

codingdave wrote: post #31
DrBazza wrote: post #25

Definitely these two: 1. Good writing is clear 4. Good writing is concise Use a simple, reduced vocabulary, as your readers are likely to have English as a second language (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44569277 ). And as Richard Feynman pointed out, try explaining it to a child. If you can't go back and rewrite it. Don't use (modern) slang, and avoid writing 'conversational' English. It's "lessons" not "lear…

This feedback presumes that all writing is intended for a specific, professional audience. Good writing is not limited to a single audience, and good writers will consider their audience when making choices. If a writer goes against the 'rules' you've just shared without much thought into whether or not they apply to their current goals... there is a problem. But there is likewise a problem in blindly following rules…

Personally, the main motivation I have is to improve my writing for documentation that's intended to be read by coworkers (a specific, professional audience.) I wouldn't be surprised if most people on HN feel the same way.

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#36

Post by hestefisk »

Good post. There is one important topic not touched upon yet: clear structure. Without a strong organising structure and logic, it’s hard to navigate, especially for non-prose. I can highly recommend the book “The pyramid principle” as a way to really improve structured writing.

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#37

Post by DrBazza »

jasode wrote: post #32
DrBazza wrote: post #25

Definitely these two: 1. Good writing is clear 4. Good writing is concise Use a simple, reduced vocabulary, as your readers are likely to have English as a second language (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44569277 ). And as Richard Feynman pointed out, try explaining it to a child. If you can't go back and rewrite it. Don't use (modern) slang, and avoid writing 'conversational' English. It's "lessons" not "lear…

I'm glad I'm more of a language descriptivist instead of prescriptivist because none of your examples bother me. >It's "lessons" not "learnings". How much have you eaten How many eatings have you had? Ugh. Does the word "drinks" also bother you? (As in "How many drinks have you had?" ) (My previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020434 ) And what about everybody including today's English P…

> Does the word "drinks" also bother you?

No, but if you went to a pub and had several 'drinkings', then yes.

"Learnings" is incorrect.

> Does a language get to change and evolve at all?

Yes, and despite my dislike for "learnings" it looks like it is here to stay unfortunately. It's "business English", amplified by the internet. When I tell friends and family about "learnings" their response is, to put it mildly, "who are these idiots?"

Historical language evolution is towards shorter words, when those words are heavily used. Who knows how the Internet is going to change the language?

I think you'll appreciate Suzie Dent's twitter account: https://twitter.com/susie_dent

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#38

Post by rezendi »

wombatmobile wrote: post #4

This is clear writing? 2. Because we know nothing about the local conditions, we could not determine how effectively the committee had allocated funds to areas that need the most assistance. We can't tell if the committee spent wisely because we don't know our way around here.

The first example smacks of writing which is not so much unclear as it is deliberately banal and devoid of impact, as famously described by Orwell here: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#39

Post by farleykr »

geocrasher wrote: post #29

I've been writing for several years, and the more I blog, write training materials, or just write to customers, three things keep helping me improve: 1) Less is more. A) Write all you like, and then cut out all the stuff that doesn't matter. Like the way you just said the same thing 3 times in a row. B) The less you say the less someone has to argue with. The opposite is also true C) Stick to main points and save gor…

In regards to point 2: Having kids and reading tons of books out loud to them has really impressed upon me how important this is. Reading my own writing out loud has been a real turning point for me in developing my writing skills.

Re: Steps to Improve Your Writing

#40

Post by DrBazza »

rimliu wrote: post #28
DrBazza wrote: post #25

Definitely these two: 1. Good writing is clear 4. Good writing is concise Use a simple, reduced vocabulary, as your readers are likely to have English as a second language (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44569277 ). And as Richard Feynman pointed out, try explaining it to a child. If you can't go back and rewrite it. Don't use (modern) slang, and avoid writing 'conversational' English. It's "lessons" not "lear…

English is my fourth language. I hate seeing advice like "use simple, reduced vocabulary". Dumbing everything down is not a way to go. Feynman said, that if you cannot explaind it to a child you do not understand it, not that you should communicate with everyone like they were kids.

> Feynman said, that if you cannot explaind it to a child you do not understand it, not that you should communicate with everyone like they were kids.

That's not what I said, there was a full stop, not a comma. I was applying Feynman's idea to writing, if you can't explain something simply in plain English, you really should rewrite it to reach a wider audience.

> I hate seeing advice like "use simple, reduced vocabulary".

Sure, and if articles are written 'normally', for people with English as a second language, that means that they will learn more English words when they encounter new ones.

However "I" is one person, and an author wants to reach the widest audience, with the lowest common denominator. I don't understand much German or French, for example, but an article written in simple German or French is much more accessible to me (the lowest common denominator).

Writing is about reaching all of your audience.

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