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The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

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Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#31

Post by Perceval »

crux_ wrote: post #15
swombat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive vs active voice is certainly useful, but it's only one of many, many bits of writing craft. If you want a whole lot more of those, I suggest Strunk & White: http://www.bartleby.com/141/

Good as well: Politics & The English Language. ( http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm )

As someone mired in academia, I absolutely love that piece by Orwell. It's a good reminder that the writing I'm surrounded by isn't the type of writing I should emulate.

I keep a folder in my bookmarks of writing tips that I think are insightful. Here are a few:

* Elmore Leonard: http://www.kabedford.com/archives/000013.html

* Kurt Vonnegut: http://www.peterstekel.com/PDF-HTML/Kurt%20Vonnegut%20advice...

* E.A. Poe: http://www.eapoe.org/works/ESSAYS/PHILCOMP.HTM

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#32

Post by req2 »

pchickey wrote: post #27
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with The Elements of Style is that White flagrantly, persistently and delightfully violates his own rules. Given that his writing is unfailingly charming and enjoyable to read, I have to wonder about value of those rules.

Following White's rules will do a good deal for those whose writing is not yet enjoyable to read.

White's rules improve unenjoyable prose.

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#33

Post by electromagnetic »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #20
swombat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive vs active voice is certainly useful, but it's only one of many, many bits of writing craft. If you want a whole lot more of those, I suggest Strunk & White: http://www.bartleby.com/141/

The problem with The Elements of Style is that White flagrantly, persistently and delightfully violates his own rules. Given that his writing is unfailingly charming and enjoyable to read, I have to wonder about value of those rules.

The Elements of Style (which I personally dislike) isn't written for professional writers, it's written for non-professionals.

In today's culture people are barely capable of writing a sentence without losing half the vowels along the way, and god forbid you're American because you already lost half your U's before you were even born. Forget about adequate grammar, or even half-decent spelling.

White is a professional writers, and with everything there's one key thing to being talented and that's knowing when to break the rules. Breaking the rules when you know what you're doing can be amazing and produce awe-inspiring works, however breaking the rules because you're too ignorant to know they even exist certainly doesn't make you amazing and the only awe you'll inspire is stupidity.

The rules are very valuable, but any half-decent writer has already figured out the rules merely by reading.

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#34

Post by RyanMcGreal »

bdr wrote: post #26
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #19

851 words to convey the message, "No one wants to read your shit"? Really?

Hey, that's a fun game! Ryan, 14 words to convey the message, "That was boring"? Really?!??!

I'm not saying it's boring; I'm saying it's needlessly verbose.

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#35

Post by jacquesm »

electromagnetic wrote: post #33
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with The Elements of Style is that White flagrantly, persistently and delightfully violates his own rules. Given that his writing is unfailingly charming and enjoyable to read, I have to wonder about value of those rules.

The Elements of Style (which I personally dislike) isn't written for professional writers, it's written for non-professionals. In today's culture people are barely capable of writing a sentence without losing half the vowels along the way, and god forbid you're American because you already lost half your U's before you were even born. Forget about adequate grammar, or even half-decent spelling. White is a professiona…

> and god forbid you're American because you already lost half your U's before you were even born.

My spell checker thinks that every time I write colour, endeavour, or glamour that I've made some grave error.

I really can't stand that, it doesn't allow me to change the preferences to English (which I was taught in school) or American English.

Btw, any piece about spelling contains at least one spelling error, yours is no exception ;)

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#36

Post by cema »

saurabh wrote: post #18
bk wrote: post #8

"Have you ever noticed how other people's stuff is shit, and your own shit is stuff?" - George Carlin

As much as I respect George, I think its reverse applies to us hackers "Have you ever noticed how other people's shit is stuff, and your own stuff is shit?"

Uh, but that's only because computers make us humble. (Or modest. Not sure which one.)

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#37

Post by pbhjpbhj »

alan-crowe wrote: post #25
codemonkey wrote: post #5

My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness, she passed on this gem: You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary." I can say what I need to say in half the words now.

Somewhere along the line I learned that you make science writing objective by using the passive voice. I would draft "I analysed the data and found that murder causes death." Then I re-wrote mechanically to "The data was analysed and it was found that murder causes death." Such a waste! I should have dropped myself from the story but stuck with the active voice and written "The data show that murder causes death." No…

I know you're trying to be correct but using data in this way is annoying - "the data shows", not because it is necessarily right (it depends) but because it sounds right. If it helps then just consider data the singular noun for a block of information.

"The data shows murder causes death" sounds fine to me, nothing jarring about that except that it's probably not true "the data shows murder is a cause of death" (murder doesn't cause all deaths usually depending on the locus).

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#38

Post by cema »

alan-crowe wrote: post #25
codemonkey wrote: post #5

My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness, she passed on this gem: You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary." I can say what I need to say in half the words now.

Somewhere along the line I learned that you make science writing objective by using the passive voice. I would draft "I analysed the data and found that murder causes death." Then I re-wrote mechanically to "The data was analysed and it was found that murder causes death." Such a waste! I should have dropped myself from the story but stuck with the active voice and written "The data show that murder causes death." No…

Could you just write: "Murder is shown to cause death", or do you need to mention the "data"?

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#39

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

jacquesm wrote: post #23
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loaded three times, same result each time. I agree that it's infeasible to support all browsers, and mine, in particular, is almost certainly not worth supporting. In most other circumstances I wouldn't bother to say anything, but here I thought the observation was worth making. Not everyone sees your web site the way you do. How do you check/test?

We have lots of browsers on hand in virtual machines, every major change gets tested in everything we can lay our hands on, we also ask our users to report problems through the help desk, and we work with them to get rid of bugs. As for having every browser work with your site, sorry but that isn't always possible. There are finite resources for everything, and if you insist on using an out-of-the-ordinary setup with…

Let me say from the beginning that I agree that I have a very old version of Konqueror. So old that there are many, many sites that I can't browse. I accept that. I'm not actually complaining that I can't read the text without doing something "special" - namely, highlighting the text.

However, I am quite frankly amazed that I'm being down-mud for pointing out that this is a serious issue. You, jacquesm, are describing extraordinary lengths to ensure that your visitors can read your site. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of people don't go to the lengths you do. And probably they shouldn't.

Perhaps I just didn't make myself clear.

But the point I'm trying to make is that people who care about customers need to make this decision, and need to know they're making it.

Is it not important? Is it not relevant? Is it not an issue for web designers to test across multiple browsers? Do you not care that there are people excluded? Are you not considering this? Have you consciously made the decision as to which browsers you won't support?

Are these questions not appropriate?

Clearly there are people who feel that these are not appropriate questions.

Or maybe I'm being down-mud because they are relevant, people aren't considering them, and I've pricked a conscience or two.

Down-mod me if you choose, but ask yourself why. Better yet, explain why. If people agree with you, you'll get lots of karma. I don't much care about karma, as evidenced by the fact that I've replied again, risking yet more karma in an attempt to make a point that I think is important.

So I've had my say.

As for why I use such an old version of Konqueror, it's a long story. Suffice to say I regularly access HN from hardware so old that I've struggled to run anything more modern than SuSE 8. The system is so fragile that I don't dare try to upgrade anything, because it's likely everything will break, and I really haven't the time to fix it.

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#40

Post by sofal »

cema wrote: post #38
alan-crowe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhere along the line I learned that you make science writing objective by using the passive voice. I would draft "I analysed the data and found that murder causes death." Then I re-wrote mechanically to "The data was analysed and it was found that murder causes death." Such a waste! I should have dropped myself from the story but stuck with the active voice and written "The data show that murder causes death." No…

Could you just write: "Murder is shown to cause death", or do you need to mention the "data"?

Now you've got it passive again.

Final draft: "Murder kills."

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