Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

blog.stevenpressfield.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 65 posts

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#41

Post by jacquesm »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 describin…

That's true, however, I think that you are underestimating the number of people that have consciously made the decision that any browser with less than .5% is not worth optimizing for (especially since you'll end up upsetting stuff for more popular browsers if you're not careful), and in some companies/situations that .5% might even be a lot higher.

Even my bank, which has a pretty awesome website (and a correspondingly large budget) does not work when I increase the size of my browser past 2048 pixels or when I visit using Konqueror.

It's not that they couldn't get it to work, it's just that they probably don't even care because it is a problem that is too low on their list of priorities.

It's like that with everything, finite budgets -> some of the apples will fall off the cart, and in some cases that's just too bad.

The people that make the decisions are usually well aware of that.

I think what is more amazing here is that you're actually able to see almost all other sites with a browser that old, considering that the vast majority of the site operators are definitely not testing with that particular setup.

Try finding a store that will sell you 78 rpm records or even an 8 track player. Media readers that are 'behind the times' are most of the time pretty useless, compared to that your elderly browser is doing fine.

Just for the heck of it, here are the stats for a small site:

   mozilla:   160630
   IE:        325291
   Opera:     17869
   Mobile:    45175
   Konqueror: 147
That's unique visitors, not pageviews.

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#42

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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…

Konqueror runs everywhere now doesn't it. Is this Konq 4.2 on KDE3? or Konq on Windows? Also from the screen shot it looks like it's still loading, the frills round the K are uneven??

Fine for me in 4.3.1 on KDE4 on Kubuntu 9.04.

Trying on browsershots ...

[Edit] nothing especially shows in the major browsers indeed looks pretty good in most things; I would say it looks like gzip is not on and YSlow gives the site a grade D. Some large images which could take an age on dialup.

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#43

Post by bootload »

"... 1) Reduce your message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form. 2) Make it fun. Or sexy or interesting or informative ..."

For anyone who wants to read an antidote to this drivel, try Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" ~ http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#44

Post by jamesbritt »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #37
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…

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" (mur…

At the least, "The data show murder causes death"

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#45

Post by jamesbritt »

marcofloriano wrote: post #13
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #2

One of the most important lessons about writing that I ever learned was to make sure people could read what you wrote. Here is a screenshot of my browser window opened onto the article in question. http://www.penzba.co.uk/StevenPressfield.jpg It will be ironic if this is one of those occasions that my ISP fails to serve the page, but if you get a "forbidden" or similar, hit "Reload". So, for those of you who run web…

What´s your browser ? Looks like Netscape ...

It says "Konqueror" in the title area.

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#46

Post by [deleted] »

cema wrote: post #36
saurabh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

[deleted]

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#47

Post by blasdel »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
electromagnetic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I constantly have the opposite problem -- for some reason freetards just luurve en_GB. If you really want superfluously coloured language, set your locale!

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#49

Post by dhimes »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #37
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…

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" (mur…

data shows murder causes death

Are you making the claim that the word "data" is singular? It's not. And when you use a collective noun, you use the singular form (datum, in this case).

Along this line, though, what does sound jarring to me is the recent trend among the tech lit (and maybe others) to use company names as plural, as in, "Microsoft are keeping quiet about their new product." This is totally non-standard. First of all, Microsoft is a singular entity, identified by its articles of incorporation. What these authors are doing is using a lazy shorthand for, "Members of Microsoft management are keeping quiet about their new product."

See, for instance, "The Bedford Handbook for Writers" http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/newcatalog.aspx?isbn=0312595...

Re: The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

#50

Post by doty »

dhimes wrote: post #49
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" (mur…

data shows murder causes death Are you making the claim that the word "data" is singular? It's not. And when you use a collective noun, you use the singular form (datum, in this case). Along this line, though, what does sound jarring to me is the recent trend among the tech lit (and maybe others) to use company names as plural, as in, "Microsoft are keeping quiet about their new product." This is totally non-standard…

To pile on the pedantry: "data" is one of those words that can be used in either a singular or plural construction. The OED has references going as far back as this one, from 1807:

W. IRVING Salmag. xviii. 366 My grandfather..took a data from his own excellent heart.

(Further proof that English is not Latin.)

Post reply on HN