Another Word For It

10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy by Maria Popova.

From the post:

How is your new year’s resolution to read more and write better holding up? After tracing the fascinating story of the most influential writing style guide of all time and absorbing advice on writing from some of modern history’s most legendary writers, here comes some priceless and pricelessly uncompromising wisdom from a very different kind of cultural legend: iconic businessman and original “Mad Man” David Ogilvy. On September 7th, 1982, Ogilvy sent the following internal memo to all agency employees, titled “How to Write”:

The one where I fail is: Never write more than two pages on any subject.

And could use the storing emails overnight and re-editing the next day.

Which ones would benefit you the most?

Read this: Revising Prose by Jason Zimdars.

From the post:

There are plenty of books that will teach you to be a better writer, but I’ve never found one so immediately useful as Revising Prose by Richard A. Lanham. Following along as Lanham revises example upon example of real world writing is like exercise for your writing muscles.

My favorite takeaway is this tip for improving the rhythm and cadence of your writing. Many of us have learned to read text out loud as a method to reveal awkward transitions or generally dull passages, but you can also spot poor rhythm visually. A red flag for dull cadence is a run of sentences that are all of similar length. Try adding a carriage return after every sentence or phrase, the rhythm is evident:

This looks like an interesting and easy technique to use on your own as well as the prose of others.

The better a writer you become, the easier it will be for potential clients, colleagues and others to understand what you have written.

Modulo that if you go into “public service” as they say in the United States, being understood may put you at a disadvantage.

As with most advice, it could go either way.

Let us abolish page limits in scientific publications

Daniel Lemire writes:

As scientists, we are often subjected to strict page limits. These limits made sense when articles were printed on expensive paper. They are now obsolete.

On the contrary, page limits (or their digital equivalents) are more important in a digital setting than when articles appeared in print. (Research data, source code and the like should not be subject to limits but that is a different issue.)

Why?

Perhaps you have heard of the DRY principle:

Don’t

Yourself

The hazards of repeating yourself inconsistency, change of one reference and not another, etc., are multiplied in prose writing.

Why?

At least in computer programming, if you otherwise follow good programming practices, some of your tests or even the compiler will catch repetition as a bug. Which can then be fixed. Repetition in prose lacks the advantage of a compiler to catch such errors.

Do you want to be known for “buggy” prose?

Moreover, good writing isn’t accidental. It is a matter of domain knowledge, hard work and practice. Write in a sloppy fashion and before too long, bad habits will creep into your “professional” writing.

Do you want to lose the ability to express yourself clearly?

Finally, your writing reflects your respect (or lack thereof) for readers. Your work is being read for possible use in publications or research. Why would you inflict poor writing on such readers?

To me personally, poor writing reflects a poor understanding of content. Is that how you want to be known?

tl;dr

John D. Cook writes:

The slang “tl;dr” stands for “too long; didn’t read.” The context is often either a bad joke or a shallow understanding.

What bothers me most about tl;dr is the mindset it implies, scanning everything but reading nothing. I find myself slipping into that mode sometimes. Skimming is a vital skill, but it can become so habitual that it crowds out reflective reading.

I despaired when I read in the comments that someone used this as their entire review of an ebook version of “Moby Dick.” I have read it more than once and didn’t really notice the length, other than to be disappointed with I reached the end.

On the other hand, I have read short conference proposals that required me to force myself to the end of a three page abstract. Being uncertain at the end if the authors actually had a point or were trying to conceal some point.

Reflexive reading isn’t encouraged by some user documentation, which is written carelessly, inconsistently and apparently for the purpose of claiming it exists.

To avoid seeing the use of “tl;dr” on your work, convey some of your excitement about it by caring enough to write well. Readers will recognize your writing as a cut above the average and may consider that as a good sign about your software.