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Comment by SlyShy | Hacker News Reader

Some of the comments I've read seem to misunderstand the purpose of this page. This isn't the objectively best writing style, this is a concise writing style. No, it might not be the most pleasant to read, because extremely to-the-point short sentences sound blunt. The guidelines provided for writing short and concise sentences are very useful, if that's the style you are aiming for.

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From the site: Follow the principles below to write sentences that are clear, to the point, and easier to read.

I think they're claiming a lot more than "here's how to write concise sentences, if that's the style you're aiming for."

Note also that this section ("Clear, Concise, Sentences" [sic]) falls under the heading "Improving Your Writing Style."

> "Clear, Concise, Sentences" [sic]) falls under the heading "Improving Your Writing Style."

Well I don't see the problem here. It is true that many righting concise sentences can help many people improve their writing style (it's the case for foreigners like me).

I think the site targets two types of audience:

- Those with very poor style who want to improve

- People with good style who just want to learn how to write concise sentences.

I'll give an example illustrating the second point. For some of my school projects, I had to review a lot of "science project reports", and similar stuff. Well trust me, it is painful to read a report with long, convoluted sentences expressing a simple idea..

These are great guidelines. If you don't at least understand them, your style probably sucks. And I say that objectively.

Good writing skills are so important today when you consider that much of the writing people typically do is in an email or a powerpoint, not a romantic novel.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. -- Ezra Pound

This is a good default style. If you can write clearly, you can also write in other styles for artistic effect. It's like learning scales for your instrument. If you can't play scales well, you can't play Beethoven or George Crumb well either.

To look at it another way, these are the rules that are made to be broken in the service of stylized writing. If you don't know the rules, you won't know when to break them.

Exactly. This is more for technical writing, not sales copy. That being said, a sales copy equivalent would be nice.

A lot of sales copy could benefit from a more concise, factual writing style too. There's a mountain of research to show that people react negatively when they feel they're being played, yet advertisers continue to make obviously inflated claims and use meaningless buzzwords. :-(

Helps in writing commit messages.

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