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Comment by yesenadam | Hacker News Reader

The article lost me at its first sentence:

"Today it's almost obvious to state that good written communication creates a business advantage."

That sentence has a problem with its words. It's very far from good writing. It also sounds like the piece will be business-related, which I didn't expect.

[But maybe that's a "shallow dismissal", I shall return and read more.]

Ah.. I noticed it's talking about good business writing, and that the submitter has mysteriously deleted that word from the title. Well, I never would have clicked had I known that.

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If we fix it and remove the fluff words it becomes:

"Today it's almost obvious to state that good written communication creates a business advantage."

Why, it wasn't obvious yesterday? Or 20 years ago? And why "almost"? Own up to your sentence, damnit!

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"Well-written communication is a business advantage".

Exactly. Thank you. :-)

It should be "well-written communication."

"Well-written communication" is slightly better idiomatic English than "good written communication", but the latter isn't incorrect. "Good" and "written" are both adjectives modifying "communication". The potential confusion with "well-written" (where "well" is an adverb modifying "written") makes "good" feel a little awkward, but it's valid.

That's hardly the worst thing about the sentence. "Today" is vacuous. "It's" is passive. "Almost" weakens "obvious", so we haven't even gotten to any actual information in the sentence and we're already quibbling. "Creates a business advantage" is awkward and vague. How does it create an advantage? What does this advantage accomplish?

All it means is "Good writing is important", and that is in fact so obvious that it doesn't need to be said. So skip it and move on to something the reader might actually want to know.

Isn't "written communication" a noun phrase?

Good written communication (say, well structured emails) is a different thing than well-written communication (maybe a speech is well written).

The similar usage in the next paragraph points to the noun phrase meaning.

Oh well.

Yes, there are small semantic differences between the two. In this case I'd say that either one would suffice -- the differences are smaller than the overall awkwardness of the sentence.

A really finely crafted article would pick precisely the correct phrase based on tone and meaning, but this one wasn't it.

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