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Comment by zamadatix | Hacker News Reader

1st sentence - Explaining the tool for those the tool was made for without beating around the bush.

2nd sentence - Explaining the tool to folks in the general web domain what it can do for them.

3rd sentence - Explaining where to learn how to use the tool if you've stumbled across it but web is not your area of expertise.

All that info fits in nearly 25 words then it lists the options for the tool and jumps straight into multiple examples (with outputs!). If the only explanation had been "htmlq: like jq, but for HTML" I'd agree but having the comparison to explain what it does isn't a bad thing it's _only_ having the comparison that would be bad.

Personally I think this is a model example of a opening for a Github readme.

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I disagree. The 2nd sentence contains, "extract bits content." What is that?

If you're going to write a minimal introduction, at least make sure it's not confusing.

I get the feeling the author felt compelled to write an introduction and did so with as little effort as possible.

I believe he tailored it to his target audience. If you find it confusing, you are likely not it.

As web developer for over a decade "bits content" doesn't mean anything to me. But I understand what the tool does from the rest of the description. Try running a google search for "bits content," [0] it's not a commonly used phrase in web development or anything. It's a poor choice of words.

0. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22bits%20content%22

It's supposed to be "bits of content", it's not jargon. The author's just accidentally a word, we all do it.

It's more than fair to say in technical documentation you intend others to use having a grammatical error or missing word is confusing and a problem. It's the writing equivalent of having a bug in your code. And it's definitely not "writing to a target audience" as the parent comment suggested. We all make mistakes but don't try to call a mistake effective documentation.

Of course it is, but neither parent nor anyone else is saying anything close to the mistake being effective documentation. There's a single missing word which needs to be added in, but the overall text is clearly writing to a target audience. You are aware of this, and of how small the mistake is, and you understand what the sentence should read as, so I'm not sure what your point is?

My hunch is that this is a typo and it should read "extract bits OF content."

I agree and having a missing word in your text often leads to confusion :)

Honestly you could drop the "bits" which is a bit redundant and use the phrase "Uses CSS selectors to extract content from HTML files."

Exactly this! I’ll fix it after work.

Maybe have the line about "jq" be 2nd. Have the first line be a brief description of what it actually does.

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