How to write more clearly, think more clearly, and learn complex material [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

How to write more clearly, think more clearly, and learn complex material [pdf]

covingtoninnovations.com

779 pointsSecrethus153 comments

Key takeaways:

1. One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary

2. Stuffy writing is bad writing! It lowers the power of your brain and mine!

3. What words should you never use in writing? Words whose exact meanings you don’t know! Never use a word unless you know EXACTLY what it means

4. If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too!

5. To keep things clear and readable: Put the main point of each paragraph in its first sentence

6. Pretend you’re writing a textbook! That’s how I ended up writing so many books...Organizing knowledge Learning is a lot like writing a book

7. I often write the introduction last, after I know what it will introduce!

8. Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that is not the main point

What books have you written?

I just wanted to clarify that these are the main points extracted from the PowerPoint linked. I actually do write for a living, but most of what I write is proprietary for closed distribution.

1. is not obvious.

For example, if you want to tell a story or go for specific emotions.

To be clear, this is just a simple summary of the source. I agree with your statement, though. In fact, as Rudolf Flesch said in his book, How To Write Speak And Think More Effectively, "So here we have the secret of plain conversational talk: it is not difficult ideas expressed in easy language, it is rather abstractions embedded in small talk. It is heavy stuff packed with excelsior. If you want to be better understood you don’t have to leave out or change your important ideas; you just use more excelsior. It’s as simple as that." The point his is making that the few clear simple points can be packed with some excelsior to improve clarity.

There will be exceptions to all these rules at the expert level, but less expert people should probably follow them.

I was reminded of this recently after reading an essay by a high schooler. The essay was actually pretty insightful, but I couldn't help but notice the way in which the words that the author said seemed to be a great deal more than strictly necessary to communicate the point that he was trying to make to the audience that he was speaking to at the time he was writing the essay.

Perchance.

These contexts don't change the idea in rule 1, but they do change the definition of what is "necessary". There are words that "dilute" a message and are not necessary to convey the literal meaning. But usually we don't want just the literal meaning of things, we want a certain level of dilution. Without it, prose can be clear and specific, but at the same time becomes dense and unreadable. Lots of academic writing is like that.

There are words that are necessary for the _overall effect_, even if not necessary for the literal communication goal of a set of words.

Disagreed with 5, it's too prescriptive. Lots of great writers use progressive disclosure to keep people hooked

Being unselfish also helps with building great products. Reminds me of this article, treat your reader like a customer: https://www.productlessons.xyz/article/improve-business-writ...

I agree. Sometimes a transition statement is better. Sometimes one must present evidence, then summarize. This is just my summary of the full 120-slide PowerPoint.

This is great! Here are my takeaways from that article.

1. Easy writing makes for hard reading; invest in editing and treat your reader like a customer

2. What’s the biggest difference between great writers and all the rest? It’s not talent, it’s treating the process like a product

3. Make it skimmable; expect that your reader is busy

4. Every word should serve a purpose

5. Your points should fit like a jigsaw puzzle, each connected to another

In the article, author reduces (1.)

From: "One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary"

To: "To improve your writing, cut out unnecessary words."

I don't think progressive disclosure applies in the cases the author is discussing.

Slide 8: "Most of the writing in the world is for information." Readers looking for information aren't interested in being teased to keep reading. That's a recipe for 'unhooking' them. They want to know what the author thinks they should know.

No pussyfooting.

I feel like progressive disclosure is such a broad term that anything can be made to fall under it...any book written, show filmed, movie created is progressively disclosing information/story.

FWIW plenty of informational books pussyfoot just to get a bigger piece out, there is fluff, anecdotes, tangents, but humans understand through storytelling, and ultimately that is usually a good way to go about sharing ideas.

Agree. Adopting a less helpful structure in the name of manipulating the reader, is surely incompatible with unselfish writing. From the article:

> I’m not going to demand that you put up with my quirks (bad spelling, bad organization, sloppiness). I’m going to package the information so that it enters your heads as easily as possible.

If we were discussing fiction writing, that would be different. Fiction writers aren't aiming for maximally efficient communication.

Progressive disclosure isn't what's keeping me hooked on the meaning of the registers of your chip. People asking about the status of my open bug is doing that. Give me a table.

You have to know the rules to break them. This is a good rule to know and then know how to break.

Regarding 1, something I've noticed on HN is the overuse of some adverbs. "Absolutely" comes to mind. "I absolutely agree" could as well be "I agree".

True, I wonder if it's driven by people's need to over-express over the internet since there's no body language

I think some people overexpress in general, regardless of the medium. I think it comes from an excess of "passion", which is like permanent exageration. I am prone to it, that's why I know, and I try to keep it under control.

> I think it comes from an excess of "passion", which is like permanent exageration. I am prone to it, that's why I know, and I try to keep it under control.

We thank you.

I suffer from the opposite problem—extremely deadpan personality. I insert exclamation points randomly in emails to seem human.

I don't know; "absolutely" can add emphasis. Advising someone not to use it because "agree" covers it anyway feels like trying to suppress their personality. We're communicating, not playing language golf.

I feel that it dilutes the meaning of whatever comes after. "I agree" conveys a stronger tone than "I absolutely agree". Same as "I love you" is more powerful than "I absolutely love you". I see it as a filler word that doesn't add anything to the sentence. It's subjective I know. Also I would add that if you "absolutely [verb]" all the time you might as well [verb].

Unnecessary emphasis betrays insecurity on the part of the author.

I try to remove common enhancing adverbs when writing emails at work. Removing "very," "definitely," "absolutely," etc. makes professional communication come across more authoritatively and clearly. I still use adverbs to be clear, but they need to communicate something specific that is otherwise hard to articulate.

There's a Chrome Extension for Gmail and Outlook for web that helps you send more confident emails by warning you when you use words which undermine your message.

https://justnotsorry.com

Don't use adverbs or adjectives at all unless necessary.

Combining #7 and #5 leads to:

Often write the first sentence of a paragraph last, after you know what is the paragraph's main point.

Thanks for your well written summary!

>Key takeaways: 1. One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary

I believe you meant, "1. Cut out unnecessary words."

;)

"Omit needless words."

( Strunk and White, 1918 )

> > Key takeaways: 1. One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary

I think it's funny the summarized version is that statement. Because, in the presentation, they progressively cut down that exact statement to arrive at:

"To improve your writing, cut out unnecessary words."

> I believe you meant, "1. Cut out unnecessary words."

I think your version cuts out a little too much. It loses the why and becomes an unexplained imperative.

I believe those points can also be applicable for speaking also, especially in interviews where you are expected to give canned responses in a STAR format.

Author needs to practice more ..after 125 slides he/she could not communicate clearly to me that the underlying hypothesis is true.

This is my writing gem: when you send an email, you either want them to know something or do something, so say that in the first sentence:

Good: "FYI, our etcd cluster is broken, but we're working to fix it."

Bad: "I came in this morning, and while I was going through my emails when I saw a message about one of the nodes in our cluster. So I checked it out, and sure enough it was down, and I went to the console and saw the kernel had panicked, so I ... [much further down] and that's when I realized our etcd cluster was down."

The later is what I call The Narrative: people have a natural inclination to tell a story, but the irony is that usually what's at the end of the story is the thing that should be first ("the cluster is down!").

Similarly when asking for something:

Good: "Could you please get me a new monitor? I'm getting headaches from the current one's constant flickering"

Bad: "I had a headache yesterday, so I had to leave early—I hope that's okay. Anyway, I'm not sure about the purchase requisition process. I think there's a resonating frequency between the 60Hz electric system and my monitor's refresh rate, but I'm not an electrical engineer. By the way, the new chair is great ..."

A more generalised approach: structure emails in importance order, top down. So, actionable stuff at top, rationales further down, in descending importance etc...

This becomes more critical when talking to execs.

For a masterclass in how not to write, take a look at this BBC article which is narrativised to the point of being downright insulting. [0] It's quite an effort to even figure out what they're talking about. (The article's dishonest clickbait title is just icing.)

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49012771

Or any article from The New Yorker.

This is how journalists are taught to write. In a "pyramidal" style where the key facts come first, followed by elaboration, followed by more elaborate elaboration.

Even following a simple "who what when where why how" order of elaboration is extremely useful and clarifying.

Tell the story if the conclusion is unimportant, but there is a story to be told that is cool. Otherwise skip the story.

If the story and the conclusion are important, give the conclusion and then hey, if anyone is interested, here is a story related to the conclusion.

> … but the irony is that usually what's at the end of the story is the thing that should be first ("the cluster is down!").

Also know as BLUF (bottom line up front).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)

Agree on most of the points here and the PDF.

The only problem with me is that, the PDF itself is unnecessarily lengthy, which kind of weakening the point author is trying to make. Would be nice if it is in one or two pages.

Agree with the general sentiment, and a constructive suggestion:

>Similarly when asking for something. Good: "Could you please get me a new monitor? I'm getting headaches from the current one's constant flickering"

Put the rationale ahead of the request. I.e. "My monitor is giving me headaches. It's affecting my work. Will you get me a new monitor? "

This way you avoid the defensive knee-jerk reaction before you have made your case. Notice I also added a sentence of why your boss should care.

A formula of two declaratives + a question is a good formula for short communications.

Always open with an "executive summary". At most two sentences must convey all the information.

Then you can add more details and narrative.

This applies to email, PowerPoint, wiki pages, etc.

It's a hard rule to follow - I'd risk saying that the "better" writer you are, larger the chance you'll drift into details and narrative.

A good mechanism to solve that problem is to add the tl; Dr aka executive summary after you've written all you need.

----

Many years at Big Consulting Inc may have dried up my soul but at least taught me to communicate effectively, I think.

One useful first step in becoming a better writer - in particular if your subject is complex - is to to delete your Twitter account and never look at another Twitter thread. Character limits kill creativity and complexity.

The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading. If you're going to write about a complex scientific or technical subject, you should have some examples in mind of great texts that you've read. What did other writers do that you liked or that stuck with you? Equally true, what are some really bad examples, some things to avoid?

For example, here's what I think is an excellent popular history book, and if I ever wrote something with a historical bent, I'd flip though it first: "By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia" by Barry Cunliffe

https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/...

The point about Twitter is really this: you have to develop the skill of composing a paragraph as a coherent entity in order to become a decent writer, and Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart.

Of course that's just advice for non-fiction writing; if you're doing fiction or poetry basically anything goes. The public might like it or hate it, but the literary critics can safely be ignored.

Limitations and bounds generally allow me to explore a smaller creative space without tangents. I think this is a generally accepted trope in creative domains.

There's also the fact that a swath of the world stopped reading after high school. If accessibility and reach are a goal of a piece of writing, Twitter sort of forces a writer to compress an idea and move on.

Who knows how many people I lost even with just this short comment. I guess it's about end goals.

I agree very much. The whole document in the OP reads like someone who lost his Twitter account and is trying to communicate in PPT.

Barry Cunliffe is a great scholar. Europe Between the Oceans is another great example.

On the contrary, a person skilled at Twitter could have compressed the essence of what you wrote into 280 characters.

I’ve found the best books and essays are similarly compressible, with the rest of the information being about bolstering it as being worthy of the precious few slots in your L1 cache.

The essence, perhaps... with none of the nuance or shading. If one thinks that is unnecessary, dispensable fluff, Twitter is no doubt sufficient for most writing.

And a rhyming dictionary contains all poetry in many fewer pages.

> The essence, perhaps... with none of the nuance or shading

Precisely why the worlds problems are all solvable on Twitter.

Yep, I do remember the many problems Twitter solved. Without Twitter, we would be centuries away from enlightened world peace and mutual understanding.

Nuance and shading is not entirely unselfish. Too much nuance indicates a lack of trust in your reader.

Given the nature and quality of replies I’ve seen even on HN — where there are no such character limits and the level of education its members have is higher on average — it seems to me that trust has yet to be earned.

I explicitly said that it’s necessary, but generally it’s not for the primary purpose of encoding the core point one is trying to make. Nuance to me is more about convincing the unpersuaded reader the idea has merit and is important or useful. Which is why Twitter allows reasonable idea propagation but does a terrible job of persuading people who disagree.

Before twitter it was called aphorisms and Nietzsche was doing it before it was cool.

Does the master oil painter not start with charcoal pencil?

"Brevity is the soul of wit", and saying what you have to say with as few and simple words as possible is essential for a good writer.

It is, however, far from the only important thing!

I agree: Twitter forces you to be succinct, a useful skill when writing an Executive Summary for a business paper or an Abstract for a paper in a scientific journal.

"Never look at another Twitter thread" is pretty great advice no matter what the question is.

I disagree: I follow research scientists and software developers in topics of my interest. This way, Twitter feed keeps me up-to-date on useful information in topics I care for and I can exchange news and ideas with those people.

See also "First, You Write a Sentence" by Joe Moran.

Twitter has a lot in common with writing poetry. I think it can be a good practice, depending on one’s goals. But I agree with your general point about reading a lot. I think it’s important to read a lot of different styles/genres: fiction, academic writing, journalism, old stuff, new stuff, translations, great literature in various languages, ad copy, so on. Most good writing is about conforming/mimicry and being especially considerate of the reader. Exceptional writing is a different thing. A lot of bad writing comes from regular people trying to write exceptionally. It’s hard to learn to write dumber, but thankfully the internet lets us all practice a bunch. Whether we like it or not, most people prefer Stephen king to Henry James or Proust.

Twitter is an extreme example, but in general, learning to cut concepts down to the bone and write in short succinct sentences is a super useful skill to make your writing more comprehensible. For example:

Twitter is an extreme example. In general, however, it is important to learn to cut concepts down to the bone. Writing in short succinct sentences is a super useful skill. It improves your writing and makes it more comprehensible.

> The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading.

I strongly agree. Based on my experience in my first profession, teaching school children throughout my 20s, I’d say that doing a lot of reading is more important than everything on these slides combined.

> Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart.

You are describing 'tweet threads' (formerly 'tweetstorms'). They are a popular format for long-form writing on Twitter.

Many famous old books (bhagavatgita, etc.) look like a long list of tweets. Each "tweet" is well thought out and has multiple layers of meanings. Such books often have companion books with commentary, where each "tweet" is explained in many paragraphs of text. Those commentaries are written by very knowledgeable and respected people, who are, nevertheless, aren't wise enough (yet) to write those condensed "tweets".

Forgive me for bringing up my own material here, but I wrote a piece that is highly relevant in this context only two days ago:

Writing for Engineers - https://www.heinrichhartmann.com/posts/writing/

This text is particularly geared towards Software Engineers and focuses more on the psychology of getting started with writing. Lot's of overlap with the content in this post (which has much more depth on the "how to write well" part).

I hereby forgive you.

Thank you for posting and for having a site that is easy to save for later.

Good article!

I especially enjoyed the “Start at the Top not the Beginning” part.

No need to ask for forgiveness.

Just disclose you're promoting something you created.

>Heat the iron before working it >Conversely, if you don’t have the context in your brain right now, you have two options (1) don’t write or (2) start loading the context into your brain.

I haven't heard that idea before - makes a lot of sense, thanks!

I think this is a great presentation. I've found that learning to write has largely a process of unlearning everything I was taught in secondary school. In school we were conditioned to excrete as much bullshit as we could in a fixed amount of time. Everything we learned--new vocabulary, literary techniques--we were told was for sounding more sophisticated, which we unknowingly interpreted as verbose. I even remember a loved English teacher saying "the purpose of the first sentence in a short answer is make yourself sound smarter than you are. You shouldn't answer the question until at least the second sentence." And for some reason, every argument needed 3 supporting reasons, even though in real life there's almost always just one dominant reason.

Turns out actual good writing has precisely the opposite spirit. It's about compressing ideas into their simplest forms. New words are invented to make us more concise, not less. I wish I had realized this many years ago, before writing my essays for college admission.

Another thing done at all levels of schooling is to ignore the needed process of revision. A paper is written and then graded, but if revision was a focus the student would learn a great lesson: great ideas and writing take re-writing

I never thought about this, but it's true. The value of iteration is woefully undersold.

Now that I think about it, an incredibly valuable exercise would be to give students a longwinded, vague, rambling essay and make them rewrite it to be as clear and concise as possible. This even works within the time-constrained test environment.

I like this. I'm diving into the zettlekasten thing after reading How to Take Smart Notes, and stopping to think about how I write so that it's as simple and clear as possible, while still being informative enough for my future self is what flexes my head muscle the most. This complements it nicely.

Mind describing the value you gained from How to Take Smart Notes? Sounds interesting to me, as someone wanting to catalog all "information" i take in

I bought it on a whim after somebody mentioned it and was very pleasantly surprised. Ahrens makes a convincing case for use of the zettlekasten, but the book is mostly about how to acquire understanding of something. You could read it without having any interest in making a zettlekasten and still get a lot out of it.

Having read about zettlekasten online I thought they were one thing, but after having read this I feel that I have a deeper understanding of them, and how to approach using them. The goal isn't necessarily to archive all your knowledge, it's to facilitate insights and new ideas. In a way, having your knowledge and ideas cross referenced is just a nice side effect. Prior to reading this, I would have taken an approach that would have just been a database of things I learned, which takes a lot of time to create and doesn't do much for you in the end.

It's a short, easy read at around 150 (small) pages and the author keeps it pretty interesting. I plan on rereading it pretty soon.

edit: I forgot to add that a lot of the book goes over study methodsmost people are taught growing up, and why they don't really work that well. I thought this was pretty interesting as well.

If you haven't already, you may take a look at networked thinking applications, like the open source logseq[1] or all the similar proprietary outliner alternatives out there.

There is a growing ecosystem based on a modern note-taking style heavily based on bi-directional links for organizing your knowledge with a bottom-up strategy, and a friendly community sharing advice while discovering the possibilities of these tools.

Plus, you can do zettlekasten or GTD on these tools if you have already built a habit on these techniques. The outliner will accomodate that habit, and let you grow it long-term into a personal knowledge database providing opportunistic insights.

[1] https://logseq.com/

How to Take Smart Notes is hands down one of my favorite books and I incorporate a lot of the lessons learned in both my personal and professional life.

Yeah I think that book is actually a great read. Too bad the name is that way --- it is a lot more than about taking notes.

It sounds like I need to add this to my list. Thanks

Just bought this book, thanks. I've heard about it before, but this post was the critical "okay, I've now heard about this N times, time to look into it" moment.

Would this be decent as an audiobook? Or should I go with a hard copy?

You could audio book it, there's only a couple of diagrams in it, none of which are strictly necessary, and the book itself is fairly engaging. It's more about imparting general principles than giving you a flowchart or checklist for studying.

People who dig this deck may dig this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Simple-Truth-Writing-Classic/dp...

The best single book I've ever read on writing well. Had a big impact on me outside of writing, too.

Looks interesting. May I ask what would be the most valuable lesson you got out of it?

The most enduring lesson was an attitudinal shift toward the reader. The book's stance is that the reader is capable of and interested in understanding whatever it is that you want to say, and your job is not to dazzle her, or persuade her, but rather to provide her the conceptual building blocks to conclude what you have yourself concluded.

After reading the book I realized that, without ever having consciously decided to, I had been writing at least a little bit to signal how smart and creative and insightful I was, vs trying to communicate effectively. This was a revelation, and not a happy one -- so much misdirected vanity, to so little purpose!

Or him.

It's too late to edit my comment, but as long as we're talking about it, I just read this article linked earlier today on HN, and it's such a lovely example of the classical style:

https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/what-does-shitty-job-me...

The author is clearly trying to give the reader what he/she knows about this subject, clearly and simply. It is straightforward, a delight to read, and an inspiration.

Something that's coming to mind while reading this is how much company communication these days happens almost exclusively on Slack, and how antithetical that format can be to writing and thinking clearly.

Yes, I'm still smarting from this default behavoir that pressing "return" sends the message instead of starting a new paragraph. My thoughts usually run to more than one paragraph, and I like to edit before I send.

I supposes that's not "chat", but then again written is not oral.

(side note-- again, two paragraphs, plus self-commentary)

I hate that as well - but finally learned that you can actually change the RETURN behavior in Slack’s preferences.

I wonder why they decided that a different behavior was needed depending on you being in a code block (RETURN -> new line) than normal writing (RETURN -> submit). That’s bad UX!

I’m so old school that I want an e-mail so I can file it (as a file) in whatever folder I find logical - that’s not possible in Slack (which is good for non-worthy-of-being-saved chit-chat kind of communications)

You can use SHIFT-RETURN in Slack/Discord to insert a newline. Maybe not great for RSI, but it's muscle memory now.

I've suggested creating a company forum at a few different places, but it's always received like a strange idea that nobody will actually engage with or give any thought to.

Email, Slack, etc, none of them create a good long term record that outsiders and newcomers can consume. Some companies have a wiki, but I've never seen them used. Forums are good for long form communication, people can put in more effort knowing that their effort will be available to all going forward.

Our team has begun using GitHub Discussions for this purpose, and it's actually pretty good. I've been actively trying to push conversations there from Slack, but some people still seem really hesitant to use it. Or even worse, some people seem to try to use it like a chat application, sending a bunch of short and quick replies, rather than letting the conversation evolve slowly and async.

I've heard 90+% of people will not participate in online discussions. It makes me wonder what people would do if you forced them to do so as part of a job. How many people can participate in a forum and make coherent multi-paragraph arguments? We HN participants can, but we're a biased group. A lot of people are accustomed to conversational-style communication as found in Slack or social media, and they may not have written a formal argument since high school.

I think you're spot-on. If anything, it's closer to 99%. I've run/managed various forums over the years, and the disparity between the active participants and the passive readers was always wider than you'd think.

Oh yeah, good point. A lot of people these days have never used a communication medium like that. It would be interesting to work at a company that really prioritized people who prefer that communication style, over the non stop stream of consciousness that Slack turns into.

A lot of my old colleagues actually balked at the thought of creating a report, preferring mostly to be told what to do, or doing it their own way. Actually justifying their arguments in writing with cons and pros was a no-go.

These days, as I'm working as a freelancer, I try to get much of my thinking in writing. These makes sharing information a bliss as I have a trove of documentation to support whatever discussion we're having

Actually, Automattic, the distributed company behind WordPress uses blogs (called p2s after the WP theme) for this. Each team has their own 'blog' and you can link them, comment, etc. Then there are company wide blogs with different topics, watercooler blogs, etc.

Really useful to revisit past decisions and as a company wide knowledgebase. They even created a product out of it: https://wordpress.com/p2/

Disclaimer: I work there, but on a different product.

At a previous job we had certain email lists that were archived and searchable. But I think today everyone would just use Slack.

Forums are preferable to email lists, in my opinion.

This idea was completely alien to me until I experienced it first hand. The F in FAANG puts emphasis on putting things like weekly/monthly status reports, incident investigation (even minor ones), and other useful information into 100-500 word posts. This has created a wealth of historical documentation about projects and problems that always helped me debug problems. What's more, it made discussing plans easier because participants had hours/days to think things through and shape them into paragraphs.

I've heard that Stripe and Amazon have writing coded into their cultures as well. I wish I knew more companies that did this because it's absolutely a different level of communication that helps ease so much friction (at a small price of reading/writing).

We dont use slack like that really, but google doc comments are similarly limiting. Atleast most thoughts happen in a google doc

I don’t understand. Slack is written communication. How could that be antithetical to writing? Every time you use it is an opportunity to practice.

Slack (and teams, discord, skype) are all antithetical to the style of written communication outlined in the slide deck. They make difficult writing a long, well-structured document to record and transmit a complex idea. IM team coordination platforms are only good for the first phase of writing, that is, just getting ideas down in written format. The issue is that the tools built into those platforms do not aid in the other phases of the writing process, and in fact, they sort of make it difficult, actually. I speak from experience having to go back through thousands of Discord messages to condense the ideas into a collection of documents on different topics.

Someone should write an extension that makes it easier to convert IM thread to an organized document outline in slack or discord. That would be nice.

For someone who advocates clear writing and communication, it's pretty amusing that he puts this advice into the worst kind of information-sparse 125-page Powerpoint, and thinks that it needs to be protected with a copyright.

I skipped right to the HN comments for summaries and follow-up article/book recommendations.

I found it embarrassing that I actually do not know much material that worth to be written. My gut feeling is that one month of intensive research/work/study can be summarized in a long blog post. But in my post-student life I have, unfortunately, avoided so many of those intensive experience because they are difficult. I even switch job every 2-3 years so that I never get much deep understanding of pretty much anything and fortunately not many jobs actually need one.

This might be something I can start working on for my second half of life.

Every time I wanted to write, I felt that what I'm writing about is either trivial or already done. But whenever someone asked me something, I could speak about it for hours. So now, I'm building personal wikis - one for learning and work, the other for thinking. I jot down whatever I feel somewhat relevant. Aiming for the perfect blog post stunted me, so I love writing in a more raw format and a less structured environment.

If you can speak for hours I believe you already have some understanding of the issue, but when you start writing something you might tend to underestimate some knowledge as "trivial" so that you would not want to write them down, at all. That significantly reduces the length of writing IMHO.

The key to Plain English writing can be found in the book, "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing).

It gives you the ability to take simple ideas, and write in a simple way, as well as take complex ideas and write in a simple way.

Highly recommended skills for anyone wanting to compel others to action.

Make it Clear by Patrick Henry Winston [0] is slightly related to this. I learned a lot of things from it.

I first got to know about him through his now famous video- How to Speak [1].

[0]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/make-it-clear

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

Great presentation! Another short read that covers similar ground is "The Day You Became a Better Writer" by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert):

https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...

I find pg's essay on writing[1] to be one of the best on this topic.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html

To those like me who are more interested in thinking clearly and use writing as a thinking tool may find this book more helpful https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Paper-V-Howard/dp/0688077587

Wow, I am so surprised to see this - I came upon an earlier version of this deck 10+ years ago, and it's one of a very small number of things I've held onto and made a point to re-read every couple of years. Very cool to see there's an updated version of it!

I resonated with the "Why"s so much:

> * Clear writing leads to clear thinking.

> * You don’t know what you know until you try to express it.

> * If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too

This is the main reason I've kept blogging over the years.

This resonated with me as well. I taught university philosophy courses and programming courses at a bootcamp. Trying to explain stuff like this to oneself or to others was for me the quickest and most thorough way to truly understand the complexities of these subjects.

In addition to the comments about writing (and title), I would also encourage everyone to read the Epistemology part of the slide deck. It gives a nice framework to form beliefs, opinions and test them.

This stuck out for me;

> "Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are not a layer of added decoration. They help express the meaning. If you let a computer “correct” them, you may not get what you intend."

The stilted formulations of Grammarly powered student essays is getting obvious to me. Does anyone else feel that assisted writing has every drop of personality wrung out of it?

Very useful for learners of all ages.

I haven't read a 125-page deck completely for a while.

It seems a little strange that the author uses a slide deck to explain how to write more clearly, but then I only read the first dozen slides. Maybe later he makes a convincing case that an outline is the ultimate form of clear writing?

This seems to just be a pastiche of ‘how to write well’ advice that you’ll find most anywhere. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful, but it’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, and often more clearly.

It's significantly better than k-12 or the first page of Google.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&q=how+to+...

The first 1/3 is sort of useful, I'd say stop reading the deck when it says “There are invisible, undetectable elves all over this room” is a meaningless stence (it is not meaningless, the sentence may be false but everyone can understand what it takes for it to become true, namely 1. you see elves in this room OR 2. you detect elves in this room OR 3. both.).

Also, I'd suggest epistemiology is not so much about finding out what's true or false but what is knowable and not knowable in principle - i.e., to establish the frontier of the knowable (which does not change, whereas the frontier of the present knowledge shifts).

No, your 1, 2 or 3 don't help at all. If you see the elves or detect them, then they are not "invisible, undetectable elves", and your observation has no bearing on the truth of the sentence. So the sentence absolutely cannot ever be tested, cannot be said to be true or false, and therefore is in some sense outside the domain of logic.

You can have a separate argument about whether an untestable statement is necessarily "meaningless" (maybe the way it makes you feel is the meaning) but I believe the only point the author is trying to get across here is that some statements make predictions about the world, and some don't, and it's worth being aware of the difference.

Those appear to be nice points. Anything similar for speaking?

I think a lot of this applies to spoken communication, too. For instance, if you can't say it clearly and succinctly, you may be lacking clarity yourself and need to do more reflection before talking about it. Also, I like the perspective of communicating while believing your audience is the important one, not yourself.

Agreed. You can apply most of it.

- Speaking = Power - You influence people by speaking for them to listen. - Knowledge = Expressing it - Non-sense speak = Non-sense thoughts - You speak because they are important.

I highly recommend this lecture: https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY

As someone who explains complicated things to people in writing for a living, this is one of the best guides for business and technical communication I’ve ever seen.

How do you resist the urge to describe all possible exceptions? In my writing, I describe something, then find myself spending four times as many paragraphs explaining all the exceptions.

Fake example:

A bicycle has two wheels of equal size.

Some bicycles have two extra smaller wheels on each side to train bicycle riders.

Occasionally you might have one helper wheel on the left or right instead of two, but it's rare.

If a bicycle has two wheels in the back and one in the front it's a tricycle. Not to be confused with training wheels.

I miss the time when writers didn't follow these rules, it was so much more fun to read, and ideas expressed were more complex and interesting too.

Yes there is an obvious advantage to fuzzyness in writing as it lets the readers make their own path in a story. But not everybody likes that, lots of readers enjoy being taken for a guided tour.

For me it is rather that this style doesn't encourage my own thinking. The idea is kind of the opposite, that is that simple writing should free mental capacity, but in my case it just puts my mind in a relaxed state where it can only consume information, while more sophisticated style kindles creativity and interaction with what's written rather than pure consumption

Yes! I've had this _exact_ thought while reading "Sell Like Crazy". Such a badly written book in this sense. Tons of ideas and methods but it doesn't truly stick in my mind if everything is ELI5'd to infinity. I'd rather read fiction (e.g. Murakami) where I have to close the book and think before I continue.

Good news, your time is still now.

These are pretty simple rules of information delivery (at least up to page 43 of this 125 page power point). They've been around for a while but they're most useful for mid-level corporate communication and things resembling that.

Fiction writers and writers trying to convey more sophisticated ideas haven't used them (or haven't only them) in the past and generally don't at present.

"Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that is not the main point."

I loved that phrase! I think it is important for designing UIs too.

I learnt this during my PhD. I think that is what we are supposed to learn whole doing PhD. How to think clearly.

"Writing for reader to NOT asking more questions" is my way of communication now.

"Of a 100-page grammar book, you may need 3 pages, or less."

Or fewer!! (I think)

for an article about writing, the format ís quite ironic. txt version: https://pastebin.com/dGd75ky8

I dont care about writing but I want to learn new things quickly- how?

I don't have a good space to learn in.

Here’s an alternative method: by doing it.

Refreshing ideas. Thank you for sharing.

Great article, thanks for sharing!

Anyone know who is this RDG?

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