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Comment by namanyayg | Hacker News Reader

What I've always interpreted this advice as as is to read out loud what I write and then eliminate the parts that sound weird or like a robot.

Source: Writing for more than half my life and HN has liked some of my articles in the past

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My current best way to write is to just write everything that amuses me, then go back and edit out the tangents, and then usually reverse the order of the paragraphs.

Interesting, why reverse?

A common suggestion is to put the bottom line on the top line. Consider all the articles posted even here that make the reader suffer through the writer's own thinking process before getting to the point.

> A common suggestion is to put the bottom line on the top line.

BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front — e.g., https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre...

I don’t know. When I jam out a comment I seem to summarize at the end when I’m done, and then I reread quickly and see the summary made a weird conclusion but was a fine introduction.

When news was transmitted by flaky telegraph systems, the first paragraph evolved to be a concise version. The ensuing paragraphs provided layers of detail. If the connection was lost, whatever got through would stand as enough. That is more or less how I write emails for work. The other thing is, tell em what you’re going to say, then say it, then tell em what you told them.

This. Sometimes during hectic times, my bosses need to get the right summary of everything in one phone screen. So I generally try to have mails with a first line summarizing everything in one glance, a short section you can read in an elevator ride, and then everything else.

For example, during Log4Shell, our Group Director of Operations was helping Support and Account Management with scared customers and was just bouncing customer meeting to meeting. Hence, line one of the mail was "Rollout of mitigation 1 to applications estimated by 12:13; delays expected at only internally reachable middleware". After that, a 3-4 sentence paragraph with more details and then a longer explanation in detail, ideally with keywords highlighted and such. Those would be discussed in some peace later on.

what?

I always understood it as advice for school children who don't know how to express themselves in writing and end up with a blank page. You are encouraged to imagine you're talking to someone to overcome the hurdle of translating thoughts into words.

Along similar lines, in elementary school we were taught the introduction/body/conclusion pattern to help organize our thoughts in essays, but actually using those words as headers makes you sound like a child. "Conclusion" is especially common. It just reads like you're blindly following that pattern and don't actually know how to tie your thoughts together.

I remember editing my then girlfriend’s (now wife) papers in university, when she was struggling to explain something succinctly. I’d ask her: well what are you trying to say? And she would explain it to me, clear as day. “Just write that.”

This is how I write

I literally use my iphone voice to text to transcribe, then go back and edit.

It’s surprising that more people aren’t doing it

I still can't figure out a non-awkward place to talk to a device to generate text.

Can't do it in public, can't do it in the office, talking to my phone at home feels weird.

That’s purely a you problem

So you can just start talking to your computer in a coffee house or middle of an open plan office

"So claude, let's get this feature started, ummm. Maybe we could, umm, get working on the backend first..."

And you don't feel the least bit awkward or silly?

I agree it feels silly, even though we look like we’re talking to ourselves when we’re on a phone call in front of others. It is bizarre.

If I saw someone doing that it wouldn’t feel any different to me as an outside observer than someone having a phone call

People have crazy phone conversations on BART or Caltrain all the time

I do however have no issue doing that basically anywhere I would otherwise have a phone call

Me personally? No I wouldn’t do that because it wouldn’t be comfortable to have a phone call in a coffee shop

I think most people don't like editing text on a phone. I hate it.

I’m trying to move more and more to my phone so I can walk around

I’d love a great voice IDE

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