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The Importance of Writing Well

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31 pointsteej12 comments

I agree with what the author is saying but take a slightly different approach to it. I think writing well is important but I think more focus should be put on writing succinctly. Because if you write succinctly it forces you to be clear.

This is the theory of William Zinsser's On Writing Well (http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti...).

It's one of my favorite books and its primary point is that verbosity is the enemy of clarity and therefore the clearest sentence is also the smallest one. I think that concept is a 1,000 times more important than having perfect grammar.

Oh, and to bring this back to tech, I think this concept is even more important given the sheer amount of data available to use today. Everyone should be trying to write as succinctly as possible just so their readers can fit it all in.

I agree. I've long chased-after a notion of "information density" -- you want to get the best bang for your (written) buck. Zinsser's book is one of my favorites.

One needs to be careful, however, of being too concise or focused on density alone. There are many lessons that are better relayed (and learned) in the form of a story or anecdote than in dry, factual form.

Of course, if you do use stories, then being concise within that form is, naturally, still an important consideration, but storytelling mustn't be ruled out simply because it tends to rely on using more words (I know you weren't saying that, but I think it's a key point.)

if you write succinctly it forces you to be clear

Well put. I think this is also true for code: succinct code is generally easier to read and understand. This only works up to a point, though: overly succinct code becomes obfuscated code. Or maybe it's simply that some kinds of succinctness are beneficial, and some kinds are harmful.

As a writer myself, I consume these sort of guides religiously, but they always have a journalistic bent; fiction rarely seems to be considered. [1] This is usually excused by these guide-writers with a remark that "there's no one true way to tell a story well."

Indeed, there are many ways, perhaps an infinite number, but there are just as many ways to tell a story badly, and it would be helpful to at least ponder upon some of them, rather than telling each author to start from scratch. I'd love to see a guide that just works through the corpus of the standard set of famous authors, and points out the various choices of narrative construction and prosody they made along the way.

Sadly, not even the university courses I took on this specific subject did this well; they seemed more to be "here, look at this author; he writes well, does he not? You should read him, and perhaps osmose what he knows, somehow." This is not the scientific method; we do not teach people about gravity by repeatedly dropping things on them. We experiment with variations, seeing how each change affects some variable--in this case, the experience of reading--and then declare that some or another technique has certain statistical effects on readers.

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[1] Fiction is not orthogonal to HN--narratives in general, and the allegory in particular, can be just as valid methods of information delivery as plain speech--but that's another rant.

With all due respect I think you might be missing the point.

When you write non-fiction you are trying to convey facts. That's why all these guides focus on non-fiction because, in truth, you are conveying information more than anything. So rules like the ones in these guides bring you closer to the ideal because they strip away anything that is not relevant to relaying the information.

Fiction on the other hand is really the act of conveying your own persona to the reader. Even though you are telling a story its a story born out of your mind and is therefore a representation of you. So in contrast the more rules you put on that the further you get away from your intended purpose.

At least, that's the way I see it.

Rules in this case are just like rules that could be applied to hacking, or startups: if you don't understand why it's there, you probably shouldn't break it. If you do understand, and know why it doesn't apply to your situation, go ahead.

Conveying your persona isn't just about yourself; the recipient needs to be able to recieve it. Experience has shown that there are things you can do to make that easier for them. Rules in fiction would be to do those things, and avoid the things which make it harder.

Even if something is non-fictional, it can still be a story. The most engrossing non-fiction content (such as investigative journalism or essays) has more in common with fiction (in the sense that stories are relayed and emotions are worked) than it does with dry parroting of facts.

Learning at least the basics of storytelling and being able to write good fiction are essential skills for non-fiction writers who aim to be engrossing.

I totally agree with the sentiment but strongly disagree with the provided resources. Studying style guides to learn how to write well is like studying the syntax of a language to learn how to build good algorithms. There’s a connection, but it’s missing that the art of “writing well” is split into two parts.

Firstly, yes, you have syntax, grammar and spelling - the “technicalities” of the task. These are less important than.. the actual message. There’s enough technically fine but dull and easily ignored text out there. To be successful, the words must first mean something to the reader and be able to inspire them to read on - learning syntax and style is not going to help with that at all.

Unfortunately, writing what the reader wants to read can be both very easy and very difficult. It’s very easy if you have the ability to get out of your own head and place yourself into the readers’ shoes, but some people find that, in itself, difficult. This is essential before you start thinking about style though - otherwise you’ll be to English what a code monkey is to programming.

(Figured I should post this here as well, just because more discussion tends to take place :))

Is it still 1996? Clicking on one of the reference sites listed in the article feels like stepping into a time machine:

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

"Guide to Grammar & Writing" should have a knowledge exchange with "Guide to Web Site Design & Style".

You mean "The Importance of Writing Good"?

ummm... Shouldn't it be "The Importantance of Writing Good"?

;)

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