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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

Brilliant story.

That being said, Page should learn to be a better writer. Take this, for example:

As for my right ear, I was born deaf in it lol. This was not a fun experience to say the least.

Being born deaf in one ear is rarely a cause for "laughing out loud," and the "lol" adds nothing to the first sentence. "To say the least" is a cliché and should be eliminated.

Anyone could be guilty of these writing sins and in a large enough sample of my own writing I'm sure someone could find clichés. Nonetheless they're pervasive enough to detract from the piece. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get Write Right! (my favorite short, pithy writing book) and William Zissner's On Writing Well.

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I think there is a time and a place for formal writing, but I liked the :) and the lols in this case. It feels very informal and personal.

I agree. I thought the writing was really poor and very hard to follow. One moment he's talking about losing his hearing, then his vision and then having Epstein Barr.

That being said, it seems like a pretty interesting story, good for him for fighting through his problems!

I think there's room for the perspectives offered by both formal and informal writing.

Given the informal context, reminiscing about first job interviews with friends, I feel that the author wanted to share that setting with us as readers.

It may not have been the same decision you would have made, but take it as a chance to learn a new perspective rather than opening with hard criticisms.

I disagree, I don't think the style was informal, I think it was simply poorly written. There is a difference between the two. The blogger never purported to be a good writer, so I don't fault him for it and I was able to get the gist of what he wanted to say, but it wasn't well written..

Informal is totally fine, but I found the relatively low writing quality distracting.

You're criticising this dude's writing and he got a meeting with Mike Moritz. Even if he didn't receive a positive outcome (and if this story is even true, I'm not doubting just saying) total props to the lad for getting a meeting via a cold email with one of the biggest venture investors in history.

How many other people can do the same thing?

In fact, it's actually irrelevant in this case that the writer made mistakes and could be better (all of us could be better). The most impressive point of the story is he showed enough courage to write to someone at the height of the VC industry and get a response and invite for a meeting.

Props to the lad.

Being born deaf in one ear is rarely a cause for "laughing out loud"

I think it was quite clearly intended as sarcasm.

the "lol" adds nothing to the first sentence

I can agree with you there though, but mostly because I don't like "lol" as a word and not because of the use of sarcasm.

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