The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned | Hacker News Reader

The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned

blog.stevenpressfield.com

130 pointstalison62 comments

Hacker's Corollary:

"The Most Important Programming Lesson I Ever Learned"

Nobody wants to run your shit.

Make it simple. Make it easy. Make it fun (to the extent that you can). Make it intuitive. Make it do exactly what needs to be done.

Your user is too busy for anything else.

Please don't make it intuitive, I know everybody says it should be but that assumes that all software is made to please the casual user. The best software is made to please the expert user, and makes them many times more powerful that the average user.

Why can't powerful features be done in an intuitive fashion? Smart UI design will allow for that. The more typical argument is one of simplicity versus functionality. But if you choose functionality, why not put in the effort to make the features as easy to use as possible?

I'm not a UI expert and definitely need to improve things with my site, but I've found that most non-tech users can't be bothered to do much of anything that requires a little thought. If you're not spoon feeding it to them, they don't want it. This is why drag and drop website creation is so successful.

I find this argument completely incorrect... Was Google made for expert users? Were ipods made for expert users? Providing an interface which allows users to accomplish a complex task and in the process users know what they are doing is the essence of the whole ui.

The expert user was a casual or novice user once too...

If I find something unintuitive, then I will avoid using it. If I find something intuitive, then, provided its s\for a task I need to do, I willo use it and become an "expert user". I think software needs to be intuitive (or, more importantly, intuitive to the target user), yet still cater for the expert power user by providing shortcuts/macros/scripts/keyboard commands/advanced features etc.

First, it's not necessarily a tradeoff.

Second, it should be intuitive to your target audience, be they experts or casual users.

"Have you ever noticed how other people's stuff is shit, and your own shit is stuff?" - George Carlin

As much as I respect George, I think its reverse applies to us hackers

"Have you ever noticed how other people's shit is stuff, and your own stuff is shit?"

Uh, but that's only because computers make us humble. (Or modest. Not sure which one.)

George Carlin had enough money to have stuff. I have shit.

My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness, she passed on this gem:

You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary."

I can say what I need to say in half the words now.

Passive vs active voice is certainly useful, but it's only one of many, many bits of writing craft.

If you want a whole lot more of those, I suggest Strunk & White: http://www.bartleby.com/141/

"On Writing Well" by Zinsser is also worthwhile:

http://bit.ly/2wH4VC (link to Google Books)

Good as well: Politics & The English Language. (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

As someone mired in academia, I absolutely love that piece by Orwell. It's a good reminder that the writing I'm surrounded by isn't the type of writing I should emulate.

I keep a folder in my bookmarks of writing tips that I think are insightful. Here are a few:

* Elmore Leonard: http://www.kabedford.com/archives/000013.html

* Kurt Vonnegut: http://www.peterstekel.com/PDF-HTML/Kurt%20Vonnegut%20advice...

* E.A. Poe: http://www.eapoe.org/works/ESSAYS/PHILCOMP.HTM

Dare I point out the staleness of imagery in your first sentence ("mired in academia") or the passive phasing of your second? ;)

Seriously, though: good bookmarks.

The problem with The Elements of Style is that White flagrantly, persistently and delightfully violates his own rules. Given that his writing is unfailingly charming and enjoyable to read, I have to wonder about value of those rules.

Following White's rules will do a good deal for those whose writing is not yet enjoyable to read.

White's rules improve unenjoyable prose.

The Elements of Style (which I personally dislike) isn't written for professional writers, it's written for non-professionals.

In today's culture people are barely capable of writing a sentence without losing half the vowels along the way, and god forbid you're American because you already lost half your U's before you were even born. Forget about adequate grammar, or even half-decent spelling.

White is a professional writers, and with everything there's one key thing to being talented and that's knowing when to break the rules. Breaking the rules when you know what you're doing can be amazing and produce awe-inspiring works, however breaking the rules because you're too ignorant to know they even exist certainly doesn't make you amazing and the only awe you'll inspire is stupidity.

The rules are very valuable, but any half-decent writer has already figured out the rules merely by reading.

> and god forbid you're American because you already lost half your U's before you were even born.

My spell checker thinks that every time I write colour, endeavour, or glamour that I've made some grave error.

I really can't stand that, it doesn't allow me to change the preferences to English (which I was taught in school) or American English.

Btw, any piece about spelling contains at least one spelling error, yours is no exception ;)

I constantly have the opposite problem -- for some reason freetards just luurve en_GB. If you really want superfluously coloured language, set your locale!

> Btw, any piece about spelling contains at least one spelling error, yours is no exception ;)

I know! It's the irony of the world. No matter what, when you complain about a general lack of spelling there is always a spelling mistake, but you won't notice it until 5 hours later. It's like there's a frigging anti-spelling Nazi out there who hijacks your post just to screw with you.

God damn gremlins always plaguing English people :(

Strunk & White devote a lot of time to misrepresenting grammar and presenting rules that don't mean much. Both of these distract an author from writing with irrelevant questions of passive voices and adjectives.

Pullum points out how silly most of the book is in this article: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549...

A better respected book that wastes less time is Joseph William's Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

A short review, with some excerpts: http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/Reviews/williams.h...

Brilliant !

You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary."

I can say what I need to say in half the words now.

60%

(concise by one more character, unlike this footnote)

Somewhere along the line I learned that you make science writing objective by using the passive voice. I would draft "I analysed the data and found that murder causes death." Then I re-wrote mechanically to "The data was analysed and it was found that murder causes death."

Such a waste! I should have dropped myself from the story but stuck with the active voice and written "The data show that murder causes death." Notice the jarring effect of such forthright prose. Do the data really show that murder causes death? Atleast the writing lives up to the ideal of scientific objectivity: the focus is on what the data do or do not show.

I know you're trying to be correct but using data in this way is annoying - "the data shows", not because it is necessarily right (it depends) but because it sounds right. If it helps then just consider data the singular noun for a block of information.

"The data shows murder causes death" sounds fine to me, nothing jarring about that except that it's probably not true "the data shows murder is a cause of death" (murder doesn't cause all deaths usually depending on the locus).

At the least, "The data show murder causes death"

data shows murder causes death

Are you making the claim that the word "data" is singular? It's not. And when you use a collective noun, you use the singular form (datum, in this case).

Along this line, though, what does sound jarring to me is the recent trend among the tech lit (and maybe others) to use company names as plural, as in, "Microsoft are keeping quiet about their new product." This is totally non-standard. First of all, Microsoft is a singular entity, identified by its articles of incorporation. What these authors are doing is using a lazy shorthand for, "Members of Microsoft management are keeping quiet about their new product."

See, for instance, "The Bedford Handbook for Writers" http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/newcatalog.aspx?isbn=0312595...

To pile on the pedantry: "data" is one of those words that can be used in either a singular or plural construction. The OED has references going as far back as this one, from 1807:

W. IRVING Salmag. xviii. 366 My grandfather..took a data from his own excellent heart.

(Further proof that English is not Latin.)

I agree that it's a tough game to standardize usage, especially when different "experts" don't agree (I would guess that you could find writing by other authors circa 1807 that used "data" as a plural). Currently, you find the use of "gender" confused with the use of "sex." Over time "gender" will probably come be used generally for male/female, and sex for reproductive references. But the first such uses were non-standard.

Perhaps it's best to leave it at, "know your audience."

Could you just write: "Murder is shown to cause death", or do you need to mention the "data"?

Now you've got it passive again.

Final draft: "Murder kills."

"... 1) Reduce your message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form. 2) Make it fun. Or sexy or interesting or informative ..."

For anyone who wants to read an antidote to this drivel, try Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" ~ http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott is an amazing book about writing. It's funny, very helpful, inspiring, etc...

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-Life/dp...

Repost but Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the best treatise on writing (and by extension, creative expression) I think I've ever read. Here are some excerpts - I believe its worthwile reading the entire essay many times:

"I often hear people say, 'I’m not good enough yet to be published.' That’s quite possible. Probable, even. All I’m saying is: Let someone else decide that. Magazines, editors, agents. They all employ young people making $22,000 a year whose job it is to read through piles of manuscripts and send you back letters telling you that you aren’t good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. Don’t pre-reject yourself. That’s their job, not yours. Your job is only to write your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest."

"There are heaps of books out there on How To Get Published. Often people find the information in these books contradictory. My feeling is -- of COURSE the information is contradictory. Because, frankly, nobody knows anything. Nobody can tell you how to succeed at writing (even if they write a book called 'How To Succeed At Writing') because there is no WAY; there are, instead, many ways. Everyone I know who managed to become a writer did it differently. sometimes radically differently. "

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm

Robert Heinlein's "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" ranks pretty highly up there. Starts off with the old Kipling quote:

  There are nine and sixty ways
  Of constructing tribal lays
  And every single one of them is right!

and ends up with his rules (which he describes as "business habit")

1. You must write.

2. You must finish what you write.

3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.

4. You must put it on the market.

5. You must keep it on the market until it sells.

I refrain from posting the Google Books link to the essay: it's much too long, and so is left as an exercise for the reader.

One of the most important lessons about writing that I ever learned was to make sure people could read what you wrote.

Here is a screenshot of my browser window opened onto the article in question.

http://www.penzba.co.uk/StevenPressfield.jpg

It will be ironic if this is one of those occasions that my ISP fails to serve the page, but if you get a "forbidden" or similar, hit "Reload".

So, for those of you who run web sites - what does your site look like in an older browser, and should you care?

FWIW I could read the article if I selected all text (Ctrl-A).

It works fine for me and is actually quite good.

Just to be sure I checked it in konqueror too (4.2.2) and it works there too.

I can read it fine when I highlight the text. And the article is quite good - yes. I've up-mud it.

My point remains.

I'm actually technically fairly competent compared with most of my customers. If either of my companies served a web page like that, half my customers wouldn't be able to read it. Is that my problem?? Or theirs?

It's my problem. If you have a web page, you need to decide where the cut-off is. The author here either doesn't know that his page doesn't render correctly, or doesn't care. Either way, if I were a customer, I'd be less than impressed.

So the question remains: Can your customers read your web page(s)?

(In your specific case, jacquesm, I know the answer is "yes")

Give it another try. Sometimes loading a page doesn't work and refreshing fixes it.

Also: With all respect, supporting Konqueror is really stretching support. It's got practically no market share, and isn't even the most popular Linux browser. I'm surprised it isn't working, though: I thought it ran WebKit, and so wouldn't mess up.

Loaded three times, same result each time.

I agree that it's infeasible to support all browsers, and mine, in particular, is almost certainly not worth supporting. In most other circumstances I wouldn't bother to say anything, but here I thought the observation was worth making.

Not everyone sees your web site the way you do. How do you check/test?

We have lots of browsers on hand in virtual machines, every major change gets tested in everything we can lay our hands on, we also ask our users to report problems through the help desk, and we work with them to get rid of bugs.

As for having every browser work with your site, sorry but that isn't always possible. There are finite resources for everything, and if you insist on using an out-of-the-ordinary setup with a miniscule portion of the users then you must surely agree that the minor discomforts of that are of your own choosing. Just like, for instance I will not support IE3, IE4 or Netscape 1.2 (and a whole host of other browsers that have met their end-of-life long ago) any more.

I've been a long time user of Konqueror myself, but right now I wouldn't know of any real good reason to continue to use it, Mozilla/FF/Iceweasel or whatever it wants to be called is available just about everywhere for the price of a free download.

Even Opera has a huge following compared to Konqueror, which is now below 0.08%, in spite of being the 'default' browser on a whole bunch of linux distros.

Chances are you're one of very few people that has ever tried to load that page using Konqueror, and chances are that the problem lies in (your old version of) Konqueror, especially since a newer one displays the page correctly.

Let me say from the beginning that I agree that I have a very old version of Konqueror. So old that there are many, many sites that I can't browse. I accept that. I'm not actually complaining that I can't read the text without doing something "special" - namely, highlighting the text.

However, I am quite frankly amazed that I'm being down-mud for pointing out that this is a serious issue. You, jacquesm, are describing extraordinary lengths to ensure that your visitors can read your site. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of people don't go to the lengths you do. And probably they shouldn't.

Perhaps I just didn't make myself clear.

But the point I'm trying to make is that people who care about customers need to make this decision, and need to know they're making it.

Is it not important? Is it not relevant? Is it not an issue for web designers to test across multiple browsers? Do you not care that there are people excluded? Are you not considering this? Have you consciously made the decision as to which browsers you won't support?

Are these questions not appropriate?

Clearly there are people who feel that these are not appropriate questions.

Or maybe I'm being down-mud because they are relevant, people aren't considering them, and I've pricked a conscience or two.

Down-mod me if you choose, but ask yourself why. Better yet, explain why. If people agree with you, you'll get lots of karma. I don't much care about karma, as evidenced by the fact that I've replied again, risking yet more karma in an attempt to make a point that I think is important.

So I've had my say.

As for why I use such an old version of Konqueror, it's a long story. Suffice to say I regularly access HN from hardware so old that I've struggled to run anything more modern than SuSE 8. The system is so fragile that I don't dare try to upgrade anything, because it's likely everything will break, and I really haven't the time to fix it.

That's true, however, I think that you are underestimating the number of people that have consciously made the decision that any browser with less than .5% is not worth optimizing for (especially since you'll end up upsetting stuff for more popular browsers if you're not careful), and in some companies/situations that .5% might even be a lot higher.

Even my bank, which has a pretty awesome website (and a correspondingly large budget) does not work when I increase the size of my browser past 2048 pixels or when I visit using Konqueror.

It's not that they couldn't get it to work, it's just that they probably don't even care because it is a problem that is too low on their list of priorities.

It's like that with everything, finite budgets -> some of the apples will fall off the cart, and in some cases that's just too bad.

The people that make the decisions are usually well aware of that.

I think what is more amazing here is that you're actually able to see almost all other sites with a browser that old, considering that the vast majority of the site operators are definitely not testing with that particular setup.

Try finding a store that will sell you 78 rpm records or even an 8 track player. Media readers that are 'behind the times' are most of the time pretty useless, compared to that your elderly browser is doing fine.

Just for the heck of it, here are the stats for a small site:

   mozilla:   160630
   IE:        325291
   Opera:     17869
   Mobile:    45175
   Konqueror: 147

That's unique visitors, not pageviews.

Konqueror runs everywhere now doesn't it. Is this Konq 4.2 on KDE3? or Konq on Windows? Also from the screen shot it looks like it's still loading, the frills round the K are uneven??

Fine for me in 4.3.1 on KDE4 on Kubuntu 9.04.

Trying on browsershots ...

[Edit] nothing especially shows in the major browsers indeed looks pretty good in most things; I would say it looks like gzip is not on and YSlow gives the site a grade D. Some large images which could take an age on dialup.

What´s your browser ? Looks like Netscape ...

It says "Konqueror" in the title area.

I think, this is really the most important writing lesson:

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for October 1, 1997: How Users Read on the Web http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

good read. it's a lesson that's emphasized by many successful authors, in addition to every writing professor i've had.

a great orwell essay with similar messages: http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Langua...

851 words to convey the message, "No one wants to read your shit"? Really?

Hey, that's a fun game!

Ryan, 14 words to convey the message, "That was boring"? Really?!??!

15 words to say "loser?" Really??!?!

I'm not saying it's boring; I'm saying it's needlessly verbose.

Geez! Just get another account and have your old email account forward emails to you.

If that's a reply to me, I'm not sure I understand you. The page does not render in a readable fashion in my (only slightly) elderly browser. I'm not sure what that has to do with email.

Have I missed your point? Could you expand on it a little? Thanks.

It looks more like a reply to the guy who ran out of space in his gmail account. How did it get here?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850827

Good question, a wormhole in the continuation mechanism? ;-)

Somehow my reply to a post about gmail gets here. I am not sure why

Reply on news.ycombinator.com