5 ms·
Read the first few chapters of On Writing Well. Omit needless words. There's a page in Stephen King's autobiography "On Writing" where he shows an editor's com
by bevan 9y ago
Read the first few chapters of On Writing Well.
Omit needless words. There's a page in Stephen King's autobiography "On Writing" where he shows an editor's comments on an article he wrote as a teenager. Half of the words are crossed out. Remembering that example improved my writing significantly.
Also, understand that writing is an iterative process. It can take 5-6 passes to craft a good sentence.
- PaulHoule 9y agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
- big_spammer 9y ago"Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace" is better than "The Elements of Style". https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Clarity-Grace-12th/dp/0134080416 https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Clarity-Grace-12th/dp/0...
- anacleto 9y agoI've read "On Writing Well". Then I discovered "The Elements of Style". On Writing Well opens your eyes to what bad writing is, "The Elements of Style" explains how to write clearly. "The Elements of Style" belongs to that 1% of books that are truly able to change the way you think (and write). I tried to apply what I learned in "The Element of Styles" and "On Writing Well" to my company blog: https://medium.com/plainflow/how-we-write-at-plainflow-7e994f9c4097 https://medium.com/plainflow/how-we-write-at-plainflow-7e994...
- mcguire 9y agoThe Elements of Style is contentious. Many of its prescriptions are linguistically sketchy. On the other hand, it points out many things that many people do badly. E.B. White, the 'editor', was one of the best essayists around, but he didn't particularly obey the rules in his own book.
- ams6110 9y agoBest thing to come out of my high school English education. I was introduced to it by my sophomore year English composition teacher. It does have its critics but I think it's a very useful guide for most writers, and being a small book it is easily referenced and has remained useful to me to this day, much like K&R was when I did "C" programming.
- baby 9y agoI love this part: http://imgur.com/a/ipJSj http://imgur.com/a/ipJSj
- coalescedfrog 9y agoI think this reflects writing software in some ways, judicious 'editing' is important. It's realizing what you don't need that is as important as what you do need to keep in there, at least in terms of avoiding snowballing tech debt/feature creep. My first attempts at writing were monstrosities of flowery descriptions and long-winded dialogues, an awful hybrid prose/poetry. That didn't improve, but I realized the art is getting an interesting message across as simply as possible, not showing off your vocab or pre-empting the reader's imagination.