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Good writing is a business advantage
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mapleoin 6y agoThe new BMW ad actually speaks to me more than the old ones. I find the old ones too blunt, whereas the new one is trying to be poetic and smooth, purposefully contrasting with the old design and trying to create this utopic vision of the future where everything is smooth and efficient. I even got the feeling that there's a nice breeze in the car even though you're in the desert.
- jasode 6y ago>Here's a promotional film on the car that was sent to me on Saturday. It's almost impossible for me to believe this passes for work today. It's incomprehensible, unappealing, uninteresting and meaningless. It provides no information that makes me want the car. The blog author misunderstands that the BMW car video ad is deliberately not supposed to convey concrete information. Abstract ads are typical of "brand awareness advertising" vs "product specific advertising". I made some previous comments about the difference between "concrete informational ads" vs "abstract aspirational ads"[0][1]. Yes, the ad agencies choosing to communicate abstract ads are infuriating to us but they don't care because they are going for a deliberate and calculated emotional effect. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20034558 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877422
- solatic 6y agoYou're missing the larger change in society that advertising is adapting to. Few people have the attention span anymore to read all of the copy in BMW's old ads. Ad agencies could hire Hemingway himself, it wouldn't make any difference. People look at the picture, the headline, and move on. So-called brand advertising (at least, print brand advertising) serves as an admission on the part of marketers that, if they can't fit the whole AIDA model into a single ad anymore, they can at least try to push Awareness as much as possible. Doesn't mean that brand advertising is particularly effective.
- uryga 6y ago> Few people have the attention span anymore to read all of the copy in BMW's old ads or could it be that everything is so oversaturated with ads that spending two minutes voluntarily reading fluffy ad copy just doesn't seem like a great use of time, even if it's well written? attention span is its own problem, but connecting the two like this seems... odd. --- EDIT, had more thoughts on this i mean, i like the old VW Beetle ads. they're charming and clever and i enjoy reading them. but that's because the element of "trying to get me to buy something" isn't relevant anymore, i'm experiencing the (long-dead) ad willingly. but if the ad is a normal ad i see in a magazine... no way i'm giving it my undivided attention for two minutes just so it can manipulate me into liking X
- jonfw 6y agoI agree, there is still plenty of money invested in product placements in long form content, or sponsored 'review' articles. It's not so much that they don't write copy, it's that they try to avoid telling you that it's copy
- new2628 6y agoHemingway is kind of a bad example here because he writes short and to the point.
- jotm 6y ago
- erispoe 6y agoIt took me more than 5 minutes, reading through more than half the article, and watching the video clip in its entirety, to realize what this blog post what about. Is this good writing? In the end, the proof is in the pudding. Is this selling cars? It's very hard to measure the marginal effect of one ad, but to the extent that we can do it, this is what the yardstick of advertisement is. edit: putting -> pudding typo
- chrisweekly 6y agoputting -> pudding
- qnsi 6y agoExactly! Title is so misleading I stopped reading after a second.
- Daub 6y agoEffective writing might be an even better advantage.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoYes, Comms is King. Whether written, verbal or other, the foundation of human progress is comms; often taking form as influence. That said, while well written, I don't agree with his argument. In general selling - well, actually buying - is mostly driven by emotions and less factual. Even B2B is emotiinal. "Will this decision help my career?" We don't buy what X does (i.e., features). We buy benefits. That is, "what's in it for me?" Yes, it makes sense to be upfront about features. Of course. But it's benefits that sell.
- keiferski 6y agoI can’t help but feel like we are on the verge of a new audiovisual era, one in which long paragraphs of text are almost never seen in any marketing context and eventually in most contexts. The initial reaction of most educated people is probably horror at our new illiterati leaders, but in an attempt to be optimistic, I’d note that the widespread dominance of writing is something of a material historical accident. Languages were originally spoken, not written. It’s been suggested that the semi-mythical Homer was specifically depicted as blind in order to emphasize that poetry is an aural art, not a visual (textual) one. If somehow audio recording devices had been invented prior to paper, I think we’d be living in a far different society, one filled with audio recordings rather than books. So, knowing this, the challenge is to adapt to this new reality and form of communication and learn how to utilize it to achieve the level of depth seen in literature. I’m fairly confident we’ll get there eventually: the art of writing has been around for thousands of years, whereas video/film (moving images) is barely over a century old. We’ve got time to master it.
- julienfr112 6y agoHecker news would be audio only, and we would develop the ability to fast listen multiple accelerated audio at the same time like we can just read parts of the post and move on ?
- keiferski 6y agoSeems plausible. I am imagining a voice that reads all the submitted link titles and then lets you choose one and go to the link or listen to the comments. Having comments be actual recordings of the commenter's speech would actually be quite interesting and more personal than reading them in the fairly generic text form.
- mgummelt 6y agoText is much easier to skim than audio. Visual bandwidth is higher than auditory (though less so for communicating emotions), and the receiver has much more control over the cursor. Audio has some advantages, but it's limited.
- arvinsim 6y agoI wish there was a concrete way of improving writing skills and getting feedback ala Hackerrank
- alexpetralia 6y agoCommenting because I'm interested in this as well.
- Cactus2018 6y agoYou might like "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes" by Stephen King https://msu.edu/~jdowell/135/King_Everything.html https://msu.edu/~jdowell/135/King_Everything.html
- alexpetralia 6y agoThis was entertaining, but I didn't find it particularly edifying. I enjoyed "Bird by Bird" more.
- pixelpoet 6y agoI think caring is the most important first step, and much of the "decline" (it's debatable) is due to people not caring and disregarding linguistic standards. By the way, in the sentence you wrote, people used to use the subjunctive mood, "I wish there were"; this "rule" seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur and "was" in place of the conditional "were" sounds so terribly wrong to me (probably because of the German "wäre").
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago"Just do it." That sounds familiar... There's no substitute for repetitiveness and habit. Feedback is important, but also valuable. It can be hard to get good feedback for free. I've found that just slapping stuff up there is important, as long as I keep doing it, and make sure that whatever I "slap up" is of the best quality possible. Every few weeks, I stop what I'm doing, and spend a day or so, writing up an entry about something. My usual read length is under fifteen minutes, but I have a couple of prolix entries. You can see what I write here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/ https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/ and here: https://medium.com/chrismarshallny https://medium.com/chrismarshallny I'm not a widely-read author, but everything I do; whether coding or writing, is done as if I were publishing to the masses. Establishes good habits. I also find that writing in the vernacular seems to be received well. But that's just me. YMMV.
- manmal 6y agoI disagree with the argument that today's inventions are only incremental improvements "because someone invented the automobile" - if Tesla (or any other manufacturer) really manages level 5 autonomy at some point, it will indeed be a breakthrough. Or just take CRISPR - that in itself is a remarkable invention. Improvements to solar cells and batteries will eventually upend the whole energy sector. I do agree with the author that good writing is a business advantage. E.g. developers who are good at writing blog posts or email newsletters can become widely known (and booked). I don't see the author make a compelling argument in the article that supports this though.
- martinald 6y agoAlso, don't forget that inventing the car in the first place was a bunch of "small" incremental improvements. Without improvements to steelmaking, the combustion engine wouldn't have been possible. Without Ford's incremental improvements to assembly lines, they would have been too expensive for mass market, etc.
- pferde 6y agoAfter reading the title, I was hoping that the article would be not about advertising, but about technical writing - whether in communication (email) or documentation (internal or public). Good writing is paramount for both of these contexts. From good text formatting to realizing what the audience is and adjusting level of detail and pace accordingly.
- VieEnCode 6y agoDoes HN have some resources to share on good technical writing?
- macintux 6y agoIt’s come up a time or twenty. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=technical+writing https://hn.algolia.com/?q=technical+writing And while this is orthogonal, I’m sure there’s some overlap: this is a list of links I’ve compiled on giving technical talks. I haven’t checked the links for years, so I’m sure a few are broken. https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837 https://gist.github.com/macintux/5354837
- afarrell 6y agoAfter I read https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM1990StyleTowardClarityandGrace.pdf https://sites.duke.edu/niou/files/2014/07/WilliamsJosephM199..., I found myself remembering its advice and putting it into practice.
- Angostura 6y agoHere's a little test for your company and your website. Is it easier for me to work out what the hell you do by looking up your company on Wikipedia than it is is by looking at your website. A surprising number of companies fail the Wikipedia test, because marketing and management somehow feel that simple language sdescrtibing what they do somehow devalues the importance. "We're valuable because we're complex. Our marketing material needs to make what we do seem very complex".
- Tepix 6y agoIt's normal for a company website to fail this test. After all, explaining what a company does is the sole purpose of a wikipedia article about a company. The company website on the other hand has many more objectives.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoWhat objectives are these? I have had quite a few occasions where I tried to look up what a project does and couldn’t figure it out from the website. I only learned that the product is really cool and makes young, diverse and good looking people happy.
- goatherders 6y agoIts easier to sell a product that is really cool and makes young, diverse, and good looking people happy than it is to sell what a product does. The purpose of a website is to sell things. That's why the "About Us" page isn't the home page.
- m52go 6y agoI really like this line in the article: "Bad writing is bad thinking." So true. Sometimes I just write when I'm confused about something and it helps clarify things. Since this is HN, I'm going to add a shameless plug. For 4 years I've run Write Battle, a game for writers (originally anyone writing emails, instant messages, etc...but user base has largely turned out to be marketers) to compete against each other to devise the most concise prose. The best writing wins, as judged by brevity (response length) and readability (Flesch-Kincaid). Right now, as we speak, I'm turning these games into a set of interactive, gamified, bite-size courses to teach the basics of effective writing without boring reading or lectures. I should have the first set of (free) courses done in about a week [0]. My approach is that while grammar and formal rules are important, practical effect is more important, so the games and courses I've made so far focus more on effectiveness than theory and rules. Turns out writing is more fun that way too! [0] https://writebattle.com https://writebattle.com
- kareemm 6y agoFantastic idea and execution. One comment: it would be helpful to see leaderboard entries after you finish a battle. Understanding how others complete a battle can help me improve.
- m52go 6y agoThank you! Yes -- I send the best responses out in an email after some manual sifting, after live scoring for a game has ended. I wasn't sure if showing the best answers immediately would encourage some people to play again with "help", putting others at a disadvantage.
- kareemm 6y agoAh, it wasn't clear to me that games end. That would be helpful to put on the results page e.g. "Send me an email with my result and top results". FWIW that would be a lot more compelling of an opt-in to build your list that doing so before the game ;)
- austincheney 6y agoSuperior writing skills are one of two things that separate novice developers from experts. This, as judged from experience, is self-evident to all people except bad developers. Here are the criteria that are generally most important: * precision: This is perhaps most important. The ability to communicate tiny finite details that immediately reflects the product as a whole in a way that is universally clear to a wide audience in the same way is paramount. * directness: Say what you mean. Don’t waste people’s time with distractions and pleasantries. Put the most important things first. If the audience wishes to read more they will. * conciseness: There is an art to the careful description of technical details, behaviors, and examination of a subject that is both precise and still expressed in the fewest words/statements. An extended vocabulary is helpful. * organization: Almost everything complex is open to more simplistic description as a subject of intrinsic relationships. The ability to perceive, understand, and convey those relationships is logic at its most base foundation but only when the those relationships are orderly and supported by evidence. A common mistake is to be clever about organization, relationships, and their logic. Don’t do that. People do this as a weak form of manipulation, but strong communicators will tear it apart. All of these points on writing are directly evident in well written code as well as formally expressed writings for general audiences.
- dfsegoat 6y ago> Superior writing skills are one of two things that separate novice developers from experts. This has been an area of concern for me. As I've increased my technical skills, I feel like my writing skills have atrophied, which impacts communication with my team and management. As such, I found these tips very helpful.
- austincheney 6y agoI think a common mistake many developers, or any early writer in other disciplines, make is not reflecting on this as you are. Knowing and accepting this as a personal weakness puts you ahead of your peers who may have a similar weakness.
- heinrichhartman 6y ago
- dx87 6y agoIn general, technical people severely underestimate the value of good writing. My wife has a MS in Professional Writing, no technical background, and got hired to work in the IT department at a major publishing company. While there, her entire job was writing up guides, announcements, etc., that were going to be disseminated to the rest of the company. Management had identified that a bunch of time/money was being wasted because the IT team had nobody who could write in a non-technical matter, so non-technical employees were giving a lot of pushback on IT changes that they didn't see the benefit of. Even though the IT employees would constantly make snide remarks about her having a "soft degree", management loved her because she could take technical information, even if she didn't fully understand it herself, and translate it into a format that could be understood by the rest of the company.
- goatherders 6y agoAt the risk of offending many HN'ers, I think many (most?) technical people severely underestimate the value of most "non technical" things. Sales, marketing, writing...
- whyhow 6y agoThis is true in all fields. Everyone always over estimates their own profession's impact on the big picture.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoEveryone of course estimates that their own field is most important, but IT often estimates that some non-technical fields are completely worthless.
- goatherders 6y agoAgree.
- darkerside 6y agoNot worthless, but trivially easy, to be fair to the misguided folks I've worked with in the past.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoSurely every thing you use in furthering your business will confer an advantage if it is a Good example of that thing?
- goatherders 6y agoFrom grade 7 to grade 12 my education was heavily writing focused. I didn't take a history, civics, or English test that wasn't 100% written. In college I took classes that were focused on writing as well, mostly because I could write better than I could study for/take a test. That has made me an adult with no real skills except the ability to communicate very well. More specifically, I'm able to write very well. And I find it staggering how many people cannot write with any quality. Rewinding to college - I funded my beer and fun fund by writing other people's term papers. The first year or two out of school I paid the rent by writing other people's term papers. I run a marketing business now and despite my hatred for spending the time writing longform, a good chunk of our revenue comes from people overpaying for content simply because finding good writers is hard. While many people say that understanding how to code is perhaps the most valuable skill available to young people during their education, I would offer that writing well is of greater significance and use. There are plenty of excellent careers, vocations, and paths in life where any measure of success can be reached without knowing how to code. There are far fewer where not being able to write is not a hindrance.
- cloudier 6y agoHow do you prove to others that you can write? I’m assuming that you have a portfolio that shows your writing — is that the case? How do you tell if your writing is good quality? Are your clients able to evaluate that too? I suspect the issue is that it’s really easy to evaluate technical skills like coding, but I am not sure since I don’t work in a writing-focused occupation.
- munificent 6y agoOne thing that separates writing apart from many other fields is how easy it is for non-professionals to determine when it's done well. In fact, the definition of good writing basically is whether or not it has the intended impact on its audience. If you are moved, the writing is good. This is in contrast with other fields where "goodness" also requires other longer-term less tangible goals that are invisible to non-professionals. If a program does what you want right now, it may still not be made of good code because it can be hard to maintain, or fail catastrophically in edge cases or otherwise lack in ways that aren't immediately obvious. You can be a poor chef who makes tasty food if your personality causes high staff turnover or your ingredient choices and pricing kill your profitability, all of which is hidden from the diner. But the point of writing is to get an idea lodged in someone's head as effectively as possible, and we're pretty good at evaluating whether that's happened. The only case where it can clearly break down is journalism where the ideas you transmit must be factual in ways that require external validation. A compelling news story that is false may be good "writing" at some level, but isn't good journalism.
- ubermonkey 6y agoI was never more than a middling coder, but I can write. I've built a pretty great and remunerative career on being able to understand technical things well enough to write about them for a less technical audience.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoIt took me a while to appreciate that. A long time ago i noticed that a lot of famous bloggers didn’t really write about groundbreaking things but relatively trivial stuff. This annoyed me for a long time until i realized that being able to write this stuff is a great skill by itself. I think I am a decent developer and have done interesting things but I am having trouble communicating my stuff. My impact could be much more if I could write about it in a compelling way.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI watched the ad and read the comments. I am not a target audience either, but I do respond to visuals. So I watched while mostly ignoring the semi-aspirational talk. The ad created mixed feelings for me. Frankly, it could have done away with the voice over. Especially since it did not make much sense. In a practical sense, the story told through video was sufficient. Aesthetically, I dislike the new look. It looks nothing like I8 I was expecting to see, but that is a personal preference. Inside looks futuristic and cool, but not much more can be said beyond that. I am oddly disappointed with BMW. They have all the money they need to unseat Tesla, but they just can't seem to hack it. Eh, maybe Taycan will change the field somewhat.
- disease 6y agoHas anyone here made the leap from developer to technical writer? Or know someone who has? It sounds weird but I not only take pride in writing documentation for my software, I actually enjoy doing so as well. I'm sure this would result in a large pay cut but it may be worth it for the change of pace.
- klibertp 6y ago6 hours and no replies? Damn. I'm also interested, what would be needed to start a career as a technical writer, after 15 years of programming? Is it even worth it as a career, compared to coding? I like writing and, according to a few people, the result is of good quality; I would also appreciate a change of pace (due to health issues) for a while...
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI have not, but what I have done, is get to a place where documentation is a “first class citizen” in my work. I actually wrote an article about exactly that, fairly recently: https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/leaving-a-legacy-1c2ddb0c8014 https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/leaving-a-legacy-1c2ddb0c... It’s a fairly long read, compared to most of my articles, but I feel that it’s an important topic. My biggest issue with most modern tech writing, is that it is actually painful to read. It may be 100% correct, and impart very important information, but if I can use it as a soporific, there’s a problem. I find that writing in the vernacular, injecting personal anecdotes and [very carefully-chosen] humor and humanity into tech writing helps. I write about extremely technical stuff; often walking through significant code trails, but I have had non-technical people praise my writing, and read the entire article.
- jariel 6y ago'Communicating' is almost a better term. There are great writers who are not able to organise their ideas very well. I think good business writing isn't really the same thing as creative writing though they are both assets. The ability to explain something very quickly in simple and succinct terms, so that the value is really well understood by an audience without any context ... this is the key.
- nicbou 6y agoGood writing is a business advantage because it encompasses many other useful business skills. - Writing clearly requires empathy. If you write documentation, you must put yourself in the shoes of your confused users. - Writing requires storytelling skills. Writing something pleasant to read is no small task. - Writing requires social skills. How you write things dictates how well they'll be received. You have to sell your arguments and convince people with very different priorities.
- paultopia 6y agoI don't understand why this essay starts with an excursus on economic decline before veering around the corner to talk about writing and the author's---no shit---comparison of himself to Einstein? And then closes with a bunch of screenshots of BMW ads, evidently (?) as an example of Good Writing of the Past, but where those ads (that is, the alleged exemplars of writing) are too blurry to read, even zoomed in? This is, dare I say it, exceedingly bad writing.
- chasedehan 6y agoIt seems as though you read the entire article and cared enough to make a comment about it. Those are not characteristics of bad writing even if it is disagreed with.
- bagacrap 6y agobit of a catch-22, wouldn't you say? If you read it, it must be good; if you don't read it, you aren't qualified to rate it.
- scrumper 6y agoI had similar thoughts. Regardless of whether or not it's "good writing" in itself, it is definitely in need of a good edit.
- hachibu 6y ago>(An advertisement for myself.) I love the author's sense of humor.
- at_a_remove 6y agoI am not a particularly great programmer. I am decent at documentation, to the point where I have received unsolicited commentary about the technical documents I produce and the comments in my code. My technical writing class is largely to thank for it, plus a hefty dose of frustration at reading awful documentation over the years, combing through code with almost no comments, and the like. Once your code "works," nobody cares about it -- they're on to the next thing -- and then the next time it receives attention is if something goes wrong, or something changes either coming in or going out. It is then that your code will receive attention again. Having good docs on hand is going to make that quite a lot better.
- asdffdsa 6y agoobligatory: https://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html https://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html
- edraferi 6y agoI completely agree. I view this as a competitive advantage personally. Like any skill, practice is the most important thing. Training helps, especially grammar & structure coaching. That said, tools can help: - Hemmingway[0] has been useful to me. I often use it to revise things I write elsewhere. - Grammarly [1] seems good, but I refuse to pipe everything I write to (another) cloud. If I could run it locally or get a private on-prem instance for my firm, that would be great. - Microsoft's new AI Editor [2] seems promising. [0] http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ [1] https://www.grammarly.com/ https://www.grammarly.com/ [2] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing-microsoft-editor-bring-out-your-best-writer-wherever/ba-p/1247931 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/in...
- jsanford9292 6y agoJust like his "400 mi range BMW", I fear George will find himself on the wrong side of history. Let's start with cars: why has George gone out of his way to put down Tesla, lumping it in to his "not-a-new-product" category, and decided to purchase an objectively inferior electric vehicle (BMW)? Maybe he likes the look of BMWs. I hope so. Or maybe he cannot stomach Tesla because it represents the exact antidote to his entire argument: an "incremental" product that requires no marketing or writing to easily outsell the competition. If the future looks like a world where there are no "new products" and great writing will be the meaningful differentiator between products, why has Tesla decided to forgo writing altogether, great or not? He makes a few salient points on the outskirts of the article. But the crux of his argument is "good writing goes beyond almost anything outside of real transformative technological leaps," one of which is not Tesla, as noted earlier. If you had to bet the future of societal progress on improving products vs. improving writing, which would you choose? If the future of advertising follows the future of autos, then I'm sorry but George will be out of a job pretty soon here. For all the hackers that get scared by these articles and run out to take a writing class: don't. Focus on creating great products. As Elon does, let the products speak for themselves. Also George, small typo in paragraph 16: "I called by system "the three Ds.""
- econcon 6y agoWell reading/writing level are going down. Anyone who thinks, just because they've graduated from some famous college are going to absolutely obliterate competition in business are wrong. You need a language which most of your customers can easily understand and most of the times those who come from outside of the industry but have superior knowledge of language make fool of themselves. This is as someone who doesn't know much about English but have built a company for English speakers.
- therealdrag0 6y agoIf I were to make one request of people, it'd be that they re-read their own writing before posting it--even to Slack or a code-review. I feel like it's a daily occurrence that I have to read between the lines of what people say and construct my own reply that does the heavy lifting of moving the ball forward by outlining the different possibilities based on what was said. There's a sense in which lazy writers are offloading thinking onto others. This sort of drive-by writing is pretty annoying IMO. And when there's not someone in the room willing to do the meta-thinking of clarifying, it can lead to misunderstanding or arguments.
- ineedasername 6y agoThis is (one of) the reasons why I am skeptical of arguments that are dismissive of all formal coursework in college that isn't directly applicable to the technical aspects of people whose majors are in STEM programs. General education courses, required courses in history and humanities, they provide a different way of critically thinking about things, and their frequently heavy writing focus is excellent practice for a skill that will be extremely useful in life, even if it isn't directly tied to your STEM program. Consider this: And enormous amount of your quality of life, your career advancement, and many other things are directly tied to your ability to convince other people of your way of thinking. And writing is a fundamental vehicle for that process.