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Here's the "one weird tip" life hack to do all of these things: revise and rewrite. Important communications should go through multiple drafts. That includes i

Here's the "one weird tip" life hack to do all of these things: revise and rewrite. Important communications should go through multiple drafts. That includes important emails. Write it all out, then re-read it carefully, ideally after a bit of time has passed. Edit with an eye toward making it shorter. Rewrite it from scratch if you have to. I once had the good fortune to take a writing class with Edward Hoagland. We spent most of the semester with each student working on a single essay--reviewing it, editing it, rewriting it, rewriting it.

frostwhale 7y ago
As someone who had issues with this before, can second this is the best advice. As well as running it by someone else to see if they're picking up on the narrative you're trying to convey.
Tade0 7y ago
> Write it all out, then re-read it carefully, ideally after a bit of time has passed. Edit with an eye toward making it shorter. Rewrite it from scratch if you have to. That's what I've been doing. I'm not an amazing developer, but with time and effort I am able to refactor my way to decent code. Forgetfulness has been my ally - if you forget about something you're obviously not attached to it, so it's easier to throw it out and replace with something better.
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
My last writing professor didn't have a Wikipedia page, but he was fantastic, and taught with an approach on iteration: He allowed us to submit our assignments for review, and then let us take back the paper to work on it more, and we could continue to do that until it was an A paper. This essentially guaranteed everyone an A in the course, if they did the work. But the focus was on getting you to improve your writing, not to fail people out. My opinion is that this is how writing should be taught, rather than giving you one shot to get a grade. (I also once had a writing teacher who gave me a zero for a paper because it wasn't submitted in a manilla folder, and no late submissions were accepted, so I had no chance to fix it.)
- ak39 7y ago
  Your comment made my day. That professor is one incredibly great teacher! Imagine indeed if all teaching was done like this. Standardised testing and reliance of testing memory is probably robbing generations of gifted students.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  My father was a professor of business finance for a few years. He wrote on the board the first lecture that if any of the following words were misspelled, it was an automatic F: 1. business 2. entrepreneur 3. your, you're 4. its, it's 5. they're, their, there Also, for the term paper due at the end of the semester, for every day the paper was late, one grade would be subtracted. I.e. 2 days late meant a B would become a D. No excuses would be accepted, as they had the entire term to get it done. The first time he taught this course, half the students were a day or more late. He followed through. The next year, word apparently got out as he only received one late paper. His point was that in business, excuses were not acceptable.
  - throwawaycorona 7y ago
    This is a disservice to all students. In business excuses is the standard MO. Look at all the business men and women out there. It's about failing quickly and often. I hope he changed his tune later in life because he was hurting so many students for no good reason.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    The example I gave was of a terrible writing professor: I learned no writing in her course. Because when her arbitrary requirement that the paper be in a manilla folder cost me two letter grades for the whole course, I dropped her course, rather than accept a C as my highest achievable grade. It's the sole withdrawal in my entire transcript. Furthermore, I never got any legitimate feedback on the paper, which I put a lot of time and thought into. It's important to teach the values of timeliness and attention to detail, but you aren't teaching anything if you're not giving students a way to recover and improve.
WalterBright 7y ago
> Rewrite it from scratch if you have to. Rewrite from scratch as necessary. :-)
JoshTriplett 7y ago
Agreed completely. Related skill: learn to read and type fast, because there's no upper bound where it stops being useful. It's easier to re-read and revise if you can do both quickly. If you have half the typing speed, revising takes twice as long, and given the same amount of time you'll be able to do less of it.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  > If you have half the typing speed, revising takes twice as long In my experience, this isn't true. When revising, most of my time is spent considering what changes I can make and not putting them into practice. If the bottleneck is thinking, raising your typing speed will provide marginal gains at best.
  - JoshTriplett 7y ago
    I'm not suggesting that revising is solely a matter of re-reading and re-typing. I'm suggesting that I've found them to be a notable component, and that I can do more revising when I can quickly take a possible revision and type it out and reread it to see how it looks.
  - Kinrany 7y ago
    It's true if you're using writing for thinking. (Not claiming that that's actually faster, or otherwise.)
thirdsun 7y ago
Indeed. Although it’s ok to start with short sketches, expanding on them before finally cutting it down again. My writing often starts with a rough list of bullet points and loose thoughts before being revised, structured, properly phrased, edited repeatedly and shaped into final form.

frostwhale 7y ago

As someone who had issues with this before, can second this is the best advice. As well as running it by someone else to see if they're picking up on the narrative you're trying to convey.

Tade0 7y ago

> Write it all out, then re-read it carefully, ideally after a bit of time has passed. Edit with an eye toward making it shorter. Rewrite it from scratch if you have to. That's what I've been doing. I'm not an amazing developer, but with time and effort I am able to refactor my way to decent code. Forgetfulness has been my ally - if you forget about something you're obviously not attached to it, so it's easier to throw it out and replace with something better.

ocdtrekkie 7y ago

My last writing professor didn't have a Wikipedia page, but he was fantastic, and taught with an approach on iteration: He allowed us to submit our assignments for review, and then let us take back the paper to work on it more, and we could continue to do that until it was an A paper. This essentially guaranteed everyone an A in the course, if they did the work. But the focus was on getting you to improve your writing, not to fail people out. My opinion is that this is how writing should be taught, rather than giving you one shot to get a grade. (I also once had a writing teacher who gave me a zero for a paper because it wasn't submitted in a manilla folder, and no late submissions were accepted, so I had no chance to fix it.)

ak39 7y ago
Your comment made my day. That professor is one incredibly great teacher! Imagine indeed if all teaching was done like this. Standardised testing and reliance of testing memory is probably robbing generations of gifted students.
WalterBright 7y ago
My father was a professor of business finance for a few years. He wrote on the board the first lecture that if any of the following words were misspelled, it was an automatic F: 1. business 2. entrepreneur 3. your, you're 4. its, it's 5. they're, their, there Also, for the term paper due at the end of the semester, for every day the paper was late, one grade would be subtracted. I.e. 2 days late meant a B would become a D. No excuses would be accepted, as they had the entire term to get it done. The first time he taught this course, half the students were a day or more late. He followed through. The next year, word apparently got out as he only received one late paper. His point was that in business, excuses were not acceptable.
- throwawaycorona 7y ago
  This is a disservice to all students. In business excuses is the standard MO. Look at all the business men and women out there. It's about failing quickly and often. I hope he changed his tune later in life because he was hurting so many students for no good reason.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  The example I gave was of a terrible writing professor: I learned no writing in her course. Because when her arbitrary requirement that the paper be in a manilla folder cost me two letter grades for the whole course, I dropped her course, rather than accept a C as my highest achievable grade. It's the sole withdrawal in my entire transcript. Furthermore, I never got any legitimate feedback on the paper, which I put a lot of time and thought into. It's important to teach the values of timeliness and attention to detail, but you aren't teaching anything if you're not giving students a way to recover and improve.

WalterBright 7y ago

> Rewrite it from scratch if you have to. Rewrite from scratch as necessary. :-)

JoshTriplett 7y ago

Agreed completely. Related skill: learn to read and type fast, because there's no upper bound where it stops being useful. It's easier to re-read and revise if you can do both quickly. If you have half the typing speed, revising takes twice as long, and given the same amount of time you'll be able to do less of it.

kd5bjo 7y ago
> If you have half the typing speed, revising takes twice as long In my experience, this isn't true. When revising, most of my time is spent considering what changes I can make and not putting them into practice. If the bottleneck is thinking, raising your typing speed will provide marginal gains at best.
- JoshTriplett 7y ago
  I'm not suggesting that revising is solely a matter of re-reading and re-typing. I'm suggesting that I've found them to be a notable component, and that I can do more revising when I can quickly take a possible revision and type it out and reread it to see how it looks.
- Kinrany 7y ago
  It's true if you're using writing for thinking. (Not claiming that that's actually faster, or otherwise.)

thirdsun 7y ago

Indeed. Although it’s ok to start with short sketches, expanding on them before finally cutting it down again. My writing often starts with a rough list of bullet points and loose thoughts before being revised, structured, properly phrased, edited repeatedly and shaped into final form.