15 ms·

How to write more clearly, think more clearly, and learn complex material [pdf]

779 points by Secrethus 4y ago

Trasmatta 4y ago
Something that's coming to mind while reading this is how much company communication these days happens almost exclusively on Slack, and how antithetical that format can be to writing and thinking clearly.
- iworshipfaangs2 4y ago
  I don’t understand. Slack is written communication. How could that be antithetical to writing? Every time you use it is an opportunity to practice.
  - d-us-vb 4y ago
    Slack (and teams, discord, skype) are all antithetical to the style of written communication outlined in the slide deck. They make difficult writing a long, well-structured document to record and transmit a complex idea. IM team coordination platforms are only good for the first phase of writing, that is, just getting ideas down in written format. The issue is that the tools built into those platforms do not aid in the other phases of the writing process, and in fact, they sort of make it difficult, actually. I speak from experience having to go back through thousands of Discord messages to condense the ideas into a collection of documents on different topics. Someone should write an extension that makes it easier to convert IM thread to an organized document outline in slack or discord. That would be nice.
- mellavora 4y ago
  Yes, I'm still smarting from this default behavoir that pressing "return" sends the message instead of starting a new paragraph. My thoughts usually run to more than one paragraph, and I like to edit before I send. I supposes that's not "chat", but then again written is not oral. (side note-- again, two paragraphs, plus self-commentary)
  - Tempest1981 4y ago
    You can use SHIFT-RETURN in Slack/Discord to insert a newline. Maybe not great for RSI, but it's muscle memory now.
  - tveyben 4y ago
    I hate that as well - but finally learned that you can actually change the RETURN behavior in Slack’s preferences. I wonder why they decided that a different behavior was needed depending on you being in a code block (RETURN -> new line) than normal writing (RETURN -> submit). That’s bad UX! I’m so old school that I want an e-mail so I can file it (as a file) in whatever folder I find logical - that’s not possible in Slack (which is good for non-worthy-of-being-saved chit-chat kind of communications)
- Buttons840 4y ago
  I've suggested creating a company forum at a few different places, but it's always received like a strange idea that nobody will actually engage with or give any thought to. Email, Slack, etc, none of them create a good long term record that outsiders and newcomers can consume. Some companies have a wiki, but I've never seen them used. Forums are good for long form communication, people can put in more effort knowing that their effort will be available to all going forward.
  - Trasmatta 4y ago
    Our team has begun using GitHub Discussions for this purpose, and it's actually pretty good. I've been actively trying to push conversations there from Slack, but some people still seem really hesitant to use it. Or even worse, some people seem to try to use it like a chat application, sending a bunch of short and quick replies, rather than letting the conversation evolve slowly and async.
    - Buttons840 4y ago
      I've heard 90+% of people will not participate in online discussions. It makes me wonder what people would do if you forced them to do so as part of a job. How many people can participate in a forum and make coherent multi-paragraph arguments? We HN participants can, but we're a biased group. A lot of people are accustomed to conversational-style communication as found in Slack or social media, and they may not have written a formal argument since high school.
      - Baeocystin 4y ago
        I think you're spot-on. If anything, it's closer to 99%. I've run/managed various forums over the years, and the disparity between the active participants and the passive readers was always wider than you'd think.
      - Trasmatta 4y ago
        Oh yeah, good point. A lot of people these days have never used a communication medium like that. It would be interesting to work at a company that really prioritized people who prefer that communication style, over the non stop stream of consciousness that Slack turns into.
- tayo42 4y ago
  We dont use slack like that really, but google doc comments are similarly limiting. Atleast most thoughts happen in a google doc
gfodor 4y ago
Wow, I am so surprised to see this - I came upon an earlier version of this deck 10+ years ago, and it's one of a very small number of things I've held onto and made a point to re-read every couple of years. Very cool to see there's an updated version of it!
yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
I like this. I'm diving into the zettlekasten thing after reading How to Take Smart Notes, and stopping to think about how I write so that it's as simple and clear as possible, while still being informative enough for my future self is what flexes my head muscle the most. This complements it nicely.
- lijogdfljk 4y ago
  Mind describing the value you gained from How to Take Smart Notes? Sounds interesting to me, as someone wanting to catalog all "information" i take in
  - yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
    I bought it on a whim after somebody mentioned it and was very pleasantly surprised. Ahrens makes a convincing case for use of the zettlekasten, but the book is mostly about how to acquire understanding of something. You could read it without having any interest in making a zettlekasten and still get a lot out of it. Having read about zettlekasten online I thought they were one thing, but after having read this I feel that I have a deeper understanding of them, and how to approach using them. The goal isn't necessarily to archive all your knowledge, it's to facilitate insights and new ideas. In a way, having your knowledge and ideas cross referenced is just a nice side effect. Prior to reading this, I would have taken an approach that would have just been a database of things I learned, which takes a lot of time to create and doesn't do much for you in the end. It's a short, easy read at around 150 (small) pages and the author keeps it pretty interesting. I plan on rereading it pretty soon. edit: I forgot to add that a lot of the book goes over study methodsmost people are taught growing up, and why they don't really work that well. I thought this was pretty interesting as well.
  - TuringTest 4y ago
    If you haven't already, you may take a look at networked thinking applications, like the open source logseq[1] or all the similar proprietary outliner alternatives out there. There is a growing ecosystem based on a modern note-taking style heavily based on bi-directional links for organizing your knowledge with a bottom-up strategy, and a friendly community sharing advice while discovering the possibilities of these tools. Plus, you can do zettlekasten or GTD on these tools if you have already built a habit on these techniques. The outliner will accomodate that habit, and let you grow it long-term into a personal knowledge database providing opportunistic insights. [1] https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/
sbmthakur 4y ago
Those appear to be nice points. Anything similar for speaking?
- dcsommer 4y ago
  I think a lot of this applies to spoken communication, too. For instance, if you can't say it clearly and succinctly, you may be lacking clarity yourself and need to do more reflection before talking about it. Also, I like the perspective of communicating while believing your audience is the important one, not yourself.
  - Secrethus 4y ago
    Agreed. You can apply most of it. - Speaking = Power - You influence people by speaking for them to listen. - Knowledge = Expressing it - Non-sense speak = Non-sense thoughts - You speak because they are important.
- oleh 4y ago
  I highly recommend this lecture: https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY
oytis 4y ago
I miss the time when writers didn't follow these rules, it was so much more fun to read, and ideas expressed were more complex and interesting too.
- ta988 4y ago
  Yes there is an obvious advantage to fuzzyness in writing as it lets the readers make their own path in a story. But not everybody likes that, lots of readers enjoy being taken for a guided tour.
  - oytis 4y ago
    For me it is rather that this style doesn't encourage my own thinking. The idea is kind of the opposite, that is that simple writing should free mental capacity, but in my case it just puts my mind in a relaxed state where it can only consume information, while more sophisticated style kindles creativity and interaction with what's written rather than pure consumption
    - WhateverHappns 4y ago
      Yes! I've had this _exact_ thought while reading "Sell Like Crazy". Such a badly written book in this sense. Tons of ideas and methods but it doesn't truly stick in my mind if everything is ELI5'd to infinity. I'd rather read fiction (e.g. Murakami) where I have to close the book and think before I continue.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  Good news, your time is still now.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  These are pretty simple rules of information delivery (at least up to page 43 of this 125 page power point). They've been around for a while but they're most useful for mid-level corporate communication and things resembling that. Fiction writers and writers trying to convey more sophisticated ideas haven't used them (or haven't only them) in the past and generally don't at present.
drakonka 4y ago
I resonated with the "Why"s so much: > * Clear writing leads to clear thinking. > * You don’t know what you know until you try to express it. > * If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too This is the main reason I've kept blogging over the years.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vga805 4y ago
  This resonated with me as well. I taught university philosophy courses and programming courses at a bootcamp. Trying to explain stuff like this to oneself or to others was for me the quickest and most thorough way to truly understand the complexities of these subjects.
billylo 4y ago
Very useful for learners of all ages. I haven't read a 125-page deck completely for a while.
- criddell 4y ago
  It seems a little strange that the author uses a slide deck to explain how to write more clearly, but then I only read the first dozen slides. Maybe later he makes a convincing case that an outline is the ultimate form of clear writing?
hbarka 4y ago
Refreshing ideas. Thank you for sharing.
vishnumohandas 4y ago
I find pg's essay on writing[1] to be one of the best on this topic. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html
shanusmagnus 4y ago
People who dig this deck may dig this book: https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Simple-Truth-Writing-Classic/dp/0691147434 https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Simple-Truth-Writing-Classic/dp... The best single book I've ever read on writing well. Had a big impact on me outside of writing, too.
- V__ 4y ago
  Looks interesting. May I ask what would be the most valuable lesson you got out of it?
  - shanusmagnus 4y ago
    The most enduring lesson was an attitudinal shift toward the reader. The book's stance is that the reader is capable of and interested in understanding whatever it is that you want to say, and your job is not to dazzle her, or persuade her, but rather to provide her the conceptual building blocks to conclude what you have yourself concluded. After reading the book I realized that, without ever having consciously decided to, I had been writing at least a little bit to signal how smart and creative and insightful I was, vs trying to communicate effectively. This was a revelation, and not a happy one -- so much misdirected vanity, to so little purpose!
    - RivieraKid 4y ago
      Or him.
- shanusmagnus 4y ago
  It's too late to edit my comment, but as long as we're talking about it, I just read this article linked earlier today on HN, and it's such a lovely example of the classical style: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/what-does-shitty-job-mean-in-the https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/what-does-shitty-job-me... The author is clearly trying to give the reader what he/she knows about this subject, clearly and simply. It is straightforward, a delight to read, and an inspiration.
stakkur 4y ago
This seems to just be a pastiche of ‘how to write well’ advice that you’ll find most anywhere. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful, but it’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, and often more clearly.
- ultra_nick 4y ago
  It's significantly better than k-12 or the first page of Google. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&q=how+to+write+better&oq=how+to+write+better&aqs=heirloom-srp..0l5 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&q=how+to+...
photochemsyn 4y ago
One useful first step in becoming a better writer - in particular if your subject is complex - is to to delete your Twitter account and never look at another Twitter thread. Character limits kill creativity and complexity. The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading. If you're going to write about a complex scientific or technical subject, you should have some examples in mind of great texts that you've read. What did other writers do that you liked or that stuck with you? Equally true, what are some really bad examples, some things to avoid? For example, here's what I think is an excellent popular history book, and if I ever wrote something with a historical bent, I'd flip though it first: "By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia" by Barry Cunliffe https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/0199689172 https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/... The point about Twitter is really this: you have to develop the skill of composing a paragraph as a coherent entity in order to become a decent writer, and Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart. Of course that's just advice for non-fiction writing; if you're doing fiction or poetry basically anything goes. The public might like it or hate it, but the literary critics can safely be ignored.
- izzygonzalez 4y ago
  Limitations and bounds generally allow me to explore a smaller creative space without tangents. I think this is a generally accepted trope in creative domains. There's also the fact that a swath of the world stopped reading after high school. If accessibility and reach are a goal of a piece of writing, Twitter sort of forces a writer to compress an idea and move on. Who knows how many people I lost even with just this short comment. I guess it's about end goals.
- kepler1 4y ago
  I agree very much. The whole document in the OP reads like someone who lost his Twitter account and is trying to communicate in PPT.
rg111 4y ago
Make it Clear by Patrick Henry Winston [0] is slightly related to this. I learned a lot of things from it. I first got to know about him through his now famous video- How to Speak [1]. [0]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/make-it-clear https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/make-it-clear [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY https://youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY
ghoshbishakh 4y ago
I learnt this during my PhD. I think that is what we are supposed to learn whole doing PhD. How to think clearly.
kepler1 4y ago
For someone who advocates clear writing and communication, it's pretty amusing that he puts this advice into the worst kind of information-sparse 125-page Powerpoint, and thinks that it needs to be protected with a copyright.
- erwincoumans 4y ago
  I skipped right to the HN comments for summaries and follow-up article/book recommendations.
heinrichhartman 4y ago
Forgive me for bringing up my own material here, but I wrote a piece that is highly relevant in this context only two days ago: Writing for Engineers - https://www.heinrichhartmann.com/posts/writing/ https://www.heinrichhartmann.com/posts/writing/ This text is particularly geared towards Software Engineers and focuses more on the psychology of getting started with writing. Lot's of overlap with the content in this post (which has much more depth on the "how to write well" part).
- SnowHill9902 4y ago
  I hereby forgive you.
- pryelluw 4y ago
  Thank you for posting and for having a site that is easy to save for later.
- voiper1 4y ago
  >Heat the iron before working it >Conversely, if you don’t have the context in your brain right now, you have two options (1) don’t write or (2) start loading the context into your brain. I haven't heard that idea before - makes a lot of sense, thanks!
- tveyben 4y ago
  Good article! I especially enjoyed the “Start at the Top not the Beginning” part.
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  No need to ask for forgiveness. Just disclose you're promoting something you created.
suyash 4y ago
To those like me who are more interested in thinking clearly and use writing as a thinking tool may find this book more helpful https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Paper-V-Howard/dp/0688077587 https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Paper-V-Howard/dp/0688077587
tchalla 4y ago
In addition to the comments about writing (and title), I would also encourage everyone to read the Epistemology part of the slide deck. It gives a nice framework to form beliefs, opinions and test them.
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icu 4y ago
The key to Plain English writing can be found in the book, "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing). It gives you the ability to take simple ideas, and write in a simple way, as well as take complex ideas and write in a simple way. Highly recommended skills for anyone wanting to compel others to action.
jll29 4y ago
The first 1/3 is sort of useful, I'd say stop reading the deck when it says “There are invisible, undetectable elves all over this room” is a meaningless stence (it is not meaningless, the sentence may be false but everyone can understand what it takes for it to become true, namely 1. you see elves in this room OR 2. you detect elves in this room OR 3. both.). Also, I'd suggest epistemiology is not so much about finding out what's true or false but what is knowable and not knowable in principle - i.e., to establish the frontier of the knowable (which does not change, whereas the frontier of the present knowledge shifts).
- inimino 4y ago
  No, your 1, 2 or 3 don't help at all. If you see the elves or detect them, then they are not "invisible, undetectable elves", and your observation has no bearing on the truth of the sentence. So the sentence absolutely cannot ever be tested, cannot be said to be true or false, and therefore is in some sense outside the domain of logic. You can have a separate argument about whether an untestable statement is necessarily "meaningless" (maybe the way it makes you feel is the meaning) but I believe the only point the author is trying to get across here is that some statements make predictions about the world, and some don't, and it's worth being aware of the difference.
hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
I found it embarrassing that I actually do not know much material that worth to be written. My gut feeling is that one month of intensive research/work/study can be summarized in a long blog post. But in my post-student life I have, unfortunately, avoided so many of those intensive experience because they are difficult. I even switch job every 2-3 years so that I never get much deep understanding of pretty much anything and fortunately not many jobs actually need one. This might be something I can start working on for my second half of life.
- skydhash 4y ago
  Every time I wanted to write, I felt that what I'm writing about is either trivial or already done. But whenever someone asked me something, I could speak about it for hours. So now, I'm building personal wikis - one for learning and work, the other for thinking. I jot down whatever I feel somewhat relevant. Aiming for the perfect blog post stunted me, so I love writing in a more raw format and a less structured environment.
  - hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
    If you can speak for hours I believe you already have some understanding of the issue, but when you start writing something you might tend to underestimate some knowledge as "trivial" so that you would not want to write them down, at all. That significantly reduces the length of writing IMHO.
jgerrish 4y ago
I don't have a good space to learn in.
_ddzr 4y ago
Key takeaways: 1. One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary 2. Stuffy writing is bad writing! It lowers the power of your brain and mine! 3. What words should you never use in writing? Words whose exact meanings you don’t know! Never use a word unless you know EXACTLY what it means 4. If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too! 5. To keep things clear and readable: Put the main point of each paragraph in its first sentence 6. Pretend you’re writing a textbook! That’s how I ended up writing so many books...Organizing knowledge Learning is a lot like writing a book 7. I often write the introduction last, after I know what it will introduce! 8. Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that is not the main point
- _hcuq 4y ago
  What books have you written?
  - westcort 4y ago
    I just wanted to clarify that these are the main points extracted from the PowerPoint linked. I actually do write for a living, but most of what I write is proprietary for closed distribution.
- k__ 4y ago
  1. is not obvious. For example, if you want to tell a story or go for specific emotions.
  - westcort 4y ago
    To be clear, this is just a simple summary of the source. I agree with your statement, though. In fact, as Rudolf Flesch said in his book, How To Write Speak And Think More Effectively, "So here we have the secret of plain conversational talk: it is not difficult ideas expressed in easy language, it is rather abstractions embedded in small talk. It is heavy stuff packed with excelsior. If you want to be better understood you don’t have to leave out or change your important ideas; you just use more excelsior. It’s as simple as that." The point his is making that the few clear simple points can be packed with some excelsior to improve clarity.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
This stuck out for me; > "Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are not a layer of added decoration. They help express the meaning. If you let a computer “correct” them, you may not get what you intend." The stilted formulations of Grammarly powered student essays is getting obvious to me. Does anyone else feel that assisted writing has every drop of personality wrung out of it?
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johnqian 4y ago
I think this is a great presentation. I've found that learning to write has largely a process of unlearning everything I was taught in secondary school. In school we were conditioned to excrete as much bullshit as we could in a fixed amount of time. Everything we learned--new vocabulary, literary techniques--we were told was for sounding more sophisticated, which we unknowingly interpreted as verbose. I even remember a loved English teacher saying "the purpose of the first sentence in a short answer is make yourself sound smarter than you are. You shouldn't answer the question until at least the second sentence." And for some reason, every argument needed 3 supporting reasons, even though in real life there's almost always just one dominant reason. Turns out actual good writing has precisely the opposite spirit. It's about compressing ideas into their simplest forms. New words are invented to make us more concise, not less. I wish I had realized this many years ago, before writing my essays for college admission.
- richardatlarge 4y ago
  Another thing done at all levels of schooling is to ignore the needed process of revision. A paper is written and then graded, but if revision was a focus the student would learn a great lesson: great ideas and writing take re-writing
  - pschuegr 4y ago
    I never thought about this, but it's true. The value of iteration is woefully undersold.
    - johnqian 4y ago
      Now that I think about it, an incredibly valuable exercise would be to give students a longwinded, vague, rambling essay and make them rewrite it to be as clear and concise as possible. This even works within the time-constrained test environment.
pkrumins 4y ago
Here’s an alternative method: by doing it.
alexpls 4y ago
Great presentation! Another short read that covers similar ground is "The Day You Became a Better Writer" by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert): https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...
rayiner 4y ago
As someone who explains complicated things to people in writing for a living, this is one of the best guides for business and technical communication I’ve ever seen.
- 100011_100001 4y ago
  How do you resist the urge to describe all possible exceptions? In my writing, I describe something, then find myself spending four times as many paragraphs explaining all the exceptions. Fake example: A bicycle has two wheels of equal size. Some bicycles have two extra smaller wheels on each side to train bicycle riders. Occasionally you might have one helper wheel on the left or right instead of two, but it's rare. If a bicycle has two wheels in the back and one in the front it's a tricycle. Not to be confused with training wheels.
fatih-erikli 4y ago
"Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that is not the main point." I loved that phrase! I think it is important for designing UIs too.
sydthrowaway 4y ago
I dont care about writing but I want to learn new things quickly- how?
sgsvnk 4y ago
Anyone know who is this RDG?
sgsvnk 4y ago
Great article, thanks for sharing!
revskill 4y ago
"Writing for reader to NOT asking more questions" is my way of communication now.
brian_cunnie 4y ago
This is my writing gem: when you send an email, you either want them to know something or do something, so say that in the first sentence: Good: "FYI, our etcd cluster is broken, but we're working to fix it." Bad: "I came in this morning, and while I was going through my emails when I saw a message about one of the nodes in our cluster. So I checked it out, and sure enough it was down, and I went to the console and saw the kernel had panicked, so I ... [much further down] and that's when I realized our etcd cluster was down." The later is what I call The Narrative: people have a natural inclination to tell a story, but the irony is that usually what's at the end of the story is the thing that should be first ("the cluster is down!"). Similarly when asking for something: Good: "Could you please get me a new monitor? I'm getting headaches from the current one's constant flickering" Bad: "I had a headache yesterday, so I had to leave early—I hope that's okay. Anyway, I'm not sure about the purchase requisition process. I think there's a resonating frequency between the 60Hz electric system and my monitor's refresh rate, but I'm not an electrical engineer. By the way, the new chair is great ..."
- iamstupidsimple 4y ago
  A more generalised approach: structure emails in importance order, top down. So, actionable stuff at top, rationales further down, in descending importance etc... This becomes more critical when talking to execs.
- MaxBarraclough 4y ago
  For a masterclass in how not to write, take a look at this BBC article which is narrativised to the point of being downright insulting. [0] It's quite an effort to even figure out what they're talking about. (The article's dishonest clickbait title is just icing.) [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49012771 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49012771
  - dqpb 4y ago
    Or any article from The New Yorker.
- ciphol 4y ago
bennysomething 4y ago
"Of a 100-page grammar book, you may need 3 pages, or less." Or fewer!! (I think)
navane 4y ago
for an article about writing, the format ís quite ironic. txt version: https://pastebin.com/dGd75ky8 https://pastebin.com/dGd75ky8

779 points by Secrethus 4y ago

Something that's coming to mind while reading this is how much company communication these days happens almost exclusively on Slack, and how antithetical that format can be to writing and thinking clearly.

iworshipfaangs2 4y ago
I don’t understand. Slack is written communication. How could that be antithetical to writing? Every time you use it is an opportunity to practice.
- d-us-vb 4y ago
  Slack (and teams, discord, skype) are all antithetical to the style of written communication outlined in the slide deck. They make difficult writing a long, well-structured document to record and transmit a complex idea. IM team coordination platforms are only good for the first phase of writing, that is, just getting ideas down in written format. The issue is that the tools built into those platforms do not aid in the other phases of the writing process, and in fact, they sort of make it difficult, actually. I speak from experience having to go back through thousands of Discord messages to condense the ideas into a collection of documents on different topics. Someone should write an extension that makes it easier to convert IM thread to an organized document outline in slack or discord. That would be nice.
mellavora 4y ago
Yes, I'm still smarting from this default behavoir that pressing "return" sends the message instead of starting a new paragraph. My thoughts usually run to more than one paragraph, and I like to edit before I send. I supposes that's not "chat", but then again written is not oral. (side note-- again, two paragraphs, plus self-commentary)
- Tempest1981 4y ago
  You can use SHIFT-RETURN in Slack/Discord to insert a newline. Maybe not great for RSI, but it's muscle memory now.
- tveyben 4y ago
  I hate that as well - but finally learned that you can actually change the RETURN behavior in Slack’s preferences. I wonder why they decided that a different behavior was needed depending on you being in a code block (RETURN -> new line) than normal writing (RETURN -> submit). That’s bad UX! I’m so old school that I want an e-mail so I can file it (as a file) in whatever folder I find logical - that’s not possible in Slack (which is good for non-worthy-of-being-saved chit-chat kind of communications)
Buttons840 4y ago
I've suggested creating a company forum at a few different places, but it's always received like a strange idea that nobody will actually engage with or give any thought to. Email, Slack, etc, none of them create a good long term record that outsiders and newcomers can consume. Some companies have a wiki, but I've never seen them used. Forums are good for long form communication, people can put in more effort knowing that their effort will be available to all going forward.
- Trasmatta 4y ago
  Our team has begun using GitHub Discussions for this purpose, and it's actually pretty good. I've been actively trying to push conversations there from Slack, but some people still seem really hesitant to use it. Or even worse, some people seem to try to use it like a chat application, sending a bunch of short and quick replies, rather than letting the conversation evolve slowly and async.
  - Buttons840 4y ago
    I've heard 90+% of people will not participate in online discussions. It makes me wonder what people would do if you forced them to do so as part of a job. How many people can participate in a forum and make coherent multi-paragraph arguments? We HN participants can, but we're a biased group. A lot of people are accustomed to conversational-style communication as found in Slack or social media, and they may not have written a formal argument since high school.
    - Baeocystin 4y ago
      I think you're spot-on. If anything, it's closer to 99%. I've run/managed various forums over the years, and the disparity between the active participants and the passive readers was always wider than you'd think.
    - Trasmatta 4y ago
      Oh yeah, good point. A lot of people these days have never used a communication medium like that. It would be interesting to work at a company that really prioritized people who prefer that communication style, over the non stop stream of consciousness that Slack turns into.
tayo42 4y ago
We dont use slack like that really, but google doc comments are similarly limiting. Atleast most thoughts happen in a google doc

gfodor 4y ago

Wow, I am so surprised to see this - I came upon an earlier version of this deck 10+ years ago, and it's one of a very small number of things I've held onto and made a point to re-read every couple of years. Very cool to see there's an updated version of it!

yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago

I like this. I'm diving into the zettlekasten thing after reading How to Take Smart Notes, and stopping to think about how I write so that it's as simple and clear as possible, while still being informative enough for my future self is what flexes my head muscle the most. This complements it nicely.

lijogdfljk 4y ago
Mind describing the value you gained from How to Take Smart Notes? Sounds interesting to me, as someone wanting to catalog all "information" i take in
- yeetsfromhellL2 4y ago
  I bought it on a whim after somebody mentioned it and was very pleasantly surprised. Ahrens makes a convincing case for use of the zettlekasten, but the book is mostly about how to acquire understanding of something. You could read it without having any interest in making a zettlekasten and still get a lot out of it. Having read about zettlekasten online I thought they were one thing, but after having read this I feel that I have a deeper understanding of them, and how to approach using them. The goal isn't necessarily to archive all your knowledge, it's to facilitate insights and new ideas. In a way, having your knowledge and ideas cross referenced is just a nice side effect. Prior to reading this, I would have taken an approach that would have just been a database of things I learned, which takes a lot of time to create and doesn't do much for you in the end. It's a short, easy read at around 150 (small) pages and the author keeps it pretty interesting. I plan on rereading it pretty soon. edit: I forgot to add that a lot of the book goes over study methodsmost people are taught growing up, and why they don't really work that well. I thought this was pretty interesting as well.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  If you haven't already, you may take a look at networked thinking applications, like the open source logseq[1] or all the similar proprietary outliner alternatives out there. There is a growing ecosystem based on a modern note-taking style heavily based on bi-directional links for organizing your knowledge with a bottom-up strategy, and a friendly community sharing advice while discovering the possibilities of these tools. Plus, you can do zettlekasten or GTD on these tools if you have already built a habit on these techniques. The outliner will accomodate that habit, and let you grow it long-term into a personal knowledge database providing opportunistic insights. [1] https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/

sbmthakur 4y ago

Those appear to be nice points. Anything similar for speaking?

dcsommer 4y ago
I think a lot of this applies to spoken communication, too. For instance, if you can't say it clearly and succinctly, you may be lacking clarity yourself and need to do more reflection before talking about it. Also, I like the perspective of communicating while believing your audience is the important one, not yourself.
- Secrethus 4y ago
  Agreed. You can apply most of it. - Speaking = Power - You influence people by speaking for them to listen. - Knowledge = Expressing it - Non-sense speak = Non-sense thoughts - You speak because they are important.
oleh 4y ago
I highly recommend this lecture: https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY https://youtu.be/Unzc731iCUY

oytis 4y ago

I miss the time when writers didn't follow these rules, it was so much more fun to read, and ideas expressed were more complex and interesting too.

ta988 4y ago
Yes there is an obvious advantage to fuzzyness in writing as it lets the readers make their own path in a story. But not everybody likes that, lots of readers enjoy being taken for a guided tour.
- oytis 4y ago
  For me it is rather that this style doesn't encourage my own thinking. The idea is kind of the opposite, that is that simple writing should free mental capacity, but in my case it just puts my mind in a relaxed state where it can only consume information, while more sophisticated style kindles creativity and interaction with what's written rather than pure consumption
  - WhateverHappns 4y ago
    Yes! I've had this _exact_ thought while reading "Sell Like Crazy". Such a badly written book in this sense. Tons of ideas and methods but it doesn't truly stick in my mind if everything is ELI5'd to infinity. I'd rather read fiction (e.g. Murakami) where I have to close the book and think before I continue.
maxerickson 4y ago
Good news, your time is still now.
joe_the_user 4y ago
These are pretty simple rules of information delivery (at least up to page 43 of this 125 page power point). They've been around for a while but they're most useful for mid-level corporate communication and things resembling that. Fiction writers and writers trying to convey more sophisticated ideas haven't used them (or haven't only them) in the past and generally don't at present.

drakonka 4y ago

I resonated with the "Why"s so much: > * Clear writing leads to clear thinking. > * You don’t know what you know until you try to express it. > * If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too This is the main reason I've kept blogging over the years.

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vga805 4y ago
This resonated with me as well. I taught university philosophy courses and programming courses at a bootcamp. Trying to explain stuff like this to oneself or to others was for me the quickest and most thorough way to truly understand the complexities of these subjects.

billylo 4y ago

Very useful for learners of all ages. I haven't read a 125-page deck completely for a while.

criddell 4y ago
It seems a little strange that the author uses a slide deck to explain how to write more clearly, but then I only read the first dozen slides. Maybe later he makes a convincing case that an outline is the ultimate form of clear writing?

hbarka 4y ago

Refreshing ideas. Thank you for sharing.

vishnumohandas 4y ago

I find pg's essay on writing[1] to be one of the best on this topic. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html

shanusmagnus 4y ago

People who dig this deck may dig this book: https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Simple-Truth-Writing-Classic/dp/0691147434 https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Simple-Truth-Writing-Classic/dp... The best single book I've ever read on writing well. Had a big impact on me outside of writing, too.

V__ 4y ago
Looks interesting. May I ask what would be the most valuable lesson you got out of it?
- shanusmagnus 4y ago
  The most enduring lesson was an attitudinal shift toward the reader. The book's stance is that the reader is capable of and interested in understanding whatever it is that you want to say, and your job is not to dazzle her, or persuade her, but rather to provide her the conceptual building blocks to conclude what you have yourself concluded. After reading the book I realized that, without ever having consciously decided to, I had been writing at least a little bit to signal how smart and creative and insightful I was, vs trying to communicate effectively. This was a revelation, and not a happy one -- so much misdirected vanity, to so little purpose!
  - RivieraKid 4y ago
    Or him.
shanusmagnus 4y ago
It's too late to edit my comment, but as long as we're talking about it, I just read this article linked earlier today on HN, and it's such a lovely example of the classical style: https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/what-does-shitty-job-mean-in-the https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/what-does-shitty-job-me... The author is clearly trying to give the reader what he/she knows about this subject, clearly and simply. It is straightforward, a delight to read, and an inspiration.

stakkur 4y ago

This seems to just be a pastiche of ‘how to write well’ advice that you’ll find most anywhere. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful, but it’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, and often more clearly.

ultra_nick 4y ago
It's significantly better than k-12 or the first page of Google. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&q=how+to+write+better&oq=how+to+write+better&aqs=heirloom-srp..0l5 https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&q=how+to+...

photochemsyn 4y ago

One useful first step in becoming a better writer - in particular if your subject is complex - is to to delete your Twitter account and never look at another Twitter thread. Character limits kill creativity and complexity. The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading. If you're going to write about a complex scientific or technical subject, you should have some examples in mind of great texts that you've read. What did other writers do that you liked or that stuck with you? Equally true, what are some really bad examples, some things to avoid? For example, here's what I think is an excellent popular history book, and if I ever wrote something with a historical bent, I'd flip though it first: "By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia" by Barry Cunliffe https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/0199689172 https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/... The point about Twitter is really this: you have to develop the skill of composing a paragraph as a coherent entity in order to become a decent writer, and Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart. Of course that's just advice for non-fiction writing; if you're doing fiction or poetry basically anything goes. The public might like it or hate it, but the literary critics can safely be ignored.

izzygonzalez 4y ago
Limitations and bounds generally allow me to explore a smaller creative space without tangents. I think this is a generally accepted trope in creative domains. There's also the fact that a swath of the world stopped reading after high school. If accessibility and reach are a goal of a piece of writing, Twitter sort of forces a writer to compress an idea and move on. Who knows how many people I lost even with just this short comment. I guess it's about end goals.
kepler1 4y ago
I agree very much. The whole document in the OP reads like someone who lost his Twitter account and is trying to communicate in PPT.

rg111 4y ago

Make it Clear by Patrick Henry Winston [0] is slightly related to this. I learned a lot of things from it. I first got to know about him through his now famous video- How to Speak [1]. [0]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/make-it-clear https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/make-it-clear [1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY https://youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY

ghoshbishakh 4y ago

I learnt this during my PhD. I think that is what we are supposed to learn whole doing PhD. How to think clearly.

kepler1 4y ago

For someone who advocates clear writing and communication, it's pretty amusing that he puts this advice into the worst kind of information-sparse 125-page Powerpoint, and thinks that it needs to be protected with a copyright.

erwincoumans 4y ago
I skipped right to the HN comments for summaries and follow-up article/book recommendations.

heinrichhartman 4y ago

Forgive me for bringing up my own material here, but I wrote a piece that is highly relevant in this context only two days ago: Writing for Engineers - https://www.heinrichhartmann.com/posts/writing/ https://www.heinrichhartmann.com/posts/writing/ This text is particularly geared towards Software Engineers and focuses more on the psychology of getting started with writing. Lot's of overlap with the content in this post (which has much more depth on the "how to write well" part).

SnowHill9902 4y ago
I hereby forgive you.
pryelluw 4y ago
Thank you for posting and for having a site that is easy to save for later.
voiper1 4y ago
>Heat the iron before working it >Conversely, if you don’t have the context in your brain right now, you have two options (1) don’t write or (2) start loading the context into your brain. I haven't heard that idea before - makes a lot of sense, thanks!
tveyben 4y ago
Good article! I especially enjoyed the “Start at the Top not the Beginning” part.
rmbyrro 4y ago
No need to ask for forgiveness. Just disclose you're promoting something you created.

suyash 4y ago

To those like me who are more interested in thinking clearly and use writing as a thinking tool may find this book more helpful https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Paper-V-Howard/dp/0688077587 https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Paper-V-Howard/dp/0688077587

tchalla 4y ago

In addition to the comments about writing (and title), I would also encourage everyone to read the Epistemology part of the slide deck. It gives a nice framework to form beliefs, opinions and test them.

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icu 4y ago

The key to Plain English writing can be found in the book, "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing). It gives you the ability to take simple ideas, and write in a simple way, as well as take complex ideas and write in a simple way. Highly recommended skills for anyone wanting to compel others to action.

jll29 4y ago

The first 1/3 is sort of useful, I'd say stop reading the deck when it says “There are invisible, undetectable elves all over this room” is a meaningless stence (it is not meaningless, the sentence may be false but everyone can understand what it takes for it to become true, namely 1. you see elves in this room OR 2. you detect elves in this room OR 3. both.). Also, I'd suggest epistemiology is not so much about finding out what's true or false but what is knowable and not knowable in principle - i.e., to establish the frontier of the knowable (which does not change, whereas the frontier of the present knowledge shifts).

inimino 4y ago
No, your 1, 2 or 3 don't help at all. If you see the elves or detect them, then they are not "invisible, undetectable elves", and your observation has no bearing on the truth of the sentence. So the sentence absolutely cannot ever be tested, cannot be said to be true or false, and therefore is in some sense outside the domain of logic. You can have a separate argument about whether an untestable statement is necessarily "meaningless" (maybe the way it makes you feel is the meaning) but I believe the only point the author is trying to get across here is that some statements make predictions about the world, and some don't, and it's worth being aware of the difference.

hnthrowaway0315 4y ago

I found it embarrassing that I actually do not know much material that worth to be written. My gut feeling is that one month of intensive research/work/study can be summarized in a long blog post. But in my post-student life I have, unfortunately, avoided so many of those intensive experience because they are difficult. I even switch job every 2-3 years so that I never get much deep understanding of pretty much anything and fortunately not many jobs actually need one. This might be something I can start working on for my second half of life.

skydhash 4y ago
Every time I wanted to write, I felt that what I'm writing about is either trivial or already done. But whenever someone asked me something, I could speak about it for hours. So now, I'm building personal wikis - one for learning and work, the other for thinking. I jot down whatever I feel somewhat relevant. Aiming for the perfect blog post stunted me, so I love writing in a more raw format and a less structured environment.
- hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
  If you can speak for hours I believe you already have some understanding of the issue, but when you start writing something you might tend to underestimate some knowledge as "trivial" so that you would not want to write them down, at all. That significantly reduces the length of writing IMHO.

jgerrish 4y ago

I don't have a good space to learn in.

_ddzr 4y ago

Key takeaways: 1. One of the best ways to improve your writing is to learn how to cut out words that are not necessary 2. Stuffy writing is bad writing! It lowers the power of your brain and mine! 3. What words should you never use in writing? Words whose exact meanings you don’t know! Never use a word unless you know EXACTLY what it means 4. If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too! 5. To keep things clear and readable: Put the main point of each paragraph in its first sentence 6. Pretend you’re writing a textbook! That’s how I ended up writing so many books...Organizing knowledge Learning is a lot like writing a book 7. I often write the introduction last, after I know what it will introduce! 8. Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that is not the main point

_hcuq 4y ago
What books have you written?
- westcort 4y ago
  I just wanted to clarify that these are the main points extracted from the PowerPoint linked. I actually do write for a living, but most of what I write is proprietary for closed distribution.
k__ 4y ago
1. is not obvious. For example, if you want to tell a story or go for specific emotions.
- westcort 4y ago
  To be clear, this is just a simple summary of the source. I agree with your statement, though. In fact, as Rudolf Flesch said in his book, How To Write Speak And Think More Effectively, "So here we have the secret of plain conversational talk: it is not difficult ideas expressed in easy language, it is rather abstractions embedded in small talk. It is heavy stuff packed with excelsior. If you want to be better understood you don’t have to leave out or change your important ideas; you just use more excelsior. It’s as simple as that." The point his is making that the few clear simple points can be packed with some excelsior to improve clarity.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

This stuck out for me; > "Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are not a layer of added decoration. They help express the meaning. If you let a computer “correct” them, you may not get what you intend." The stilted formulations of Grammarly powered student essays is getting obvious to me. Does anyone else feel that assisted writing has every drop of personality wrung out of it?

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johnqian 4y ago

I think this is a great presentation. I've found that learning to write has largely a process of unlearning everything I was taught in secondary school. In school we were conditioned to excrete as much bullshit as we could in a fixed amount of time. Everything we learned--new vocabulary, literary techniques--we were told was for sounding more sophisticated, which we unknowingly interpreted as verbose. I even remember a loved English teacher saying "the purpose of the first sentence in a short answer is make yourself sound smarter than you are. You shouldn't answer the question until at least the second sentence." And for some reason, every argument needed 3 supporting reasons, even though in real life there's almost always just one dominant reason. Turns out actual good writing has precisely the opposite spirit. It's about compressing ideas into their simplest forms. New words are invented to make us more concise, not less. I wish I had realized this many years ago, before writing my essays for college admission.

richardatlarge 4y ago
Another thing done at all levels of schooling is to ignore the needed process of revision. A paper is written and then graded, but if revision was a focus the student would learn a great lesson: great ideas and writing take re-writing
- pschuegr 4y ago
  I never thought about this, but it's true. The value of iteration is woefully undersold.
  - johnqian 4y ago
    Now that I think about it, an incredibly valuable exercise would be to give students a longwinded, vague, rambling essay and make them rewrite it to be as clear and concise as possible. This even works within the time-constrained test environment.

pkrumins 4y ago

Here’s an alternative method: by doing it.

alexpls 4y ago

Great presentation! Another short read that covers similar ground is "The Day You Became a Better Writer" by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert): https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...

rayiner 4y ago

As someone who explains complicated things to people in writing for a living, this is one of the best guides for business and technical communication I’ve ever seen.

100011_100001 4y ago
How do you resist the urge to describe all possible exceptions? In my writing, I describe something, then find myself spending four times as many paragraphs explaining all the exceptions. Fake example: A bicycle has two wheels of equal size. Some bicycles have two extra smaller wheels on each side to train bicycle riders. Occasionally you might have one helper wheel on the left or right instead of two, but it's rare. If a bicycle has two wheels in the back and one in the front it's a tricycle. Not to be confused with training wheels.

fatih-erikli 4y ago

"Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that is not the main point." I loved that phrase! I think it is important for designing UIs too.

sydthrowaway 4y ago

I dont care about writing but I want to learn new things quickly- how?

sgsvnk 4y ago

Anyone know who is this RDG?

sgsvnk 4y ago

Great article, thanks for sharing!

revskill 4y ago

"Writing for reader to NOT asking more questions" is my way of communication now.

brian_cunnie 4y ago

This is my writing gem: when you send an email, you either want them to know something or do something, so say that in the first sentence: Good: "FYI, our etcd cluster is broken, but we're working to fix it." Bad: "I came in this morning, and while I was going through my emails when I saw a message about one of the nodes in our cluster. So I checked it out, and sure enough it was down, and I went to the console and saw the kernel had panicked, so I ... [much further down] and that's when I realized our etcd cluster was down." The later is what I call The Narrative: people have a natural inclination to tell a story, but the irony is that usually what's at the end of the story is the thing that should be first ("the cluster is down!"). Similarly when asking for something: Good: "Could you please get me a new monitor? I'm getting headaches from the current one's constant flickering" Bad: "I had a headache yesterday, so I had to leave early—I hope that's okay. Anyway, I'm not sure about the purchase requisition process. I think there's a resonating frequency between the 60Hz electric system and my monitor's refresh rate, but I'm not an electrical engineer. By the way, the new chair is great ..."

iamstupidsimple 4y ago
A more generalised approach: structure emails in importance order, top down. So, actionable stuff at top, rationales further down, in descending importance etc... This becomes more critical when talking to execs.
MaxBarraclough 4y ago
For a masterclass in how not to write, take a look at this BBC article which is narrativised to the point of being downright insulting. [0] It's quite an effort to even figure out what they're talking about. (The article's dishonest clickbait title is just icing.) [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49012771 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-49012771
- dqpb 4y ago
  Or any article from The New Yorker.
ciphol 4y ago

bennysomething 4y ago

"Of a 100-page grammar book, you may need 3 pages, or less." Or fewer!! (I think)

navane 4y ago

for an article about writing, the format ís quite ironic. txt version: https://pastebin.com/dGd75ky8 https://pastebin.com/dGd75ky8