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What I did not learn about writing in school
- jyriand 4y agoIn school, I learned that writing is like a game of bingo. Later I learned that writing is more like a game of solitaire.
- eatonphil 4y agoThe most useful lesson about writing I learned I did actually learn in school (in a mandatory writing-intensive course in college): to re-read and edit. I think it was specifically that reading what you wrote aloud (or mouthing it silently) is a way to get a fresh look at what you wrote. It helps you realize both 1) more natural sounding and 2) more logical ordering of words than the stream of thought you wrote down. My initial stream of thought when writing is always a garbled mess. So this technique made a big difference for me. The most that my favorite books on writing (mentioned in the article as well: Zinsser's On Writing Well) helped with was just cutting out unnecessary crap. Not to say it doesn't help to read these sorts of books. And I agree with the author that just writing (and continuing to write as practice) is best.
- CharlesW 4y ago> My initial stream of thought when writing is always a garbled mess. So this technique made a big difference for me. Yes! "The only kind of writing is rewriting." — Ernest Hemingway
- the_af 4y agoBorges also followed this point of view. He was allegedly so fussy about rewriting and fixing his writings, he sometimes thought of corrections for second editions, if it was too late because the text was already in print.
- korroziya 4y agoI agree with most of the points but I will say (as someone who writes for a living) that it is "easy" once you've learned how to do it. Writing is hard as hell if you don't know the rules past high-school level requirements. Case-in-point: several of my non-work friends are ESL and some of them are taking technical writing courses. I've seen their assignments and have given them copyediting help. They're shocked that I can carve out the assignment in five minutes. Usually their problem is the first rule from Strunk and White: use less words.
- ghaff 4y agoYeah. These days I mostly do a lot of writing and a lot of editing. And I suspect I can sometimes coast a little bit because people assume that what I do (for me) is a lot harder than it actually is. Though it's never really easy and does involve a lot of pacing to get through some writing "problem."
- f5ve 4y ago*fewer words, mr. professional writer jk ... but only sort of
- olddustytrail 4y agoI hope it's a joke. That foolish school child rule should never be mentioned by adults. Unless you think "<" is the "fewer than" symbol...
- mold_aid 4y ago[flagged]
- zabzonk 4y agoquite a lot of my career has been writing - reference material and training courses, and a few short stories. apart from the latter, all of which were crap, my advice would be: - know what you are writing about. it is very hard to write on a subject you have little knowledgr of - pick an example that you have seen and found helpful (i chose MS c++ help - the old stuff not the new crap) and model your text on that - if possible, get it reviewed, if it is a course then teach it from what you have written - the punters will not be kind to a badly-written course - use professional grade tools, if you are doing this for real money - i used framemaker for most of my technical writing
- nicbou 4y agoI learned the "plan first" rule in high school, and a university teacher etched it into my brain a bit later. What I wish we were taught: plain, bottom-line-up-front writing. We were never told to use fewer, simpler words. Clarity was never a criteria. In the real world, people will wish you could get to the damn point.
- Someone1234 4y ago> We were never told to use fewer, simpler words. Clarity was never a criteria. I agree. I'd even go as far as to say we're taught the exact opposite: You will get penalized in some courses for using simple words or not meeting arbitrary word-counts. What I always found particularly contradictory is that you are taught in High School you needed to write an advanced way "for college," but when you get to college the standards were lower. Then you get told you need to write verbosely because "for work," but then you get into work, and it is middle-school writing styles and complexity ruling the day. It is exactly the same thing with cursive. Nobody wants cursive in a professional setting, ever.
- maegul 4y agoCurious, haven’t really thought about this before. Seems like your observation is a strong sign that schooling and academia are run by people who’ve only worked in schooling and academia, which isn’t news obviously, but made more salient by an issue such as yours.
- andrewflnr 4y agoA lot of it is just that clarity is much, much harder to measure than word count or even vocabulary usage. The system almost can't avoid incentivizing what can be measured, and is almost incapable of incentivizing clarity (consider the task of grading 40 papers over the course of a few days and see if you still think it's reasonable to expect otherwise. And honestly, it's true that students need to prove their ability to write long pieces, and it's, again, hard to measure whether the student is covering enough ground to cover the length you want to see. You get what you measure, and what you can't measure is very hard to get (absent relatively intensive personal attention, hard to scale). I don't know a solution.
- fwlr 4y agoThere’s an idea in your head. You produce some text with your fingers. I consume that text with my eyeballs. Some idea forms in my head. Phrased like this, your aim is obviously that the idea in my head closely resembles the idea in your head. Don’t get distracted by trying to make your text more closely resemble the idea in your head; your text is just a tool to get past my eyeballs and into my brain. The best advice I have for improving that resemblance is this: Re-read your writing looking for other possible ideas that could be formed, and then edit it such that it is incompatible with as many of the other ideas as possible. You may need to put it down and come back later with fresh eyes in order to see those other possible ideas. This sounds like the cliche advice of “re-read and edit, put it down and come back with fresh eyes“ - because it IS that cliche, expanded into the most specific and effective form of itself that I know. Unfortunately, the cliche by itself isn’t as helpful, since there are many other ways to expand it. You could re-read, but looking to see how closely it resembles the idea in your head (a common mistake, I cautioned against it above). You could edit, but such that it has fewer words (aesthetically pleasing for sure, but it risks sacrificing that all-important ‘inter-brain idea-resemblance’). You could come back with fresh eyes thinking the goal is to rediscover and refine the idea that’s already in your head (a good way to think, but this is more precisely called ‘journaling’ and it doesn’t have much to do with writing to communicate.) Case in point: it was only upon re-reading my comment and thinking ‘damn, that last paragraph is really long, can I fix that?’ that I realized the entire last paragraph is literally me being worried that you’ll see “re-read … edit … come back with fresh eyes” and then the idea that ends up in your head will just be whatever you usually interpret the cliche to mean, instead of the very specific process I have in mind! I should also add a concrete example, those are usually very effective. I suspect concrete examples are helpful precisely because they are derived from your idea and not from your text description of the idea: there’s a cloud of possible ideas compatible with the text you wrote, and there’s another cloud of possible ideas compatible with the examples you give, and the intersection of those two is quite specific.
- saurik 4y agoI absolutely agree with this, and will add that one thing I do is have other people read it and see what they think and if there is any confusion at all I don't ever chalk it up to the reader or just try to get them to understand: I try to edit my article to prevent that mistake from ever having been conceived of; too many people are just like "engh: that's just one opinion and a bunch of other people got it" without realizing how their test readership likely has a sampling bias or that 1/10 is actually really bad.
- CharlesW 4y ago> Writing is hard for everyone Here's how I've put it for people who care deeply for the written word: You will hate writing. You will love having written.
- borroka 4y agoI don't think that's a good way to put it. Some people will hate writing and love to have written because they hated the act of writing. For me, writing is laborious, challenging, but the process is fun. I look forward to writing. Am I the only one? I don't think so. It's like lifting weights or training for a sport. Some people may hate the process, if they had the choice of, say, lifting weights or not lifting weights and getting the same exceptional results for their bodies, they'd sit on the couch gorging themselves on Doritos. I like lifting weights: breathing hard, the blood pumping, the strong feeling of being alive. Not just the results.
- paulpauper 4y agoEveryone likes to give writing tips. What I have learned for for something as difficult as writing and as unpredictable as how people consume it and respond to it, is that there are no obvious rules beyond the basics like grammar and spelling. What makes some writing successful and other writing not, is sometimes a coin toss. Or so many variables, who knows. Some people say to write simply or minimalistic, but others have had huge success with a more complicated writing style. Writing is 80% preparation, 20% writing Preparation is part of the writing process though. That is what editing is for. Writing is hard for everyone Good writing is hard
- LoganDark 4y agoI'll spend 30 minutes writing a short email, or many hours... just because I re-read it so many times. I re-read it every single time I've looked at anything else for even a second, because I'll feel like I need to refresh the entire context to add the next paragraph. I'll re-read the entire thing periodically as I write it, to make sure it flows alright. Every time time I read it, I fix every error I can find as I go... and then re-read it again with the corrections. I repeat until either I find no errors, or I don't feel like caring any more. I've done this with essays spanning thousands of words. I'll re-read the entire thing every 5 minutes or so. I'm so paranoid about it. And then I'll find out anyway later that I should've listened to some tiny doubt that I dismissed.
- JALTU 4y agoChatGPT, anyone? <ducks head>
- greedo 4y agoWriting well is difficult for many, and I believe one of the reasons is because people don't read much anymore. Whether it's fiction, non-fiction, or poetry doesn't matter, as long as you read. But our attention spans have become so short that we need small, quick dopamine hits. I used to read voraciously; the longer books the better. Every Stephen King book, Neal Stephenson series, I just loved to lose myself in a good book to the exclusion of everything else. Now I find I have to focus before I can truly lose myself in a good book. I'm a firm believer that you can learn to write by following style guides, quotes from Hemingway and King about 'killing your babies' etc. But to become a great writer you have to be a reader.
- the_af 4y agoTo be a great writer you must indeed become a voracious reader. Stephen King says as much in On Writing, I believe (I assume you've read On Writing; if not, I really recommend it).
- dredmorbius 4y ago"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -- Thomas Mann
- greedo 4y agoI'm not sure that fits. I find writing extremely easy, and most of my colleagues and friends hate writing and are poor writers. All of the good writers/authors I know find writing easy. It's still work, but it's not ditch-digging hard.
- dredmorbius 4y agoMann had some basis for his statement. It might not be a universal truth, of course. But it's notable coming from him.
- corbulo 4y agoSchool never taught me that writing is often at its worst when hyperoptimized to be read by a general audience. Every great writer has their own style, 'breaks rules' in their own way, and most often and importantly writes somewhat clearly. The absolute best writers totally forgo any rules or requirements of clarity but do obey a consistent logic. Modern writing classes are great for writing corporate reports, but miserable to read anywhere else.
- the_af 4y agoThere are plenty of "artsy" writing classes. It's not all about producing efficient and easy to parse writings.
- pflanze 4y ago(2020) as stated in their BibTeX entry (which looks funny to me for a blog post)
- hummus_bae 4y ago[dead]
- RheingoldRiver 4y agoI always suggest Developing Quality Technical Information, and I'll link to both Amazon [0] and my personal review of it [1]. This is the best book about writing I've ever read, and it's significantly improved my writing in concrete ways. One small example is that I no longer put gerunds (verbs ending in -ing as a noun) in any title or heading, because these don't translate well into other languages in such a context and as such may cause a non-native English speaker to slow down in their reading (or mess up your translator's job if they need to do i18n). But there are much more far-reaching changes; I tend to be a lot more concise, delete adverbs, force myself to use parallel structure, etc. As this blog post's author might put it, I'm a lot more judicious about when and where to employ my voice. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Quality-Technical-Information-Handbook/dp/0133118975 https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Quality-Technical-Informat... [1] https://river.me/blog/book-review-quality-technical-information/ https://river.me/blog/book-review-quality-technical-informat...
- lumb63 4y agoI was sad to see this article not mention Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. It is one of the best guides to writing clearly and concisely I’m aware of. Too much writing meanders and fails to say what it means.
- bawolff 4y agoThis seems like really non-constructive advice. Are they even tips? Like "your voice is you not how you write" - what does that even mean from an ontological prespective?
- dredmorbius 4y agoSome of the best insights on writing have come for me from a book on reading, Mortimer Adler's classic (and HN perennial) How to Read a Book. When you realise that written communication is a conversation, across not only space but time, that the author and reader are both participants, and that each benefits by consideration of the other, in preparing to receive or be received, and to assemble similar structures of understanding (the author the original, the reader a copy), and to both be questioned and challenged, and to question and challenge the narrative, the thought that the acts of reading and writing have much to learn from one another makes a great deal of sense. Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book> Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/howtoreadbook0000adle_y9v4 https://archive.org/details/howtoreadbook0000adle_y9v4> LibGen: <https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=adler+how+to+read+a+book&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=adler+how+to+read+a+book&lg...> Numerous HN submissions: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=how%20to%20read%20a%20book https://hn.algolia.com/?q=how%20to%20read%20a%20book> Notably 140 comments from 7 years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446> Another recent insight is that whilst we have language centres in our brains, there is no reading centre. That is, reading is an entirely learned activity, and though based on evolved capabilities, there's not innate evolved structure supporting it (yet) within neurological anatomy. This from Maryanne Wolf on the Ezra Klein podcast last November: <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-maryanne-wolf.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...> (Previously mentioned: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33761202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33761202>)
- thenerdhead 4y agoI thought at one point that Paul Graham and David Perell were “good” writers, then I started reading and writing voraciously. Now that I’ve read many great writers in all sorts of topics such as philosophy, business, finance, self-help, history, and many more, I cannot really appreciate these internet writers as much as I used to. In fact, I can’t really read them much without feeling they are too pretentious. But I do appreciate them helping me grow to appreciate the art form. Maybe the author will also go down a similar path and read great books from great authors. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
- ascotan 4y agoStrangely I don't think public schools do a good job teaching children how to write. I chalk this up to the fact that most school are testing and metrics driven and writing is somewhat more subjective.
- Veen 4y agoWhen I’ve talked to professional writers, they say the best way to become a good writer is reading the work of writers you admire. And not just reading their work but analysing and dissecting it. Find sentences and paragraphs you admire and study them. Pull them apart to see how they work. Try to understand the syntax and the rhythm and the rhetoric underlying them. Write variations until you remember them. Eventually you’ll have a mental catalogue you can call on while you’re writing.
- telesilla 4y agoInterestingly, this is pretty much how you learn to write music. Don't writing schools teach this method also? Or any creative pursuit? But then, the article ends with: >Writing is difficult. Getting better takes time That covers pretty much everything.
- skmurphy 4y agoSome observations missing from the piece: Good writing requires refining and editing as much as developing an outline and a first draft. Reading the piece aloud will trigger a natural editing and refinement process and is useful for important content. I find Grammarly helpful for spotting problems in writing, I agree with about half of the suggestions but the review is still helpful. I have paid copy editors for books and important articles I have written. Start with the audience you are writing for and what you hope they will learn or the actions you will encourage / enable. Getting a first draft via dictation can be a better way to start than typing. Try it once or twice. For important pieces ask for feedback from folks who are a good proxy for your target audience or are familiar with their needs.