Steps to Improve Your Writing (opens in new tab)

In regards to point 2: Having kids and reading tons of books out loud to them has really impressed upon me how important this is. Reading my own writing out loud has been a real turning point for me in developing my writing skills.

I use the text to speech in my articles as a 'read it out loud' exercise.

Thanks for sharing these observations. Im not much of a writer but would love to improve on my writing skills. I personally have the most problem with 3 and the only way I could get more productive brain dumps is to record myself talking freely instead, then rewrite it. But this is a time consuming process and was wondering what kind of exercises/drills I could use to ease the brain dump constipation. To me there's something that blocks me when I attempt to write something down freely but I feel that that the right exercises would ease it. I feel like Im making a wrong step somewhere that makes me become self conscious at the wrong moment.

This feedback presumes that all writing is intended for a specific, professional audience. Good writing is not limited to a single audience, and good writers will consider their audience when making choices. If a writer goes against the 'rules' you've just shared without much thought into whether or not they apply to their current goals... there is a problem. But there is likewise a problem in blindly following rules.

The rules change based on what you are writing, why, and to whom.

"Welp" might be a regional dialect, but it is used a bit differently from "well," evoking resignation about something disappointing that can't be changed. "Welp, with the gas out, we can't use the range and oven to cook the nice dinner we planned, so we'll heat something up in the microwave instead." People who say "welp" also say "well," so it makes sense to distinguish them in writing. That's not to say "welp" is appropriate diction for every kind of writing and every kind of audience, but where it's appropriate, it's appropriate.

"Whelp" has a standard English meaning, but I suppose you might see it used to mean "welp" as well. I dislike this spelling, because in my experience, people who pronounce "whale" and "wail" differently also pronounce "whelp" (the dog one) and "welp" (resignation) differently, but I don't know if that is universally true.

I'm glad I'm more of a language descriptivist instead of prescriptivist because none of your examples bother me.

>It's "lessons" not "learnings". How much have you eaten How many eatings have you had? Ugh.

Does the word "drinks" also bother you? (As in "How many drinks have you had?") (My previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17020434)

And what about everybody including today's English PhDs incorrectly using plural "you" as singular you? The word "thou" was already the correct word for the singular and intimate relation. The famous song title should be "Thou Art My Sunshine" not the incorrect "You Are My Sunshine". :-)

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/did-english...

Does a language get to change and evolve at all? If yes, who should decide? A language committee or bottom-up crowdsource language speakers? When does the previous "incorrect and criticized" usage become "correct and accepted"?

English is my fourth language. I hate seeing advice like "use simple, reduced vocabulary". Dumbing everything down is not a way to go. Feynman said, that if you cannot explaind it to a child you do not understand it, not that you should communicate with everyone like they were kids.

Like many on HN, I admire the simplified language guidelines [0]that the UK GOV network of informational sites imposes on itself. A government has a civic duty to make regulatory and legal information as easy to understand as possible, for the widest gamut of possible readers who are subject to the laws of the land.

However, those sites have a captive audience: anyone smarter than the 'lowest common denominator' UK GOV target reader, any reader who might have appreciated a more concise and less 'hand-held' style, is going to keep reading anyway, because the information is important and non-negotiable.

Outside of that context, most pieces you might like to read were commissioned with maximum word-counts, varying levels of assumed readership skill and prior knowledge, and diverse other factors that defy any 'universal style-guide', such as TFA is trying to formulate.

For instance, I write about technology for a living. Those commissions have word-count restrictions that force me to either:

- Say less, so that I can maintain a level of English suitable for a moderately-skilled non-English speaker (As you can imagine, the editor does not want me to 'say less').

- Use more compressed and concise language that may be more challenging for the non-native reader (because concision can be antithetical to simplicity [and my editor also wants prose that is accessible to the widest number of readers without alienating the target demographic for that particular piece]).

- Write boldly and use footnotes and references to justify the claims I am making, because:

a) I don't have enough word-count for 'explainers' and 'box-outs'

b) I'm expected to deliver a lot of information, and

c) I'm expected to write in the simplest style available, depending on the intent of the commission.

It's bad enough that the dictates of SEO have dumbed down so much content from once-great news and analysis providers over the last ten years. Let's not support any further race to the bottom, but rather aim to write lean and information-rich material in a style that's matched to the readership.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u...

Hey Adam, the content itself is great and the tips are bang on. However, I think you should proof read the article again. An article on 'Improving Your Writing' loses a lot of credibility when it has sentences like:

> The character, 'hotel' has does an action 'wanted'.

which should be:

> The character, 'hotel', has an action, 'wanted'.

It also seems like you rely on a single source, Williams and Colomb (1990). Is this your personal summary of that book? Do you recommend reading it, or do you believe your post captures the most important points?

Thanks for making the post. Focusing on creating a clear thesis at the start of your blog will help your readers understand the purpose of your post.

The first paragraph communicates you've struggled with writing in the past, the second para says writing advice is often low quality, and the third paragraph explains the characteristics of good writing (hints at the thesis).

You could make a single thesis like this: "This post explains the characteristics of good writing and how I was able to improve my writing skills."

You could continue with "learning to write well was a great personal struggle, especially because writing training materials didn't help". That could also be considered a separate thesis for a different post.

Paragraphs like these can be made more concise:

> Most writers struggle to write well when the subjects use technical terms. Technical terms are confusing when they are not introduced properly. This technique is helpful when communicating complex information that requires technical terms. When you introduce complex information, design the sentence that it appears in, so that you can locate that term at the end.

Here's how you could reword it:

Technical writing is difficult, especially when the terminology is not properly introduced. It's best to introduce technical terms at the end of sentences.

Native English speaker here. For me, any sentence with more than one comma is telling me that it's not one sentence. It's two, three, or four sentences. And to be clear, I'm talking about sentences that are very long, not sentences that contain a list of items such as the previous sentence. Example:

-----------------------------------------------------------

The more I write, the more I realize that sentence structure matters, as does grammar, and even spelling, and also choice of words, which affects some readers for whom English is a non-primary language.

As I write more, I realize that sentence structure, grammar, and spelling matter. My choice of words is important because unnecessary complexity may negatively affect some readers.

-----------------------------------------------------------

It wasn't always this way. 50 years ago, it was common for sentences to be much longer. I often read stories to my wife that were written in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. They are personal accounts, not professional writing. Life stories. They quite often include sentences that take more than one breath to read aloud, because they are so incredibly long that they deplete me of oxygen before I can finish reading the sentence, which I do find quite difficult to read since I am now concentrating on my breathing instead of on the written word, which is not just awkward but also distracting.

YMMV.

This is also the case in my native language (French), I assume it's pretty common for Latin languages.

That's not how science works. "Have been found" is not a weasel phrase, it's an accurate description of empirical observations.

I'm a little cautious of that. “have been found” implies a correlation but reserves some doubt; to omit it is to say the correlation is extremely strong, effectively beyond doubt. That's a strong implication. To leave that quaifier phrase in suggests the author recognises the signal is noisy and some other experts may disagree about the correlation being present.

Anyway, I really appreciate this kind of thing. There's too much bullshit writing and I'm glad someone is pushing back.

(Edited for clarity)

OP here. Taking ownership of the statement is an interesting perspective. I've never thought of that. In my experience, when I take ownership, my writing tends to feel more honest. I acknowledge what I know or don't know, which makes the writing clearer for the readers.

Start with a mind map.

If the goal of your writing is clear, it's easy to make an outline once the mind map is done. If the goal isn't clear, start asking questions about why it isn't clear and expand the mind map until there's enough there to continue. Sometimes this requires research while constructing the mind map, especially for assigned academic writing. Tag pages with sticky notes or copy data with references into a large research doc as you go.

Once the outline is done, the rest is straightforward. An editor always helps if you can afford one, but you don't always need to agree with the suggested changes.

In my experience it’s got more to do with expectations.

https://karimdaghari.netlify.app/blog/get-things-done/

I always think about the reader: what do I want them to learn or understand? Then, how can I best get there without losing their attention, and, if context allows, make it entertaining.

"The principle suggests us to focus..." Should not it be: "The principle suggests that we focus..."?

> I can bear the pain of writing in high school, but I almost gave up in university

And this should be "could"?

Pinker writes a useful explanation:

> A process called nominalization takes a perfectly spry verb and embalms it into a lifeless noun by adding a suffix like –ance, –ment, or –ation. Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement. Helen Sword calls them "zombie nouns" because they lumber across the scene without a conscious agent directing their motion.[0]

There is a lot more detail in his book "Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century"

[0]: https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/why_academics_st...

The later is hardly clear writing. I think you've mistaken terseness and informality for clarity.

You misconstrue "wise spending" with "allocating funds to areas that need the most assistance". The two are not informationally equivalent.

You leave out the information that you know nothing about local conditions. Presumably you've jumped to conclusions about what local conditions means.

And lastly, it must be pointed out that a perfectly valid interpretation of your version is that you were unable to form an opinion on the committees spending because you got lost in the carpark/ building/town...

I think one could arguably simplify the original further to:

"Knowing nothing about local conditions, we could not determine how effectively the committee allocated funds to areas needing the most assistance."

But it's very hard to move past that without fundamental information changing, and even my changes I accept are a little bit stylistically subjective, albeit with a marginally lower word count to convey fundamentally the same information.

Your version shows the problem with taking advice to "omit needless words" too far. The main virtue of good writing is clarity, and that often needs more words than a maximally compressed sentence. Your version omits useful information, is imprecise, and uses a vague idiom that is easily misinterpreted. In short, it doesn't say the same thing.

The first example smacks of writing which is not so much unclear as it is deliberately banal and devoid of impact, as famously described by Orwell here: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...