
The Most Important Writing Lesson I Ever Learned - talison
http://blog.stevenpressfield.com/2009/07/writing-wednesdays-2-the-most-important-writing-lession-i-ever-learned/
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"Have you ever noticed how other people's stuff is shit, and your own shit is
stuff?" - George Carlin

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saurabh
As much as I respect George, I think its reverse applies to us hackers

"Have you ever noticed how other people's shit is stuff, and your own stuff is
shit?"

~~~
cema
Uh, but that's only because computers make us humble. (Or modest. Not sure
which one.)

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codemonkey
My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've
written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness,
she passed on this gem:

You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked
Mary."

I can say what I need to say in half the words now.

~~~
swombat
Passive vs active voice is certainly useful, but it's only one of many, many
bits of writing craft.

If you want a whole lot more of those, I suggest Strunk & White:
<http://www.bartleby.com/141/>

~~~
RyanMcGreal
The problem with _The Elements of Style_ is that White flagrantly,
persistently and delightfully violates his own rules. Given that his writing
is unfailingly charming and enjoyable to read, I have to wonder about value of
those rules.

~~~
electromagnetic
The Elements of Style (which I personally dislike) isn't written for
professional writers, it's written for non-professionals.

In today's culture people are barely capable of writing a sentence without
losing half the vowels along the way, and god forbid you're American because
you already lost half your U's before you were even born. Forget about
adequate grammar, or even half-decent spelling.

White is a professional writers, and with everything there's one key thing to
being talented and that's knowing when to break the rules. Breaking the rules
when you know what you're doing can be amazing and produce awe-inspiring
works, however breaking the rules because you're too ignorant to know they
even exist certainly doesn't make you amazing and the only awe you'll inspire
is stupidity.

The rules are very valuable, but any half-decent writer has already figured
out the rules merely by reading.

~~~
jacquesm
> and god forbid you're American because you already lost half your U's before
> you were even born.

My spell checker thinks that every time I write colour, endeavour, or glamour
that I've made some grave error.

I really can't stand that, it doesn't allow me to change the preferences to
English (which I was taught in school) or American English.

Btw, any piece about spelling contains at least one spelling error, yours is
no exception ;)

~~~
electromagnetic
> Btw, any piece about spelling contains at least one spelling error, yours is
> no exception ;)

I know! It's the irony of the world. No matter what, when you complain about a
general lack of spelling there is _always_ a spelling mistake, but you won't
notice it until 5 hours later. It's like there's a frigging anti-spelling Nazi
out there who hijacks your post just to screw with you.

God damn gremlins always plaguing English people :(

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edw519
Hacker's Corollary:

"The Most Important Programming Lesson I Ever Learned"

Nobody wants to run your shit.

Make it simple. Make it easy. Make it fun (to the extent that you can). Make
it intuitive. Make it do exactly what needs to be done.

Your user is too busy for anything else.

~~~
tomjen2
Please don't make it intuitive, I know everybody says it should be but that
assumes that all software is made to please the casual user. The best software
is made to please the expert user, and makes them many times more powerful
that the average user.

~~~
quizbiz
Why can't powerful features be done in an intuitive fashion? Smart UI design
will allow for that. The more typical argument is one of simplicity versus
functionality. But if you choose functionality, why not put in the effort to
make the features as easy to use as possible?

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bootload
_"... 1) Reduce your message to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand
form. 2) Make it fun. Or sexy or interesting or informative ..."_

For anyone who wants to read an antidote to this drivel, try Orwell,
_"Politics and the English Language"_ ~
<http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html>

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modoc
Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott is an amazing book about writing. It's funny,
very helpful, inspiring, etc...

[http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-
Life/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Some-Instructions-Writing-
Life/dp/0385480016/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254253623&sr=8-1)

~~~
wallflower
Repost but Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the best treatise on writing (and by
extension, creative expression) I think I've ever read. Here are some excerpts
- I believe its worthwile reading the entire essay many times:

"I often hear people say, 'I’m not good enough yet to be published.' That’s
quite possible. Probable, even. All I’m saying is: Let someone else decide
that. Magazines, editors, agents. They all employ young people making $22,000
a year whose job it is to read through piles of manuscripts and send you back
letters telling you that you aren’t good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. Don’t
pre-reject yourself. That’s their job, not yours. Your job is only to write
your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest."

"There are heaps of books out there on How To Get Published. Often people find
the information in these books contradictory. My feeling is -- of COURSE the
information is contradictory. Because, frankly, nobody knows anything. Nobody
can tell you how to succeed at writing (even if they write a book called 'How
To Succeed At Writing') because there is no WAY; there are, instead, many
ways. Everyone I know who managed to become a writer did it differently.
sometimes radically differently. "

<http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm>

~~~
MaysonL
Robert Heinlein's "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" ranks pretty highly
up there. Starts off with the old Kipling quote:

    
    
      There are nine and sixty ways
      Of constructing tribal lays
      And every single one of them is right!
    

and ends up with his rules (which he describes as "business habit")

1\. You must _write_.

2\. You must _finish_ what you write.

3\. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.

4\. You must put it on the market.

5\. You must keep it on the market until it sells.

I refrain from posting the Google Books link to the essay: it's much too long,
and so is left as an exercise for the reader.

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RiderOfGiraffes
One of the most important lessons about writing that I ever learned was to
make sure people could read what you wrote.

Here is a screenshot of my browser window opened onto the article in question.

<http://www.penzba.co.uk/StevenPressfield.jpg>

It will be ironic if this is one of those occasions that my ISP fails to serve
the page, but if you get a "forbidden" or similar, hit "Reload".

So, for those of you who run web sites - what does _your_ site look like in an
older browser, and should you care?

FWIW I could read the article if I selected all text (Ctrl-A).

~~~
jacquesm
It works fine for me and is actually quite good.

Just to be sure I checked it in konqueror too (4.2.2) and it works there too.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I can read it fine when I highlight the text. And the article is quite good -
yes. I've up-mud it.

My point remains.

I'm actually technically fairly competent compared with most of my customers.
If either of my companies served a web page like that, half my customers
wouldn't be able to read it. Is that my problem?? Or theirs?

It's my problem. If you have a web page, you need to decide where the cut-off
is. The author here either doesn't know that his page doesn't render
correctly, or doesn't care. Either way, if I were a customer, I'd be less than
impressed.

So the question remains: Can your customers read your web page(s)?

 _(In your specific case, jacquesm, I know the answer is "yes")_

~~~
unalone
Give it another try. Sometimes loading a page doesn't work and refreshing
fixes it.

Also: With all respect, supporting Konqueror is really stretching support.
It's got practically no market share, and isn't even the most popular Linux
browser. I'm surprised it isn't working, though: I thought it ran WebKit, and
so wouldn't mess up.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Loaded three times, same result each time.

I agree that it's infeasible to support all browsers, and mine, in particular,
is almost certainly not worth supporting. In most other circumstances I
wouldn't bother to say anything, but here I thought the observation was worth
making.

Not everyone sees your web site the way you do. How do you check/test?

~~~
jacquesm
We have lots of browsers on hand in virtual machines, every major change gets
tested in everything we can lay our hands on, we also ask our users to report
problems through the help desk, and we work with them to get rid of bugs.

As for having _every_ browser work with your site, sorry but that isn't always
possible. There are finite resources for everything, and if you insist on
using an out-of-the-ordinary setup with a miniscule portion of the users then
you must surely agree that the minor discomforts of that are of your own
choosing. Just like, for instance I will not support IE3, IE4 or Netscape 1.2
(and a whole host of other browsers that have met their end-of-life long ago)
any more.

I've been a long time user of Konqueror myself, but right now I wouldn't know
of any real good reason to continue to use it, Mozilla/FF/Iceweasel or
whatever it wants to be called is available just about everywhere for the
price of a free download.

Even Opera has a huge following compared to Konqueror, which is now below
0.08%, in spite of being the 'default' browser on a whole bunch of linux
distros.

Chances are you're one of very few people that has ever tried to load that
page using Konqueror, and chances are that the problem lies in (your old
version of) Konqueror, especially since a newer one displays the page
correctly.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Let me say from the beginning that I agree that I have a very old version of
Konqueror. So old that there are many, many sites that I can't browse. I
accept that. I'm not actually complaining that I can't read the text without
doing something "special" - namely, highlighting the text.

However, I am quite frankly _amazed_ that I'm being down-mud for pointing out
that this is a serious issue. You, jacquesm, are describing extraordinary
lengths to ensure that your visitors can read your site. I am pretty sure that
the vast majority of people don't go to the lengths you do. And probably they
shouldn't.

Perhaps I just didn't make myself clear.

But the point I'm trying to make is that people who care about customers need
to make this decision, and need to know they're making it.

Is it not important? Is it not relevant? Is it not an issue for web designers
to test across multiple browsers? Do you not care that there are people
excluded? Are you not considering this? Have you consciously made the decision
as to which browsers you won't support?

Are these questions not appropriate?

Clearly there are people who feel that these are _not_ appropriate questions.

Or maybe I'm being down-mud because they _are_ relevant, people _aren't_
considering them, and I've pricked a conscience or two.

Down-mod me if you choose, but ask yourself why. Better yet, explain why. If
people agree with you, you'll get lots of karma. I don't much care about
karma, as evidenced by the fact that I've replied again, risking yet more
karma in an attempt to make a point that I think is important.

So I've had my say.

As for why I use such an old version of Konqueror, it's a long story. Suffice
to say I regularly access HN from hardware so old that I've struggled to run
anything more modern than SuSE 8. The system is so fragile that I don't dare
try to upgrade anything, because it's likely everything will break, and I
really haven't the time to fix it.

~~~
jacquesm
That's true, however, I think that you are underestimating the number of
people that have consciously made the decision that any browser with less than
.5% is not worth optimizing for (especially since you'll end up upsetting
stuff for more popular browsers if you're not careful), and in some
companies/situations that .5% might even be a lot higher.

Even my bank, which has a pretty awesome website (and a correspondingly large
budget) does not work when I increase the size of my browser past 2048 pixels
or when I visit using Konqueror.

It's not that they couldn't get it to work, it's just that they probably don't
even care because it is a problem that is too low on their list of priorities.

It's like that with everything, finite budgets -> some of the apples will fall
off the cart, and in some cases that's just too bad.

The people that make the decisions are usually well aware of that.

I think what is more amazing here is that you're actually able to see almost
all other sites with a browser that old, considering that the vast majority of
the site operators are definitely not testing with that particular setup.

Try finding a store that will sell you 78 rpm records or even an 8 track
player. Media readers that are 'behind the times' are most of the time pretty
useless, compared to that your elderly browser is doing fine.

Just for the heck of it, here are the stats for a small site:

    
    
       mozilla:   160630
       IE:        325291
       Opera:     17869
       Mobile:    45175
       Konqueror: 147
    

That's unique visitors, not pageviews.

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emilis_info
I think, this is really _the_ most important writing lesson:

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for October 1, 1997: How Users Read on the Web
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>

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hubb
good read. it's a lesson that's emphasized by many successful authors, in
addition to every writing professor i've had.

a great orwell essay with similar messages: [http://www.george-
orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Langua...](http://www.george-
orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html)

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RyanMcGreal
851 words to convey the message, "No one wants to read your shit"? Really?

~~~
bdr
Hey, that's a fun game!

Ryan, 14 words to convey the message, "That was boring"? Really?!??!

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I'm not saying it's boring; I'm saying it's needlessly verbose.

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maxwin
Geez! Just get another account and have your old email account forward emails
to you.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
If that's a reply to me, I'm not sure I understand you. The page does not
render in a readable fashion in my (only slightly) elderly browser. I'm not
sure what that has to do with email.

Have I missed your point? Could you expand on it a little? Thanks.

~~~
zupatol
It looks more like a reply to the guy who ran out of space in his gmail
account. How did it get here?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=850827>

~~~
logicalmind
Good question, a wormhole in the continuation mechanism? ;-)

