
Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles? - ekpyrotic
Writing advice often reiterates the same general rules: active voice, economy of expression, favour the concrete over the abstract.<p>These broad suggestions come at the expense of advice on micro- and macrostructure. We're missing a trick here. In particular, I believe great non-fiction writing out-punches the good because it manages not only to articulate ideas succinctly and clearly, but to show how they overlap and interconnect.<p>In business, while a good product is essential, it is almost always not enough. The product has to be presented to the consumer in an intuitive and sensible way. Often a product will have more than one USP, and its success hinges on which USP you chose to emphasise.<p>The same might be said of ideas. An argument---or point---will be convincing only insofar as it is presented to the reader in a coherent way.<p>To that end, do people have any tips, book suggestions, or exercises that will help writers improve their articles' unity, coherent, flow, logical structure, etc?
======
diiq
When I write a sentence, I use five stone questions1.

    
    
      Does it say what you mean?
      Can it be clearer?
      Can it more closely match overall tone?
      Can it be made more novel?
      Can it be made more beautiful (prosody)?
    

The five priorities at which the questions aim are meaning, clarity (which
includes brevity), tone, novelty (avoiding cliche), and prosody (and other
aesthetics).

When I've first drafted a sentence, I start from the top of the list, and ask
these questions in turn. Asking them forces me to think about an answer; it
prevents laziness. As soon as the answer to question suggests a possible
change, I make that change, and start again from the top. I repeat until time
constraints force me onward.

This is a great process, because if I have very little time, I end up
concentrating only on meaning. If I have all the time in the world, I get to
also play with the sound of the words, and the play of the tongue.

Questions about meaning, clarity, tone, novelty, and beauty can also be
fruitfully applied at paragraph and treatise levels; but my greatest concern
is usually for the sentence.

1\. <http://diiq.org/five_stone_questions.html>

------
verdverm
The article "The Science of Scientific Writing"
(www.unc.edu/~haipeng/teaching/sci.pdf) forever change my writing.

It's writing for the unconscious psychology of the reader's expectations. It
also has a great list of points to keep in mind while writing.

1\. Follow a grammatical subject as soon as possible with its verb.

2\. Place in the stress position the "new information" you want the reader to
emphasize.

3\. Place the person or thing whose "story" a sentence is telling at the
beginning of the sentence, in the topic position.

4\. Place appropriate "old information" (material already stated in the
discourse) in the topic position for linkage backward and contextualization
forward.

5\. Articulate the action of every clause or sentence in its verb.

6\. In general, provide context for your reader before asking that reader to
consider anything new.

7\. In general, try to ensure that the relative emphases of the substance
coincide with the relative expectations for emphasis raised by the structure.

~~~
bo1024
Agree, this is the way to do it. Backed by actual scientific research on how
people read (surprisingly/sadly rare).

If you can actually follow all of those rules in a written document, it will
be clear and easy to read. It's harder to do than it might look.

(Also, I believe Gopen has a couple books expanding on this article.)

------
zedshaw
Try this out:

1\. Get the book "Adios Strunk And White". Strunk And White is a horrible book
to learn how to actually write English well. It's full of contradictions, has
some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow its own advice, and tries to make
English a proscriptive language rather than dynamic like it is. The Adios book
basically breaks you out of the S&W mode of thinking and gets you thinking
about different forms and techniques you can practice without being
proscriptive.

2\. Do object writing every day. There's a site <http://objectwriting.com/>
that has some, but you can also hit <http://wordnik.com/random> to get a
random work. You then try to write for 10 minutes about or with that word
using all your senses, including your kinetic and sense of self.

3\. Blog something every day. Doesn't matter what it is but spend at least 30
minutes writing about something.

4\. Learn about story structure. A good book is "The Anatomy of Story: 22
Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller" and should fit the coder mind really
well. Another book is Joseph Cambell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" to
learn core mythical story structures.

5\. Study subtext and context. If this paragraph is about what to study, the
subtext is that I think most programmers can't write for shit because they're
too logical, and the context is I'm telling people this on hacker news.
Universally I find programmers terrible at both subtext and context of the
written word.

6\. Spend all the rest of your time learning to not censor yourself so that
you have a voice that's yours, not the voice you think you should have.

7\. Margaret Atwood had the best advice about being blocked. Paraphrased it's,
"Blockage is either a problem of voice or structure. If it's voice, change
who's telling the story. If it's structure, change the opening scene." She's
damn right, but what do you expect from Margaret Atwood? Shitty advice?

8\. Try writing in one form as if it's another. For example, write prose like
it's poetry. Write poetry like its prose.

9\. Get better at describing or saying the absurd. Stare at something and then
describe it from unique points of view or in bizarre ways.

10\. Keep a notebook and write down every idea you have, then try to make it
happen. Also a great thing for songs and poems. I should actually do this
more.

There ya go.

~~~
jpeterson
_Strunk And White is a horrible book to learn how to actually write English
well. It's full of contradictions, has some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow
its own advice_

Can you give some examples?

~~~
zedshaw
I'll leave that to someone more qualified than me, Geoffrey K. Pullum:

[http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-
Grammar/2549...](http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-
Grammar/25497)

He "is head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh
and co-author (with Rodney Huddleston) of The Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language".

But, go ahead and write like Strunk if you want to sound like a stiff 1890s
dandy.

------
spenrose
Here is a well-reviewed book on this topic:

    
    
        http://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publishing/dp/0226899152/
    

From the editorial reviews:

"Telling me to 'Be clear,' " writes Joseph M. Williams in Style: Toward
Clarity and Grace, "is like telling me to 'Hit the ball squarely.' I know
that. What I don't know is how to do it." If you are ever going to know how to
write clearly, it will be after reading Williams' book, which is a rigorous
examination of--and lesson in--the elements of fine writing.

~~~
Paul8
Joseph M. Williams's "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" is by far the best book
on learning HOW to put sentences and paragraphs together. It teaches
principles that I've never seen anywhere else -- principles for making my
writing easy to understand.

Then it teaches methods for applying those principles.

So instead of teaching rules, it teaches how writing can be clear. Instead of
"don't use passives" it shows when a passive verb makes the writing easier to
read. It teaches how much new information to put in a sentence and where to
put it. And it shows how to connect this sentence to the next for simple flow.

------
c0riander
In high school, I was lucky to have multiple teachers who were sticklers for
imparting the essential building blocks of strong writing. We spent a lot of
time "in the weeds," rote-learning vocabulary, sentence patterns, paragraph
construction, and finally, structures for the expository essay (above and
beyond the academic essay we mastered in school.)

The surprising thing, even to someone like me who considers herself a good
writer to begin with, was how important working through each "level" of
writing was. While I haven't reviewed the foundations in a long time (I
probably should), because I spent so much time painstakingly memorizing the
contents of each earlier on, I can now write quickly and confidently and
usually be pretty close to correct.

Here are some books I'd recommend for each level:

1) Vocabulary - Wordly Wise (the older the version of the book, the better the
word lists), such as here: [http://www.amazon.com/Wordly-Wise-Book-Kenneth-
Hodkinson/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Wordly-Wise-Book-Kenneth-
Hodkinson/dp/0838804381/)

2) Sentence structure - The Art of Styling Sentences,
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Styling-Sentences-K-D-
Sullivan/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Styling-Sentences-K-D-
Sullivan/dp/0764121812/)

3) Paragraph construction - Paragraphs and Essays (the part on paragraph
construction and patterns is very straightforward, basic, and clear, I don't
think it's worth buying the whole book though),
[http://www.amazon.com/Paragraphs-Essays-With-Integrated-
Read...](http://www.amazon.com/Paragraphs-Essays-With-Integrated-
Readings/dp/1133309992/)

4) Expository essays - Encounters: Essays for Exploration and Inquiry (this is
the textbook NYU uses to teach "Writing the Essay"),
[http://www.amazon.com/Encounters-Exploration-Inquiry-Pat-
Hoy...](http://www.amazon.com/Encounters-Exploration-Inquiry-Pat-
Hoy/dp/0072290455/)

~~~
yummyfajitas
bloggergirl, you are hellbanned. For no particular reason, near as I can tell.

~~~
greyboy
Here is what she said:

bloggergirl 21 hours ago | link [dead]

I'll add to this list my all-time favorite writing companion: Virginia Tufte's
"Grammar As Style". It's been out of print forever, which is tragic, and, when
you can find it, it usually sells for over $100 - even in rough shape. "Artful
Sentences" is meant to replace "Grammar As Style", but I prefer the original.
If you want to tie all the rules together so you can understand why we even
have grammar in the first place and how truly magical grammar can be to
shaping a sentence or paragraph, track down this book.

Interesting: Virginia Tufte is the mother of data visualization guru Edward
Tufte.

(Other good books for writers and writers-in-training: "Bird by Bird" by Anne
Lamont, Stephen King's "On Writing" and a collection of letters on writing by
F. Scott Fitzgerald, also called "On Writing". Oh, and please don't hate on
White's "Elements of Style" --- it may be old, but it's foundational.)

------
jasonshen
Write a lot. While it sounds obvious, the fact is that most people find ways
to avoid doing the hard work of actually writing. Ideally the writing is
public, but better to write in private than not at all.

Read good writing. You need to develop good taste and good taste is developed
and refined by reading good writing. Publications like The New York Times, The
Atlantic, Harvard Business Review and Esquire have distinct and powerful
voices worth studying. Same goes for pg's essays, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth
Godin, Cal Newport.

Edit and revise. I used to hate revising my work. One and done was my motto.
But I've learned that it's only through numerous revisions that great writing
is born. There's usually opportunity to 2x your writing in the revisions.

Write for your reader. While all writing is in some form, an exercise for the
ego, strive as much as possible to write for the benefit of your reader.
Remember that they are here to be informed, entertained and moved - focus on
doing that and like a compass you'll always move toward great writing.

Good luck!

------
danso
You already covered "favour the concrete over the abstract" but I do think
"show, don't tell" can't be reiterated enough.

The biggest problem I find when editing other people's writing is the use of
redundant assertions, e.g. "The Acme App is blazingly fast", when factual
statements will do: "In the same time it took for CompetitorApp to load, the
AcmeApp had already performed 2 qunitpleflops of foos"

A harmful side effect of the "tell" approach is the huge amount of time people
spend thesaurus-hacking: trying to find different adjectives to say the same
thing, over and over.

I know your question is about overall coherency and flow, but unfortunately
many writers fail at the basic general rules, which makes it difficult to
polish the body of writing as a whole.

For a practical step, I suggest writing the entirety of the piece without
adjectives, and perhaps without concern for transitions. If the writing is
nonsensicial or uninteresting in its barest form, then the writer should focus
on better content. The style is easy to add later.

------
mseebach
There are a number of tools available, but as with programming, it's primarily
a question of being able to recognize great writing. Once you can recognize
great writing, you can more or less just iterate: 1) Write 2) Is it great?
(yes) Done (no) Go to 1.

Bad programmers can't recognize good or bad code, so they stop once it works.
Same for bad writers.

------
gdubs
Use short sentences. And break traditional rules. Like using "and" or "but" at
the beginning of a sentence. Favor verbs. Avoid superfluous adjectives.

Paragraphs can be brief.

Bring people into your writing, wherever possible. That is, express your ideas
through relatable stories involving people, wherever possible.

Many of these tips were yanked from Cliff Stoll, author of "The Cuckoo's Egg".
As well as a book called, "The Art of PlainTalk", by Rudolph Flesch. Stoll was
responding to criticism that his first book had been ghostwritten -- few could
believe the guy could actually write.

Lastly, write frequently. A writing teacher of mine used to have us "free
write" every morning for fifteen minutes. That's where you start writing about
the first thing that pops in your head, and you don't stop writing until the
time is up. Give it a try.

------
irahul
Basic writing advice:

<http://apostate.com/how-to-say-nothing-in-500-words>

Macro structure:

<http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php>

Though it inclines towards fiction, I find it useful with non-fiction as well.

------
ot
For an ironic take on rhetorical devices have a look at this blog (in
particular the older posts):

<http://writebadlywell.blogspot.it/>

Each post is an example of a writing technique... overdone. I find it
brilliant in how it manages to be hilarious and insightful at the same time.

------
yolesaber
Just like with coding, improving your wordcraft is a two-fold process: read
and write. If you are reading a lot of quality work from various genres
(articles, blog posts, short stories, journalism, poetry et al), you will be
constantly learning new words, sentence structures, phrasings, all the tools
of writing. Then, by writing a lot you will be able to put these new
techniques to use and figure out what works best with your particular approach
to writing. I learned to write effective fiction and poetry (I've been
published in literary magazines and been invited to read at several events) by
close-reading all my inspirations and then practicing writing in their style.
Once I got a feel for what made Reverdy "Reverdy", I was able to approach my
own work in the same manner which results in magnitudes of improvement.

It is also imperative to constantly be rereading your older work, not only as
a measure to see how much you've improved but also as a way to reinforce
positive progress. If I can read an article from a few months ago that I wrote
and not want to close the browser window immediately, then I consider that a
worthy article and it boosts my confidence.

That being said, I have found that flow-charting ideas is good for building up
the structural integrity of a piece, especially if it is more on the analytic
side. You have assertions (themes, viewpoints) and then linkages between them
(facts, observations). By building a flow-chart you can see how they weave and
if your implications make sense. A visual overview is very helpful in this
regard. It keeps your writing tight and succinct. Again, this is just a
personal opinion - the writing process is a difficult and stressful one
because there really are no universal "tricks" or approaches to quality,
worthwhile work.

------
qeorge
Buy Dragon Naturally Speaking and start dictating. You can pump out an amazing
amount of words when you don't have to write them down.

Then edit your giant pile of words into something better, instead of starting
from a blank page.

The more you "write" the better you'll get. This is a hack for writing faster
so you can speed up your progress.

~~~
DigitalJack
I do this, though I don't have dragon (yet). I just record on my iphone, and
then use a free app (ExpressScribe) for transliterating it.

------
e12e
The best single source I've come across that helps with writing, is "On
Writing Well":

[http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-
Nonficti...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-
Nonfiction/dp/0060891548)

It has plenty of examples and advice on various types of writing.

Beyond that, my advice is to simply read good texts. One starting point would
be:

[http://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-
Shaw/dp/B000...](http://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-
Shaw/dp/B000NPX2PC)

Or, for something newer:

<http://brevity.org/misc/bestswi.html>

While doing a quick search, I also came across this:

[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/05/20/need-
examples-...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/05/20/need-examples-of-
great-web-essays-and-great-weblog-entries/)

Which seems to be a great starting point.

~~~
lunchladydoris
What I love about On Writing Well is that it tells you what to do while also
being a perfect example of that advice is action.

------
rezendi
Bona fides / credibility: I'm an award-winning novelist and occasional
journalist. (Though I'm also a TechCrunch columnist, which presumably cripples
my credibility if you're a knee-jerk hater of all things TC...)

The single best way to improve your writing is to read a lot of great writing.
For nonfiction, I recommend, in particular:

\- George Orwell \- John McPhee \- Ryszard Kapuscinski \- Gail Collins

The second best way to improve your writing is to learn how to see what is
wrong with it. (Or, as Hemingway once said, "The one thing a writer needs most
is a first-rate bullshit detector.") Don't focus on writing well, at least not
at first. Focus on learning how to read like a first-time reader, and on
_editing_ well. In time the writing will follow.

------
aidian
Read all the time; write all the time.

As far as 'process', play with different stuff and find what works for you. I
find it does help to outline a bit -- but only in the most informal way. I
edit better on paper. Hunter Thompson actually typed The Great Gatsby to get a
feel for Fitzgerald's rhythms. Fuck around until something fits.

Edit your copy ruthlessly. I will routinely change 90% of my copy between
first and final drafts.

Keep your audience in mind: who you're writing for should affect every word.

Write as tight as possible.

------
Petrushka
KISS. Too much writing in the non-fiction world, whether it be academic,
scientific, or related to business, is far too complex for its own good. This
is seemingly to overwhelm, to simultaneously weed out and impress those who
are not deeply versed in the subject, but in almost no cases is that a
positive development. For academia and science, the point of your work should
be to encourage knowledge and learning, which complex language in no way
helps. In business, the last thing you want to do is assume a level of
expertise from a customer, except in very specific and rare circumstances.

I am aware that there are certain fields and types of works that have to use
difficult phrasing and structure for the purpose of limiting ambiguity, but
often such writing is found in cases where such strictness is not necessary.
So, Keep It Simple, Stupid.

P.S. - Not trying to be rude, but your initial post is a great example of
writing at a more complex level that is in anyway necessary. Micro- and
macrostructure, the usage of an undefined and unnecessary acronym in USP? It
doesn't matter whether it is a safe assumption that your audience knows what
you are talking about, as you never know when that audience may shift without
your knowledge.

~~~
nelsonweiss
_Rewritten to be less complex and avoid unnecessary use of an acronym (not
picking on you, just figured your good advice would be more easily read if it
was written simpler):_

Keep it simple, stupid.

Too much non-fiction writing is overly complicated. It seems like people write
elaborately in order to overwhelm and impress those less familiar with the
subject, but this is a bad idea because complexity interferes with
communication.

There are certain types of writing that depend on the use of complicated
phrasing or structure to limit ambiguity, but much of the time such strictness
is unnecessary. So keep it simple.

~~~
Petrushka
I wouldn't consider the use of KISS to be unnecessary. It's sufficiently well-
known to effectively be considered a word (sort of the way en cia is used in
Spanish), and I define it, albeit not explicitly. I also read way too many
military documents to have an issue with acronyms, as their usage as an easily
pronounceable vocalization for often complex wordings really helps language
flow. Again, I don't have any issues with acronyms themselves, simply their
usage when they aren't defined.

And I would argue you don't simplify my comment at all, although you do make
it more concise. I consider simplicity to be the primary concern with writing,
however being as quick to the punch as possible is also an extremely valuable
trait. It must be noted though that they are not the same thing. Often times,
especially with technical writing, they are at loggerheads.

With all that said, your re-write is actually quite a lot better. Thanks.

------
austingunter
As a person whose core skillset is writing, not programming, I feel more
qualified to comment on this particular HN thread than most others which I
prefer to demure on.

I love the question about how to write well. It's the craft I've dedicated my
life to, and I'm grateful to see a group of really smart people investing time
in the skill. It validates the effort I've poured into becoming the writer I
am today. Particularly since I've chosen to be a writer in the startup
community, which sometimes makes me feel singled out or awash in a sea of
programmers :-)

To start, writing is often broken down into discrete rules like _Grammar_ and
_Syntax_ as well as _Word Choice_ and _Sentence Length_ , all of which could
be summed up as the overall _Style_ of a particular piece of writing. I love
the Nabokov quote below because he's one of the all-time greats, and although
Hemingway is my favorite author of all time, the critique of leaving things
out is valid. One of the supposedly set-in-stone commandments of writing,
particularly for the web is to focus on brevity above all else because the
audience is presumed to have the attention span of a gnat, particularly when
Mark Zuckerburg's mind-melding software is constantly clamoring for your
attention and mental processing power...but I digress.

My approach as a writer is to place all of the stylistic and grammatical
elements of writing in a distant second place to a thorough understanding of
your audience. Understanding who you need your app's content to connect with
is the only thing that matters, and will give you all the data you need to
write grammatically, and choose the right words, or use synonyms. To put
another way, writing is just communication. Good writing only means
communicating effectively.

Understanding your audience tells you which rules of grammar your audience
_don't care about_ and that you can therefore break.

Have you ver read a sentence on a website that ended a sentence with a
preposition and wondered what the hell the writer was on?

Of course, I'm singling out poor grammar in the previous sentence as a way to
make a point. I broke a rule simply as a tactic to get your attention, and
then point out that if I've got your attention, then my writing style was
effective. I can only get your attention if I know what you're paying
attention to, because I've done the work to deeply understand what motivates
you.

HackerNews is largely a developer audience. Developers are a detail-oriented
bunch, and I take that into account whenever I post here. In the above
example, by making a calculated error and hiding it in the middle of several
paragraphs, I'm essentially leaving my message hidden in plain sight, because
I know that most of my readers on this post have spent hours in front of their
computers paying attention and even exploiting tiny details as they bend
software to their will.

Yep, leaving a preposition at the end of the sentence is grammatically
incorrect, and even grates on most people who are detail-oriented for a
living. But that actually makes it effective.

If I were writing this the same way I wrote my honors thesis on the Pick-Up
Artist Community, I wouldn't have left a single preposition hanging out there.
Different audience. My style had to reflect the purpose.

Your style and your message are affected by the following things, in the
following order:

1) Your audience - Perform a customer development, or what I call "rhetorical
analysis" on your audience to get into their heads. Survey them to develop a
profile of who they are and how they want to communicate with them. This is
why Ramit Sethi of iwillteachyoutoberich.com is constantly surveying his
lists. He finds patterns of language in the responses and uses them in product
development and marketing.

2) Your communication medium - Use words differently in email than on Twitter.
Write your blog posts differently than your white papers. Consider the
constraints of the communication medium and learn to exploit them. For
example, Twitter's 140 characters means certain grammar rules are expected to
be broken. But there are rules about breaking those rules as well. "U wont git
far if u luv 2 tweet lik dis."

3) Your communication mode - a fancy way of analyzing the "genre" of your
communication. Basically, what's the _feel_ or the _sense_ of your
communication. Different modes in literature are poetry and prose. Different
modes in startups are the mode used when you ask for an introduction as when
you develop your business plan.

4) Your goals with each communication - what do you actually want to
accomplish, and then how can you approach that goal in such a way that it will
resonate deeply with your audience, fit into the given medium, and be in line
with the context and reader expectations of the communication mode?

Before I sit down to write anything, I mentally (or literally on paper) do a
rhetorical analysis of my audience, the medium, and my goals. Here's what I
came up with for this comment on HN.

Audience: Hackers, entrepreneurs, startup folks, wantrapreneurs, highly
intelligent, subtle, intensely focused and motivated to read long pieces IF
they are learning something, LEARNING is a primary motivator, Opinionated and
reality-based so high need to provide specific examples to general rhetorical
principles, detail-oriented from years of writing code, or simply by birth.

Medium: HackerNews forums. Highly trafficked, vibrant discussions, sometimes
full of intense disagreements, an appropriate forum for a larger comment, ONLY
if every word is carefully chosen. Brevity would be preferred, but long-form
prose will be tolerated if writer managed to be interesting and informative
along the way.

Mode: Deductive reasoning, dry and analytical, ethos of "sharing" and
"contribution" over "self-aggrandizement" or "self-promotion." Smart,
accomplished people sharing what they've learned over the years, contributing
insight to the community in one giant effort to support one another's growth.
Sometimes hostile to marketing or sales. Beware of trolls...

My goals: To share my strategy to be successful at my craft with a group of
fellow startup folks who I admire and am motivated to spend time around. To
add my own life experience to the mix in hopes of helping someone become a
better writer. To increase my own visibility and prominence in the group over
time, and develop a good reputation in the long term. To feel smart (not
relevant to writing effectively, but shared in the spirit of honesty).

I could keep writing about this, apparently, since my ideas keep flowing, but
this is a monster post already, so I want to simply thank you all if you've
managed to read this far. I hope we can talk more in the comments.

~~~
FreakLegion
_Yep, leaving a preposition at the end of the sentence is grammatically
incorrect_

No it isn't. Latin-based grammars trumpeted this "rule" for many years[1], but
those days and that theory of English grammar are long gone. In Churchill's
words: "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."

Edit: I don't disagree with the gist of your advice, of course. This is just a
bizarre illustration of "know your audience," and would be even if the
grammatical rule you chose were correct. "Know your audience" is about much
more than grammar.

1\. The reasoning being that in Latin it's impossible to end a sentence with a
preposition, and thus, obviously, to do so in English is simply _badwrong_.

~~~
ropz
Another (oft-cited) example:

"What did you bring that book that I don't like to be read to out of up for?"

------
pdog
Vladimir Nabokov, whose prose style ranks among the best, said: “Style and
structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.”

The vast majority of writers and bloggers today use a truncated writing style
(perhaps reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver).

You can present your ideas like this, clearly and coherently, but the best
essays and articles do something more than just articulate ideas.

------
Tycho
Avoid starting sentences with the same word as a nearby sentence, and
paragraphs with the same letter as a nearby paragraph.

Don't make sentences too long. Just start a new one.

Learn how to transpose matter-of-fact statements/paragraphs into witty or
memorable text by juxtaposing tones or images on what the reader was
expecting. See Michael Lewis's books for an example, or Charles Stross's blog
(antipope.org).

------
QuantumGood
An argument must be coherent to the writer too! That often means getting clear
on what your most compelling point is.

So it's worth knowing about this phenomenon:

Typically, once a writer warms to their topic, they make their most compelling
point. You need to find that point and move it to the beginning of your
writing, usually the headline.

For newer writers, it often occurs somewhere around the third paragraph. (Some
writing coaches will simply have you delete everything you wrote before that,
and open with it.)

For more emotional writers, or folks who are worked up about their topic, it
often occurs very near the end.

For experienced writers failing to put their main point in the headline it's
in the first sentence or paragraph.

Some writers get used to this phenomenon, write freely, and then simply remove
most of what they've written once they realize they're onto their most
compelling point.

Read a lot of blog posts, and you'll be amazed how many writers make this
oversight, usually consistently in the same way. Learn your own pattern, and
you'll learn to find your most compelling point.

------
antidoh
Put your absolutely most important point at the top.

Make your words, sentences, paragraphs and articles as short and simple as
possible. People don't read, they skim.

(Where you used "reiterates," I would have used "repeats" or "gives.")

Read what you write, and move your lips when you do it. A good sentence sounds
good.

------
teeja
A couple of non-fiction ideas I recall from my (very enjoyable) freshman
writing class. Consider as rules-of-thumb.

* Write about what you enjoy writing about. If you're bored it'll probably rub off on readers.

* Begin with a summary of where you're going. (Here's where your hooks go.) This is where you remind yourself what you aim to say ... and, coincidentally, your readers.

* Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence. Readers can then scan for interests. We've all got too much to read.

* Memorize Strunk and White. Clear, concise, to the point. Cut out the fat and cut to the chase.

* _Notice_ which writers capture your attention and leave you glad you read them. Learn by tearing apart how they did it. _Notice_ which writers are gasbags ... and tear apart what they're doing wrong.

* When you're done, stop.

------
wallflower
Writing can be dissected analytically but there is always a component of
emotional appeal that makes writing connect.

One of the best examples I can think of is the story of Sugru:

<http://sugru.com/story>

To practice writing with emotional appeal, I suggest you practice public
speaking. For instance, go to a public forum like a lecture or zoning board
meeting where there is a formal Q&A period (with a microphone set up). Listen
to the discussion/lecture and wait in line for the mic and attempt to
articulate an argument/point of view that is short and draws on a personal
story and makes a point.

I also recommend Stephen King's "On Writing"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Writing>

Good luck!

------
brudgers
Short answer, I usually don't.

Longer answer, the more I write on HN the better my writing probably becomes
because I get feedback from "my" audience in the form of comments and votes.

Over the past week, I read _And So It Goes,_ a biography of Kurt Vonnegut. He
spent fifteen years as a full time writer before _Slaughterhouse Five_ was
published. He had been writing press releases for GE before that. He had
written for his campus newspaper while in college. He had worked for news
bureau. It didn't come overnight.

I don't know much about writing well, but writing better is hard work. I
suspect that the 10,000 hour rule applies. When reading PG's latest essay,
keep in mind that he has been a published author for nearly twenty years.

Good luck.

~~~
manku_timma
Off topic, but that was a nicely written bio. Vonnegut's life was a lot more
complicated than I had imagined from reading his books.

------
idupree
Practice writing that has an observable effect. For example, write Facebook
statuses and see who "likes" or "comments" on them. Think about how you write
emails and to whom. See what styles and contents tend to be effective. Try
different variations.

(Don't draw conclusions too soon; there is a lot of random variation in
responses.)

Also I agree with what everyone else recommends. But, in my experience,
there's no substitute for these real-world experiments that appear in my day-
to-day life.

------
ams6110
Get a copy of _The Elements of Style_. It's like K&R for writing. Then
practice. Join a local writing group. Write essays. Keep a journal. Write
letters to the editor or guest columns for the local paper. Blog. Etc. Like
anything else, the way to learn something is to do it.

Edit: also read a lot, and try to identify writing that resonates with you,
and then work out why that is.

~~~
mkr-hn
The Elements of Style is to K&R what The Voynich Manuscript is to On the
Origin of Species. Elements of Style is good to read to see one person's ideas
on style from a century ago, but it's not a guide to writing.

If you have a need for guidelines but don't want to develop your own, many
major publications publish style books. For example: The Associated Press
Stylebook, The Chicago Manual of Style. APA and MLA work too.

------
doctorpangloss
For the NYTimes, I write about tech history and history of science. I see 3
common problems with "startup" writing, i.e., the language of young college
males:

1\. Do not condescend. I immediately broke this rule above—it gets attention,
but it doesn't convince. E.g., tweet-length commentary about complex subjects
is condescending.

2\. Delete rhetoric.

3\. Graphics are a good hook, but they rarely explain anything.

------
ph0rcyas

      Give up pursuing eloquence, unless
      You can speak as you feel! One's very heart
      Must pour it out, with primal powers address
      One's hearers and compel them with an art
      Deeper than words. Clip and compile, and brew
      From the leavings of others your ragout
      Of rhetoric, pump from your embers
      A few poor sparks that nobody remembers!

------
Someone
I often use "write it down. Now, edit it so that you have the same content in
half the words. Then, repeat that" to make my writing more coherent. A 75%
reduction may not be attainable, but aiming for it makes you think about what
you want to say and what not, and gets rid of words and phrases that do not
provide content.

------
stevewilhelm
Macro advise: read a lot of material similar to what you hope to write. Write
a lot, you only get better with practice. Collaborate with a good editor.

Books: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, Shertzer's The Elements
of Grammar, and Strunk and White's The Elements of Style.

~~~
antiterra
I suggest not bothering with Strunk and White past a quick skim. It is, at
best, inconsistent and self-contradictory.

This article makes the case: [http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-
Grammar/2549...](http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-
Grammar/25497)

------
orangethirty
You mean how to become a _good_ copywriter? Learn how to sell first. Then its
easy as pie.

------
handstad
You should read the book by Barbara Minto named "The Minto Pyramid Principle:
Logic in Writing, Thinking and Problem Solving." See
<http://www.barbaraminto.com/textbook.html>

------
Kroem3r
Avoid cliches. A cliche being a phrase that is familiar but content-free or
even contradictory. Like, "I don't mean to be a jerk, but ..."

This helps tune your focus on making each word participate in creating meaning
in the head of your reader.

Also, avoid creative analogies.

------
fidanov
Read successful blogs, books and marketing sites and look how they use words
and sentences. Then write, write and write again. Each new sentence your
write, the better you will become. There is no shortcut to learn this.

------
TreyS
Here's a great guide to writing clearly/concisely:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/y8862uack1he3f9/How%20to%20Write%2...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/y8862uack1he3f9/How%20to%20Write%20Concisely.pdf)

------
ctdonath
Read Stephen King's "On Writing", the chapter "Toolbox".

Stick to the point. People read in soundbites, so don't squander what little
time you have their attention.

Don't repeat words, use synonyms.

~~~
danso
> _Don't repeat words, use synonyms._

I disagree with this and think that it's even problematic in the common case.

First of all, if you have to resort to synonyms, you should wonder why you
need a similar word: is it because you're repeating the same kind of
content/sentiment? If so, what happens when you remove the redundant content
-- check to see if that makes the writing tighter.

Secondly, I think proper repetition words, including pronouns, can form a
useful rhythm and coherency within sentences.

As a total random example I read yesterday: this amusing Tim Rogers review of
Metal Gear Solid 4: <http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=430>

> _In closing, let us praise the one certifiably great thing about Metal Gear
> Solid 4, and the one shining beacon that fills us with faith in Kojima’s
> future productions: the flow of the dialogue. It’s occasionally hilarious
> how well Kojima is able to write rhythmic dialogue. It clips and breezes
> along; the most portentous sentences become urgent poetic moments that
> transcend the base stupidity of the plot. Of course, you’d never know this
> if you played the game in English — the script appears to have been
> translated by the Elephant Man banging his head on a keyboard. There’s a
> line where Naomi says “If you want to change your fate, you’ll have to meet
> your destiny”. What the shit? In Japanese, she uses the same word for “fate”
> (unmei) twice, one instance of which being the first word of the sentence.
> This is to lend the sentence some kind of parallel structure. Even given the
> flipping idiocy of the moment, it makes for a neat little verbal-ironic
> turnaround: “The only way to change your fate is to go forth and meet it.”
> In other words, the only way Snake can possibly outlive his terrible fate
> (death) is by running straight at it, instead of letting it crash into him
> while he sits there doing nothing. This is a nice little sentence that no
> doubt has already inspired several dozen fanfiction-writing Japanese
> fourteen-year-olds. In English, it’s a dud; the translator must have majored
> in newspaper journalism, had a professor tell him to never use the same word
> — even (ESPECIALLY) “the” — twice in one sentence. However, this isn’t
> reporting — this isn’t regurgitation of earthquake statistics. It’s “art”
> (term used loosely). The moral of the story is that there’s no concept of
> the word “it” in Japanese, which is why so many sentences resort to
> (eventually poetic) repetition. We mustn’t forget this — this is perhaps one
> of the keys of Kojima’s artistic conscience, here, seriously (okay, not so
> seriously)._

~~~
quorn3000
Just to note: John Merrick was eloquent and gentle.

------
evanx
i go with the "less or more" - it might not have more information per se, but
more people will read more of it

can you express the same idea using less words for the sentence in question?

can you eliminate or combine sentences/paragraphs to still get the essential
point across ?

sacrifice some extra information for the sake of clearer focus

having said that, i like to add non-essential information which is humourous -
to keep the reader entertained and engaged

------
mkr-hn
Practice

You get better at a craft by doing it until you're good enough to know what
you're missing. You'll know what kind of tips to look for at that point.

------
bawjaws
Read great novels of all era's.

Also, cultivate good email relationships with people from far away that you
love and respect.

------
pmb
Make every sentence work with the whole in moving the reader towards your
intended goal.

------
bobinator30
there are many thoughtful and useful long responses to this question, but I
would like to paraphrase the advice my best writing teacher gave me:

to write well, do as much reading and writing as you can.

------
rhizome
Step 1: Don't use unexpanded acronyms or anything like "USP."

------
wildranter
Jakob Nilsen guarantees that if you don't follow these rules only your mom
will read your text.

\- Use words that make sense to your audience.

\- Convey one idea in each paragraph.

\- Introduce the paragraph’s idea in the first sentence so people can quickly
decide whether to read the paragraph.

\- Use meaningful headings.

\- Highlight keywords.

\- Use bullet lists.

\- Keep text short, simple, and informal.

\- Start text with conclusions, and include a summary of its content.

