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Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by bevan on Saturday May 27, 2017 @03:26PM (#14431550)
Read the first few chapters of On Writing Well.

Omit needless words. There's a page in Stephen King's autobiography "On Writing" where he shows an editor's comments on an article he wrote as a teenager. Half of the words are crossed out. Remembering that example improved my writing significantly.

Also, understand that writing is an iterative process. It can take 5-6 passes to craft a good sentence.

Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by coalescedfrog on Monday May 29, 2017 @06:38PM (#14441880)
I think this reflects writing software in some ways, judicious 'editing' is important. It's realizing what you don't need that is as important as what you do need to keep in there, at least in terms of avoiding snowballing tech debt/feature creep.

My first attempts at writing were monstrosities of flowery descriptions and long-winded dialogues, an awful hybrid prose/poetry. That didn't improve, but I realized the art is getting an interesting message across as simply as possible, not showing off your vocab or pre-empting the reader's imagination.

Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by PaulHoule on Saturday May 27, 2017 @03:41PM (#14431619)
Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by anacleto on Saturday May 27, 2017 @03:50PM (#14431660)
I've read "On Writing Well". Then I discovered "The Elements of Style". On Writing Well opens your eyes to what bad writing is, "The Elements of Style" explains how to write clearly.

"The Elements of Style" belongs to that 1% of books that are truly able to change the way you think (and write).

I tried to apply what I learned in "The Element of Styles" and "On Writing Well" to my company blog: https://medium.com/plainflow/how-we-write-at-plainflow-7e994...

Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by mcguire on Saturday May 27, 2017 @06:43PM (#14432266)
The Elements of Style is contentious. Many of its prescriptions are linguistically sketchy. On the other hand, it points out many things that many people do badly.

E.B. White, the 'editor', was one of the best essayists around, but he didn't particularly obey the rules in his own book.

Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by ams6110 on Saturday May 27, 2017 @03:51PM (#14431661)
Best thing to come out of my high school English education. I was introduced to it by my sophomore year English composition teacher.

It does have its critics but I think it's a very useful guide for most writers, and being a small book it is easily referenced and has remained useful to me to this day, much like K&R was when I did "C" programming.

Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by big_spammer on Saturday May 27, 2017 @06:49PM (#14432285)
"Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace" is better than "The Elements of Style".

https://www.amazon.com/Style-Lessons-Clarity-Grace-12th/dp/0...

Re:Ask HN: What is your take on being a better writer? by baby on Saturday May 27, 2017 @04:44PM (#14431877)
I love this part: http://imgur.com/a/ipJSj