https://www.harpercollins.com/9780060891541/on-writing-well/
https://stevenpinker.com/publications/sense-style-thinking-p...
I was thinking about reading it but it's hard to find reviews of the book that don't include praise or criticism of Pinker's other work or the author himself.
His advice about keeping an easy-to-understand sentence tree alone is worth the price of admission.
The title has made its rounds in tech circles for a while, and I've read it. Not to be an HN contrarian, but apart from a few tips that it offers toward the beginning, it's actually a pretty dry read and does not itself, in my opinion, reflect good writing (the first few chapters are OK, then it goes downhill from there). I read a lot and unfortunately I wouldn't say Zinnser's book is a piece of writing I would admire.
I've taken IRL creative writing courses since, and I gotten a lot more out of these, because not only did I manage to receive instruction in technique, I also received continuous direct feedback in the form of workshops and instructor critique.
I’d have to refer to the book to be able to comment on the specifics of the advise though.
I also remember the beginning of the book being more interesting but perhaps the beginning was just more relevant to me.
For writing emails and structuring presentations I've found the Pyramid Principle [1] to be quite practical. (apparently McKinsey consultants are trained to do this, along with stuff like MECE, etc. Whatever we think the actual abilities of McKinsey consultants may be, they are generally pretty good at making million dollar PowerPoint decks :)
The idea is simple:
1. Start with the answer first.
2. Group and summarize your supporting arguments. (not more than 3)
3. Logically order your supporting ideas. (chronology, structure or priority)
The article below makes the point that "this “top-down” structure is counter-intuitive for many of us with a scientific or engineering background", but I've observed it is exactly this structure we must adopt for impactful business writing.
[1] https://medium.com/lessons-from-mckinsey/the-pyramid-princip...
I'm not sure what you mean, except you didn't enjoy his style? Gee, he seems the opposite of dry to me–a very warm, friendly, human voice. If you think he's pretty dry, who in the field do you prefer?
I don't think you can have read Zinsser. You misspell his name, and it's hard to believe your sentences are those of someone who's heard his message:
"Not to be an HN contrarian, but" – this adds nothing. The reader of On Writing Well learns to cut every unnecessary word.
"it's actually a pretty dry read and does not itself, in my opinion, reflect good writing" says unclearly in 16 words what could be said clearly in a few. Cut "actually", "in my opinion" and "itself". Does not reflect good writing – do you mean "it's not good writing"? i.e. "it's bad writing"? I'm not sure what saying a book "doesn't reflect good writing" means, but seemingly something other than its not being written well, or you would have said so, the reader assumes.
"unfortunately I wouldn't say Zinnser's book is a piece of writing I would admire." Again, the head spins, although what you're trying to say seems simple. If it's "I don't admire it", why not say so? If something else, say that. Simplicity! Etc.
I encourage you to give him another go!
I will admit I am expressing a subjective preference, not an objective indictment of Zinsser (I did get some value out of the first few chapters). Perhaps this dissenting opinion didn't need to be expressed because in retrospect no value was added because I didn't provide specifics myself (though I could -- I'm happy to make the case). And it's possible that I'm being unfair to the work. So in light of that, I withdraw my statement. But I still don't appreciate your sarcasm.
I agree with your points about blogging generally though. I've sort of gotten away from doing short/casual stuff in favor of articles for pubs. This isn't entirely a bad thing as I get more reach that way but it means I've sort of dropped shorter and more eclectic writing which I should get back to.
I'm mixed about this. I feel like this critic is true for any book. Books are not research papers.
Gladwell would probably end up making his books stand up better to criticism without making them any less interesting. It's fun to read about how much practice talented people have done. The problem is when you distill that down to a soundbite that sounds like a conclusion.
IMO, he's breaking the Spiderman rule of morality, "With great power comes great responsibility."
He's putting out intellectual versions of fraudulent ear worms without any sense of responsibility.
Their business model is paid newsletters, but you can start with only free emails that is basically a free blog+newsletter with zero technical distractions.
My shameless plug, I write irregularly about writing for developers: https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com
It is not about technical writing though, but written communication.
You can export emails and migrate paying subscribers, but all your links still point to a domain someone else controls. I don't want to have to set up a redirector just to protect myself. That's the whole point of controlling the domain.
[0] https://twitter.com/SubstackInc/status/1167162063879192576
So if you came here to know how to write, Stephen King wrote a book "On Writing" that is quite interesting and mostly reads like a novel. See it as a "I'll read this and I'll get motivated to write".
If you came here to understand how to get into blogging: just start. Create a wordpress, and just start writing. Focus on content, not on form. After a while, you can think about a domain name, about a custom theme, or about hosting this yourself on github with hugo. But don't start with the technical parts of managing a blog, just write.
If you came here to understand how you can become a good technical writer: keep writing. Consistence over years of writing is what makes you a good writer. The ultimate technique for me is to give an interactive talk to people about your ideas, and see where your audience get stuck, where they ask questions, how different ways of explaining something get the point across.
Malcolm Gladwell does more than this: he explains an idea multiple times in different ways. If you have the page count to do this, do it. Different people need different ways of explaining.
(shameless plug: I'm writing a book on crypto https://www.manning.com/books/real-world-cryptography?a_aid=...)