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How do I learn proper writing?

7 points by asoli ↗ HN
I'm insecure when it comes to writing. I've seen fellow programmers who have the ability to write beautiful prose that gets their point across, empowering their career. And they do it quickly too. Now management prefers to hear only from them, even if somebody else was working hard on the project in place.

I think writing, like painting to some and even programming to others, doesn't come naturally to me. I spent a lot of time formulating this passage.

I want to become better at writing. I want to learn how to write well like back when I did with programming. The difference is I didn't find writing manuals or textbooks that practically point me to the right direction.

How do I learn proper writing?

9 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 34.8 ms ] thread
dSebastien
Read a lot, and write a lot. Practice makes perfect, and reading is an important part of getting better at writing.

Over time your style will improve.

Tomte
Joseph M. Williams' "Style: Ten Lessons In Clarity And Grace"[1].

Another good one is George Gopen's "The Sense of Structure". It's less inspirational than Clarity and Grace, but it shows more hands-on how to construct sentences and paragraphs.

[1] or "Lessons in Clarity and Grace" or "Toward Clarity and Grace" – they are all substantially the same book

yesenadam
Read a lot of good writers. Keeping a diary for many years helped me, I think. Zinsser's On Writing Well is the best book I've read about writing well.

The best writers write a first draft—which can be terrible, the quality doesn't matter—and then edit again and again and again until nothing can be improved. Then someone else reads their work and thinks, gee, no way can I write like that! Which is true—noone can write a first draft like that.

woollymallard
I think the best way to learn how to write better is to read a lot and write a lot. Personally, I believe keeping a blog for the last ~13 years (both for technical posts and also just a life journal of sorts) has greatly helped to improve my writing. Maybe that could be a good way for you to start practicing? Keep a blog or a journal (doesn't have to be public if you're not comfortable with that) and just write down your thoughts, or things you learned, or maybe things you felt you wanted to communicate in writing at work but didn't get a chance to in the moment.
teatree
OP, I don't have any advice to offer but this is the exactly how I feel. Some people write so eloquently, even their random comments on reddit which I presume they didn't put a lot of effort into, is so elegant. My vocabulary on the other hand feels so constrained it might as well be a programming language.

I see a lot of advice here saying - read a lot, but where? Could you please point to some sources where you read something and felt - well, that was eloquent.

twright
Write everyday, writing is a muscle that you flex. Reading is important in the process of becoming a better writer, but in the way that watching tennis makes you good at tennis. You have to eventually get on the courts and play yourself.

I have a practice where I pick a month and I write a full page in a notebook everyday. Write about anything, most of what comes out isn’t great but that’s also the point, it’s practice. Sometimes something really good comes out too!