- The first sentence, first paragraph are the most important. Don't bury the lede!
- The next most important thing is the last paragraph.
- Keep middle points well defined, ideally with descriptive headers.
- Don't try to broaden so it's relevant for "everyone". Writing for one person is the best.
- 85% perfect is way better than 100% perfect. You'll get diminishing returns.
- Re-read and remove unnecessary words/sentences, especially superfluous words like "very".
- Expect people to skim. Think about the "shape", e.g. squint test.
- Fleshing out a sloppy draft at night and then refining in the morning is a great pattern for me.
- Don't use a clever/cryptic title. Be descriptive!
Some of this stuff is probably inline with how they teach essay writing, but I can't remember any of those lessons from school.
This post took about 60 seconds to jot down and 60 seconds to review. I think it will be useful to a lot of folks. It's probably not perfect, but you don't need to spend hours to create useful work.
Happy writing!
Top comments (23)
Great note about skimming (and great notes in general) - break up your paragraphs with code blocks. People glaze over on too much text at once or too much code at once, it's worth it to take the time to streamline both to get to your point.
I think people will often skim before they go deep. And if the skim is not successful, they'll move on.
We're busy internet folks and we don't want to approach everything linearly. Writing is actually unique in its capacity to be "random access" as opposed to audio/video which is way harder to skim for meaning.
I do this All. The. Time. Especially with tutorials.
"Does this tutorial solve the problem I'm trying to solve"
*Quick Scroll Through*
"Ok cool, it does"
*Back up to the top to go through it again*
I think this is part of why "list" type articles tend to do well - you can skim to a point that particularly interests you. You've got a roadmap through the post at a glance.
I know at least personally even the articles I do end up taking my time with and reading carefully were all skimmed first.
Does this mean that you're working on that blog post you're procrastinating on? ;)
Ha! Called out! π
This was the post I was procrastinating on...
Why DEV hosts on Heroku (and how we configure our service)
Ben Halpern γ» Aug 1 γ» 3 min read
I really wanted to write it, but because they were sponsors I really wanted to make sure it was being objective and wasn't injecting bias. I also wanted to make it clear that Heroku isn't better than alternatives, just a good choice if you care about such and such.
I think I ultimately hit on the right points π
Ahhhhh, very good! Glad it got done and I think you took an objective tone and got the point across!
Ha, here we thought Ben was slackin'βinstead he's overachievin', posting an extra thing.
"Fleshing out a sloppy draft at night and then refining in the morning is a great pattern for me." I love this, I'm going to try tomorrow and then refine it on Saturday, if my blog is shoddy I'm blaming you π
Thanks for this Ben, I usually spend a lot of time formatting my posts just going up and down trying to made them "feel" better without any sort of guide. I'm sure this is going to save me a lot of time!
Very good writing principles! When i was younger i did a little amount of free time. When i were need to write an essay about MBA assignment i realised that i don't have enough time after that i found pay4homework.com/buy-mba-essays/ - they were my rescuers. After their help i had enough time for my friends or hobbies.
Thank you for demonstrating sharing valuable advice in short format!
I often procrastinate, or pause/stop working on articles because they become huge behemoths and I just don't have the energy or will to confront them π
Mental note: more short-form articles!!! πͺ
"Don't use a clever/cryptic title. Be descriptive!"
It took me about 7 years of blogging before I figured out that my subtle literary references in my titles were basically just inside jokes with myself.
Great article.
It bothers me that some people who think their writing deserves to be read don't bother to, or can't, write properly.
I was taught that the first section tells the reader why they should read the rest and the last section tells them what they should remember.
If you find yourself using "scare quotes" to indicate that you don't actually mean what you're saying literally, there's probably a better way to phrase it.
While "inline" is a common term in computing (meaning inserted in the main flow rather than referred to), I think you mean "in line with", (meaning consistent with).
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Yep. My brothers often forget this. Perhaps it's because I sometimes end up being that one person.
This might be implicit for a collaborative guy like Mr. Halpern, but don't forget to at least try to rope a human editor into this!
It's not just Python that benefits from review. English does too.
Thanks sir for sharing this !
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