Some of my writing principles

• 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!

Comments

[Selik_Sasha]

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.

[Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard]

Great first sentence:)

[🦄N B🛡]

Don't try to broaden so it's relevant for "everyone". Writing for one person is the best.

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.

[adikwok]

how to structure the write?
i got things on my mind, but dont know
where to start

[Jaime González García]

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 😁

Mental note: more short-form articles!!! 💪

[Oury Diallo]

Thanks sir for sharing this !

[Dalmo Mendonça]

Tbh I'm impressed with the 60s thing. It took me more time than that just to read the post. And probably more than that to write this comment, too.

[Denis Howe]

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!

[Erik Dietrich]

"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.