Rare is the leader who can actually write well

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123154076720569453.html?mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy

by robg • 18 years ago

30 30 18 years ago

online.wsj.com

protomyth• 18 years ago

Regardless of political belief, Reagan was a prolific writer of letters that were articulate and thoughtful. I seem to remember someone collected them into a book.

vchakra• 18 years ago

That should be - "Rare is the leader who can actually write good"

Alex3917• 18 years ago

"If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more.

That's because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need."

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch08_Wordsmiths.php

unalone5• 18 years ago

It's because writing is really hard to fake. You can fake friendliness, you can fake efficiency. Some people are bright but have a hard time speaking quickly. A lot of that stuff isn't really indicative of a person.

You can't fake writing. You've got to have the right skills to write or else it won't work. And a lot of the things that make writing good - empathy, flair, organization - are things that help in any situation.

coolnewtoy• 18 years ago

As a CS grad student with an undergrad degree in creative writing, I always feel like I have to explain how I got here.

I usually tell people I have an affinity for metaphors, and remind them that their desktop, folders and files are all electronic metaphors.

derefr3• 18 years ago

I'm double-majoring in CS and creative writing--I'm trying to synthesize a curriculum that leads directly to being an optimal choice as a game designer (not developer.) People who think I'm trying to be a developer don't get the writing part, and people who think I'm trying to be something like a screenwriter don't get the CS part. It's all very frustrating, but I think it'll work out.

unalone5• 18 years ago

That's a great explanation!

I wonder: do a lot of CS people feel connected to writing? I never thought so, though I know music is a common connection. But most people here write fairly well, and you get a lot of eloquent posts. Is that a common trait among hackers, that they write?

gruseom2• 18 years ago

s/actually//

gruseom2• 18 years ago

's/s\/actually\/\//s\/actually\/also\//'

jodrellblank2• 18 years ago

The only valid use of 'actually' that I can think of is to correct someone in a smug way ('actually: synonymous with 'you idiot''). Any other use seems to be filler. Am I missing some good uses for it?

"1 + 1 is 11" "acccctually, it's 2"

kragen• 18 years ago

I had a coworker who used to use "in reality" in place of "actually", which is even worse. Usually he used it immediately prior to statements that needed quite a bit of justification. It used to drive me nuts. Eventually I realized that when he said, "in reality," he meant, "in my opinion," and from then on we got along much better.

jodrellblank2• 18 years ago

I don't write much in terms of stories, poems, blog articles, essays, etc. But I do write a lot in forum posts, emails and everyday work notes (into the tens of thousands of posts over the years).

Yet I've never got much feedback about my writing style. With ten thousand posts of careful practise, I would presumably be pretty good by now. What a wasted opportunity.

unalone5• 18 years ago

I find that forum posts (like on Hacker News) help a lot with writing essays, if for no other reason than it helps you develop your arguments. Ditto blog articles, though every blog is different and most of the "good" blogs are terrible.

Stories are different, though learning to construct an argument helps you plan out stories. Learning the aesthetics of a language isn't something forumming helps with. And poetry is an entirely different entity from either: it's almost all aesthetic.

The problem with feedback is that each thing you do is trying to do something different. If you state yourself clearly online, there's not much more you have to do. And yet look at somebody like why the lucky stiff, who's elevated his writing style to a level above anything I've encountered online. He doesn't have to do that, but he does it anyway.

makecheck2• 18 years ago

I would add to this that writers ideally be able to use "8th grade English", so it is easy for any English speaker to read.

It's a global workforce. Yet too often, I see a colleague send a brain dump of 3 or 4 paragraphs to someone in another country. Imagine yourself having to use a translation dictionary for half of that?

It really helps if you use just common English words, in brief sentences. And yes, this might take extra editing time. Yet, this helps anyone reading it, not just those with English as a second language.

dissenter• 18 years ago

You're approaching it from the wrong perspective. English is the lingua franca. If your colleague were really nice, he would translate his message into Hindi, but that isn't an effective use of time. Neither is writing in Simple English.

Let the recipient use a dictionary. After a while he won't have to anymore.

makecheck2• 18 years ago

That isn't really fair to the recipient. Why should he or she spend extra time figuring out what you said, and you spend no time at all making it easier to read?

diN0bot• 18 years ago

the data doesn't necessarily back up that leaders aren't good writers. maybe recent american politicians, but what about Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin (not a President, but on the $5 note), not to mention the writers of the federalist papers and constitution. maybe we're talking about a different kind of "write well".

anamax• 18 years ago

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is a hoot. (Lincoln is on the $5, Franklin is on the $100.)

Jefferson gets all the good press, but Franklin was more accomplished at more things. (Ben did fundamental work in electricity.)

Raphael• 18 years ago

Rare is a company that made GoldenEye for N64.

curiousgeorge• 18 years ago

Fantastic game. Played it enough back in college to realize that the spawn points in multiplayer weren't random. That realization changed the dynamics of the game somewhat....

More on-topic, I think the title is wrong. People who can write well tend to be better at social organization. Mao was - among other things - a librarian and poet.

kingkongrevenge• 18 years ago

No Mussolini or Caesar on the list? Is it English only?

Isn't Mao's Little Red Book one of the most printed books in human history?

Rare is the leader who can actually write well

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