Show HN: Improve Your Writing – Grammar and Writing for Creators

https://grammarandwritingforcreators.com

by richardofyork • 12 years ago

23 23 12 years ago

sloak• 12 years ago

The first bullet point reads "Learn all the important elementary to advanced rules and errors."

How many of you had to re-read it at least once, or rescan mid-sentence, to understand?

I won't even discuss the second bullet point: "Write skilfully, and write powerful and eloquent blog posts, books, and more."

It's quite disturbing to see this language in a guide that is all about grammar, writing, and the importance of being well-understood.

Or am I just a grump old man?

sgdesign2• 12 years ago

I agree the first sentence is a bit awkward (I would suggest something like "Learn all the important rules and errors, from elementary to advanced"), but what's wrong with the second example?

seanmcdirmid5• 12 years ago

The rhythm is all messed up. Not eloquent at all.

icambron• 12 years ago

It's pretty bad, IMO.

Write skilfully, and write powerful and eloquent blog posts, books, and more.

* The repetition of "write" is annoying.

* The use of multiple adjectives to describe a list of things is awkward and wordy.

* "Blog posts" shouldn't be the first item, because it's easy to read "blog" as modifying "books" too.

* "And" is a weird conjunction here. Is writing powerfully and eloquently separate from writing skillfully?

I'd have two separate bullets:

* Write skilfully.

* Create eloquent books, blog posts, and more.

I'd also make the other bullet points start with a verb ("Receive two books in one" etc). I don't think I'd ever be that picky about the writing if it weren't the marketing copy for a book full of writing advice.

As an aside, the "skilfully" spelling is pretty jarring for Americans (or at least for me), but it's apparently correct in the rest of the English-speaking world. TIL.

seanmcdirmid5• 12 years ago

You aren't grumpy, this is just grammatically correct but with extremely poor rhythm. A technically correct writer is not a good or great writer by any means, and it is always useful to know when rules should be broken.

Maybe the authors are going for irony?

Pitarou• 12 years ago

The writing is optimized for skim reading. The idea is that, whether you choose to read just two words, twenty words, or the whole thing, they'll still get their message across.

mturmon• 12 years ago

I was bothered by that too.

I also noticed that the adverb form indicating skill is spelled two different ways on this page.

There is also a lack of parallelism in the bullet lists.

Curmudgel• 12 years ago

It's quite disturbing to see this language in a guide that is all about grammar, writing, and the importance of being well-understood.

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is hated by grammarians for the same reason.

sgdesign2• 12 years ago

By the way, Richard is also the guy behind JavaScript Is Sexy (http://javascriptissexy.com/), a great blog about JavaScript (I always recommend his "How To Learn JavaScript Properly" post: http://javascriptissexy.com/how-to-learn-javascript-properly... )

janderson772• 12 years ago

Perhaps you are indeed a "grump" old man, as both those cited sentences are grammatical.

macintux2• 12 years ago

Many awkward sentences are grammatical.

ztratar• 12 years ago

I dislike things like this. There are tons of FREE, valuable resources online about grammar and writing.

Why pay for this book? There is no reason. There isn't anything special about writing for "creators" -- and if there is, this author hasn't shown capability. Just look at the bullet points. They all end with a semi-colon. While that can be grammatically correct, there are many accepted versions here and a semi-colon won't do anything but simply confuse most users.

Follow best practices from the big players' splash pages. This book looks unworthy of a reading even if it was free.

bpackard• 12 years ago

You mean...'even if it WERE free.'

macintux2• 12 years ago

Better: 'even were it free'

seanmcdirmid5• 12 years ago

The semicolons only work for short sentence fragment bucket points; the last points are a bit long for semi colons. It is generally started by a colon (you will learn: not what you will learn), and the last semicolon should include an "and.' They should have just used complete sentences for each point here with periods rather than semicolons.

I agree that the leading text doesn't provide me with much confidence, but I'm not in the market for such a book. It might be useful for those grasping at something to get started, but free sources are available...or one could invest in a well used writing style guide (my advisor suggested this approach, it didn't work for me).

hkmurakami2• 12 years ago

"Elements of Style" by Strunk (Not Strunk and White) is in the public domain.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134

zachshallbetter• 12 years ago

This book was written by one of my favorite programmer bloggers. His blog javascriptissexy.com is sincerly a consistant reference for me. Don't knock it until you've read it.

richardofyork• 12 years ago

I am the author, and I will try to address some of the comments:

1. First, if you buy and read the book, your writing will definitely improve. You will write better than you ever have. I am confident you will. Those tiny grammar books on amazon.com wouldn't help much because many don't cover the crucial topics for writing well. I read nearly all of them.

2. Language is instinctual, so arguing about grammatical rules is pointless. Take this passage from my book: "I agree with Steven Pinker, as he describes in his book "The Language Instinct," that humans have an instinct to learn and use language, and some nonstandard grammars and dialects perceived to be unsophisticated and ungrammatical (Appalachian English Vernacular and Black English Vernacular, for example) do, in fact, follow sophisticated grammatical rules.

I will not hurl even a pebble of criticism to anyone who uses English grammar to his or her own inclination. Instead, this book helps people who want to improve their Standard American English and Standard British English grammar. By “standard,” I mean the form used in academia, mainstream businesses and books, and formal and informal writing aimed at the general public or educated readers.

3. For the first bullet, I combined two similar bullets into one, hence the possible oddity. I constructed it for brevity, not for eloquence. No need to niggle over a bullet; it's a peccadillo. Incidentally, I wrote an entire chapter on how to write eloquent prose.

4. Ztratar, I presume you would agree that books are not useless. While anyone can probably learn anything online, books are still usually more organized and better researched than disparate articles and blog posts spread across hundreds of websites. In fact, to my knowledge, about half of the content in my book cannot be found online. I have devised some new grammatical constructions and techniques for writing skillfully.

5. Icambron, you should definitely read my book. You will learn a lot. For example, you will learn that all those things you pointed out are actually grammar myths (aka superstitions). I have an entire section on myths that many people believe are legitimate rules of grammar. Many such myths abound even in schools, including college. You should read the following article, a section from my book; you may find some of the cool sentence constructions quite different from the prosaic and formulaic constructions taught in schools: https://grammarandwritingforcreators.com/Creative_Powerful_W...

5. Seanmcdirmid, I wrote an entire section on the rhythm and euphony of sentences, another topic rarely found in grammar books. You can read this new figure of speech that I have devised (unrelated to rhythm, but all the examples employ rhythm): https://grammarandwritingforcreators.com/Conceal_Reveal_Arti...

nekopa• 12 years ago

I read through you new figure of speech, and I don't see why you class it as a figure of speech. Wikipedia defines a figure of speech as "A figure of speech is the use of a word or a phrase, which transcends its literal interpretation. It can be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it, as in idiom, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, or synecdoche." From what I read in your explanation of your idea, you've just creates a phrase with a literal meaning. Would you care to explain further why you regard it as a figure of speech?

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