ofut@gatech.UUCP (12/02/83)
I would like to take a moment to share some of my feeble knowledge of
writing style. If you read the pointers below, remember, it's easy to believe
that they make sense but it's much harder to apply them.
References:
Cunningham and Pearsall, "How to Write For the World of Work"
Strunk & White, "Elements of Style"
As John@genrad said, most or many of the people who read the news do so at work.
Surely we can't criticize that or people trying to budget their time at work?
The above references are both excellent books. Cunningham is a standard in Tech
writing classes and won an award for the best tech writing book from the
Assc. of Tech. Writers. I was lucky enough to take a class from him as an
undergraduate. Strunk is a standard in college composition classes.
Other ideas here come from my own experience on the net and many others hints.
This is a "long article". The rest of it is simply a list of pointers.
Writing style:
* Write *below* the readers reading level. The avg. person here reads at the
"5th" grade level. The avg. professional reads on about the 12th grade level.
* Keep paragraphs short and sweet. Keep sentences shorter and sweeter.
* White space is not wasted space. It greatly improves clarity.
* Allow only *one* meaning to your words. Vagueness is considered artistic
by literary critics. We are not being literary here.
* People can only handle around 7 things at once. This means ideas in a
paragraph, major sections, etc..
* There are several variations on any one sentence. A passive, questioning
or negative sentence is slower to read.
Net style:
* Subtlety is not comunicated well in written form - especially over the net.
* This applies to humor as well.
* When being especially "flame-boyant", I find it helpful to go the bathroom
before actually sending. Often I then change the tone considerably.
* Subject lines need to be used very carefully. How much time have each of us
wasted reading things because the subject line was misleading?
* References need to be made. When you answer mail, you have the original
message fresh in your mind. When I recieve your answer, I don't.
* It's *much* easier to read a mixture of upper and lower case letters.
* Leaving out articles (such as "the, a, an", etc.) for "brevity" mangles
the meaning of your sentences and takes longer to read.
* Be careful of the meaning of words. For instance, I used "articles" just
now. In the context of netnews it has a different meaning than I intended.
* Remember - this is an international network.
* Remember - your future employees may be reading your articles.
'Nuff said.
These pointers are all easily supported by arguments and research.
There's a lot more to say, but....
--
Jeff Offutt
School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA
CSNet: Ofut @ GATech ARPA: Ofut.GATech @ Csnet-Relay
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