Also, while I'm here let's leave a cry for help. Everytime I want to do a write up on a project, I bore myself to death with my own long-winded writing. Anyone knows of a resource to read improving my writing? Searching for writing advice seems to mostly come up with advice eon either creative writing, or academic writing, which is not what I need.
10 months ago
active voice; yes. gnu diction and style are ancient programs that analyse text, comment on wordy or bad diction and can output readability grades. 路 10 months ago
@digbat Is that the same as the active voice? Also, what's gnu style? It seems to be a search engine. 路 10 months ago
you could attempt to write in an active style. knowing what that is and re-writing text in an active style may help you. i sometimes use gnu style to assist me. 路 10 months ago
There is such a thing as "Simplified Technical English". We use it to make our manuals more clear and unambiguous. Please see here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English]. Hope this helps! 路 10 months ago
Thanks for the advice folks. I'll check that book out! 路 10 months ago
Just to provide a link, "On Writing Well" is (for now at least) available on the Internet Archive in a lot of different editions.
Here's the most recent edition: https://archive.org/details/onwritingwellcla00zins_4 路 10 months ago
"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter" - Pascal (maybe)
It takes a lot of effort and practice to write concisely and clearly, so don't feel like this is only a "you" problem. I highly recommend the book "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser. It's specifically about writing non-technical-non-fiction, and obviously is itself a pleasure to read. 路 10 months ago
Something I find sucessful to do is to simplify the language I use and try to distill the essence of the ideas I wish to convey into as few words as possible. Intellectual people have a tendency to use fancy and highly specialized words with lots of padding to flex their intelligence, a truly intelligent person has no need to flex, they speak plainly and straight to the point in words the common man can instantly grasp. 路 10 months ago