Show HN: Improve Your Writing – Grammar and Writing for Creators(grammarandwritingforcreators.com) |
Show HN: Improve Your Writing – Grammar and Writing for Creators(grammarandwritingforcreators.com) |
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?
Maybe the authors are going for irony?
The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is hated by grammarians for the same reason.
> 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.
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.
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.
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).
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...
The best way to become good at writing is to do it a lot and receive lots of critique. Style and grammar guides aren't very useful.
> The best way to become good at writing is to do it a lot and receive lots of critique.
Don't forget to read a lot! (and from a diverse set of writers too!)