You Have a Tech Job? Learn to Write!
April 24, 2008 – 7:00 amI always find myself wanting to edit technical blogs. Not usually for the technical content, usually for the horrible writing. I re-edit my writing all the time, and I struggle with blogging layout to support technical (and elsewhere, non-technical) content. I know it’s hard. But it seems you don’t even try, I will think poorly of you.
To totally pick on one guy who I happened to be reading when I went over the threshold to write this:
negatives:
“we saw” - it’s awkward, and passive
“Lets” - should not be capitalized, and should have an apostrophe
“let us get introduced” - what?obligatory positive input:
earlier article - the link is appropriately tied to the content it’s referring to
That’s just from the first paragraph.
All of the code is in a quote, is word-wrapped, and is devoid of white space - fix that!
There’s much more - I could edit it to oblivion. But I also can’t pass up: “there by”, one word, “thereby”; “invoke a method call”, just “we invoke a method”; “rhe” simple spell check-”the”; “So,whats”, don’t use contractions if you can’t use contractions- “So, what’s”; “on fail” - we begin sentences with capital letters - “On fail”. The list goes on.
The technical content is quite interesting, so kudos on that.
By the way, the ability to communicate and write effectively is at the top of my list of things you need to do to prepare for a job interview. Practicing in a blog is a great way to do it. My rule of thumb is you should re-read and edit your piece three times. I do it once before I post, once a day later (in my RSS feed - also assuring that’s working correctly), and once several days later.
Arrg. From what looks like some kind of official Microsoft announcement I am presented with this abomination of a sentence that changes tense midway: “We’re friending, twittering, digging, tagging and linking to stay in touch, share photos, be entertained, meet new people, express our opinions, learn, and the list goes on.” Didn’t finish reading it; I still don’t know what Vile Mesh is. (And every time I see “aspx” in a URL, all I can think is that the site is asphyxiating me.)
Amit Mital, General Manager at Microsoft, you’re killing me softly.
2 Responses to “You Have a Tech Job? Learn to Write!”
Thanks for taking time to point out the errors in my blog - Some of the grammatical errors could have been totally avoided. I am going to get back to my post and make appropriate edits.
Having said that, I am quite convinced myself that I would never ever bother about capitalization or the occasional incorrect line spacing because a tech blog addresses a technical problem! Its not quite a literature piece that you take the English language more seriously than the actual subject matter itself. Personally, I would write a couple more articles in the time I would spend checking for cosmetic issues. That’s the way I look at it. If the article is so inanely worded that one cannot make any sense out of it, then that’s a whole different issue.
I would have agreed with you completely if I were writing a book. As far as personal blogs are concerned, I believe I have the creative freedom to write any which way, because it is my own personal space!
That’s my thought! Once again, thanks a lot for visiting my blog.
Best Regards,
Harish
By Harish Sivaramakrishnan on Apr 24, 2008
Thanks Harish,
I’d much rather you put the content out there than not. Let me assure you, I feel the pain of time being squeezed - and writing is not a quick or easy thing. I’ve seen much worse examples, I just didn’t want to take the time to go back and find them.
You got unlucky enough to be in front of me when the weight of many things finally got to me. And, yes, personal blogs should have the most leeway of all (after email, text messages, and any real-time messaging). I hope you didn’t take any of it personally, because I definitely didn’t intend it that way!
As for press releases like that in the second half of my tirade, only lack of caring is an excuse.
By re-tech on Apr 24, 2008