Something I've known for a while (but have really come to terms with more recently) is just how important writing skills are even for technical people (even coders). It's hard to get anything done if you can't convince people why they should listen to you.<p>Especially in this increasingly remote-connected world, writing skills are key.
I would like to add a third recommendation to the list of two, and recommend "Style: Towards Clarity and Grace". (Alternatively, use any similar book by Joseph M. Williams featuring the words Style, Clarity, and Grace in the title).<p>This book discusses the information architecture of clear and coherent phrases, sentences and paragraphs in the English language, and a few passes through its contents will leave you able to reason about the way you lay out ideas and information in your writing.
Back in high school I was the copy editor for the paper (and the minutiae of AP style are still seared into my brain), and it's definitely been a useful skill. My first job was doing developer marketing, and we had a lot of devs that were happy to contribute to our blog but didn't feel their writing was great - a lot of it was just little grammatical and style stuff, so my being able to clean it up really encouraged them to work with me on creating content.<p>That said, I think that reading a book on copy edit just to be able to edit your own stuff is a little bit of overkill. You don't need a deep, sophisticated knowledge of grammar - something like Strunk and White's Elements of Style will cover the grammar stuff you need while also helping to offer a little bit better sense of bigger-picture writing style.
Pro tip, from an actual pro: you can't copyedit your own copy.<p>Lots of reasons why, including, your inability to recognize problems you are unaware of; the inexorable fact of reading what you think you wrote, not what is on the page; inability to see logical problems, missing assumptions, etc. Ad infinitum.<p>There are line-level hacks which can help with some of this, e.g. reading backwards to find typographic and spelling error...<p>...but there is no general solution.<p>Suggested fix: find a professional peer and become their formal editing buddy. Define terms and scope, this is not peer review–it is simply copy editing.
You need to be the reader's advocate, to try to set aside your ego and read your work as if someone else wrote it. This is not substantially different from adjusting your code. One might argue that with code you have also a very demanding reader, the computer, which might fail to run it or wreck something. Still you are writing for a human audience.
I was lucky enough to have Prof. Regehr in my masters program. If he says these are good books to look into to improve your editing, trust this guy, he is as good as they get.
<i>Now edit this comment for practice!</i>
Knowing how to tighten the screws on a text is essential for a lot of workplace communication, especially if you're trying to get something from your higher-ups. Don't think everyone is going to take their time to become a <i>great</i> copy editor, but it pays to learn the craft at least a little.
My team went through a major shift a number of years ago, moving most complex discussions to written documents (with commentary!) wherever possible. The outcomes were great and fwiw we had a minimal remote culture pre-pandemic, people would write things down even if they were sitting next to each other. In particular:<p>- It's much easier to track the provenance of complex decisions.<p>- Deciding in docs reduces meeting bloat.<p>- It's harder to get pissed at someone based upon a document.<p>- Anecdotally, points of view seem to be better thought-out.<p>This article made me think of how we should remember to try as hard as possible to adjust for variation in writing skill. I also wonder whether we're inherently biasing against people who are _slower_ writers.
A very useful trick for copyediting and proofreading is to use a text-to-speech tool. The default voice on Mac is quite good. I use it all the time to proofread intros, and explanation sections in my books. For math-heavy or code-blocks, it's not quite as good... but actually works OK for Python. See [1] for how to setup a keyboard shortcut.<p>[1] <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...</a>
I'm speaking from the perspective of non-native academic English speakers. I find that my time and the time of my PhD students is better spent focusing on the high-level problems. Once those are fixed, we rely on professional copy-editing. Done!
A favorite of mine is the book <i>BUGS in Writing</i>, by Lyn Dupré (1998, Addison Wesley). It's a teach-by-example book with lots of examples she rates as ugly, bad, good, and even splendid.
Just wanted to add a book recommendation for copy editing: "Revising Prose" by Lanham. It was recommended by a respected philosopher when I was in undergrad. Excellent.