Dreyer's English

What Hacker News says

1. zerbinxxJul 2023
   Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a good one on punctuation. Dreyer’s English is a good recent one. Woe Is I is a classic. There are a lot of style guides and fun little books about grammar and editing. My partner is a editor at a publishing house so she guides me a lot on things like this. I’m not sure it can be automated, but the best things I can say I’ve learned about writing are: don’t do anything obviously wrong (grammatically, syntactically, factually), be concise/specific, and keep your purpose/relationship to the reader at the front of your mind.
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2. hardwaregeekMar 2023
   I highly recommend picking up a book in writing and style. I enjoyed Dreyer's English (Strunk & White, while commonly recommended, is a little antiquated). There are so many avoidable mistakes like subject-verb agreement, attaching adjectives to the wrong noun ("A violent, intense, affair, Stephen King has written another fantastic novel" -> Stephen King is a violent, intense affair), and so on.

   The classic English teacher advice is also very much worth following, such as reading aloud and creating an outline.

   And of course, reading is a fantastic way to improve your writing. There are examples of great writing in any genre or format, but I would say that fiction and long-form journalism are usually quite good, while non-fiction books and blog posts tend to be more hit or miss. Sometimes you need to read a little James Baldwin to remember that writing can be an art form and not just a perfunctory means towards an end.

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3. iainctduncanDec 2022
   A lot of people are saying "read a lot" and "write a lot". These are necessary, but if you want to improve as much as possible you should be doing more than this. Imagine if you asked a musician how they learned their craft and they said all they did was listen to music and play? That they never took a lesson or course, and never read about music (just listened)?

   If you want to improve as much as possible, you also need to study. This means reading good works on writing, getting in situations where you get advice and critiques, and analyzing writing (which is more than just reading).

   I wound up in a job where I reviewed and edited other people's writing regularly and this was also immensely helpful. It made me really get analytical about what worked or didn't, and shone a light on some things that could be better in my own work - both from reading writing that was good and helping correct and provide feedback on writing that was bad.

   OTOH I really like the Pinker "A Sense of Style", "Dreyer's English", "On Writing Well", "Steering the Craft", and "The Making of a Story". (There are lots of others I like too, but these are top of mind.)

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4. anarbadalovOct 2022
   good advice to writers from Benjamin Dryer, whose book "Dreyer's English" is full of a lot more of it (and is funny as hell).

   "Good writing, I think, ultimately exists between the twin goal posts of as-few-words-as-you-need and as-many-words-as-you-want. I, a natural natterer, lean toward the latterer.

   But one must draw the line somewhere. I recommend striking out 'actually' at every opportunity, unless it’s in a discussion of the movie 'Love Actually,' in which case we might want to focus on the title’s confounding commalessness. Similarly, though I would never fault the supreme lyricist Johnny Mercer for the gorgeous 'You’re much too much / And just too very very,' I am on constant alert for 'very,' always looking for the chance to dispose of it. I’d encourage you to do the same."

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5. surfsvammelFeb 2021
   This article reminds me of the book “Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style”, one of the best books I’ve read the last couple of years.

   English is my second language.

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6. iainctduncanOct 2020
   Personally, I find this overly simplistic and I believe it's misleading. I write, review, and edit professionally as about 1/2 of my current job, and I see tons of awful writing by people who write every week. Believing you just need to write regularly to improve is like believing that if you play tons of gigs on your instrument you'll get better. How many really bad musicians have you seen who have been stuck at basically the same level for many years, but play all the time? So, so many. It's just not true.

   To really improve, in addition to writing you need to:

   - Read really good writing. A lot. Every good writer I've met is a voracious reader and has been for a long time.

   - Read about writing, as in, actually study writing

   - Edit and review your writing, and get your writing reviewed and critiqued by people actually qualified to comment on quality writing

   If you aren't doing this, a daily habit might get a lot written, but it could stay crappy for your whole life. I would argue that real study and less production writing is actually a better use of your time.

   Some of my favourite books to start on serious study:

   "A Sense of Style" - Steven Pinker

   "The Making of A Story" Alice LaPlante

   "Steering the Craft" - Ursula Le Guin

   "On Writing Well" - William Zinsser

   "Dreyer's English" - Benjamin Dreyer

   The problem is that everyone thinks their writing is great. You need to be willing to think it could be better. :-)

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