UChicago Social Sciences
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2020–2025
1:16:55 · 1.7M views · Feb 18, 2015
Larry McEnerney of the University of Chicago Writing Program argues that good writing is defined by what readers value, not by rules or the writer's own ideas. He explains why academic habits fail outside academia and how to write so readers find the work valuable.
HN treats it as the definitive writing lecture and recommends it repeatedly, with several commenters saying it changed how they write.
8 comments from Hacker News
Last year wrote a technical writing advice checklist for engineers called How to ask for help in Slack : [LINK] . I was at Canva, a fast growing company adding 500 engineers a year, and the tenured engineers were getting hit with a lot of questions and help requests. I thought about this list a lot, and believe that maintaining adherence to all 10 checklist items will dramatically improve your technical communication in chat apps. For advice on writing long form communications, my absolute favorite resource is LEADERSHIP LAB: Writing Beyond the Academy [1]. This lecture will cleanse you of all the bad writing ideas you picked up in 12+ years of schooling, and show you actually how to think about professional writing. I've watched it about 4-5 times. 1. this video
My favorite writing lecture is this one: this video The number one piece of advice: your writing can be clear and structured, but if it's not valuable it's useless and people will stop reading. If you want to write well, figure out who your readers are, figure out what they value, and give it to them.
It's an article about writing, which means I will plug this lecture again: this video Short version: good writing is not about rules, it's about the function of the text, the readers, and what they value.
the act of writing takes raw experience, puts it in front of the eyes, and then filters it back through your critical faculties so you can refine and reason about it. the iteration makes it higher quality thought. making writing valuable is another skill (see this evergreen lecture from the university of chicago leadership lab: this video ) however when I encounter people with low written or verbal acuity, they have to survive somehow, so it's wise to observe what tools of cunning they tend to reach for.
A post about writing means that I need to plug a couple talks by Larry McEnerney. [1,2] The tool described in this blog post is all about text-based rules: what the _text_ ought to look like. To improve your own writing (a) learn who your readers are, (b) know what they value, and (c) write so that as readers, they find your work valuable to them. [1] [LINK] [2] this video