How to Write

This is a copy of this presentation by Michael Covington

Why?

People who write are powerful.
In science, technology, or management, you influence people by writing things for them to read.
Clear writing leads to clear thinking.
You don’t know what you know until you try to express it.
If your writing is nonsense, maybe your thoughts are nonsense too!

Be Unselfish

Good writing is partly a matter of character.
Instead of doing what’s easy for you, do what’s easy for your reader.
I’m not giving this presentation (or writing this paper) because I’m important.
I’m doing it because you’re important.
I’m going to package the information so that it enters your heads as easily as possible.

Break Up the Process

Writing is almost too complicatedfor human beings to do.
We must break up the process of writing in order to make it possible.

The steps are:

Planning (deciding what & how to write)
Drafting (getting on paper, without thinking of mistakes)
Revising (making it better)
Editing (fixing spelling, grammar, typing, clarifying meaning, simplifying…)
Formatting (typefaces, layouts, etc.)

Know Your Audience

Why am I writing this?
Who is the audience?
What does the reader know/expect/want?
How can I organize it?
What are the format and style requirements?

If you can’t envision the audience, try using yourself as a sample.

If someone had needed to give you this information 6 months ago, how should they have done it?

Planning

Organizing a written paper is just like structured programming:

Every section has its purpose and is broken down into smaller sections each of which has its purpose.

If you cannot figure out how to organize your ideas, just write them in random order and then sort them.

You don’t have to write the sections in linear order. For instance, writing introduction last makes more sense because by the time you finish the rest, you’ll know what to introduce.

Drafting

Just get it down on (a virtual) paper.

Not elegantly, not perfectly; just get it down so that you no longer have to hold it all in your brain.

Do not worry about grammar, spelling, format, nothing!

Just concentrate on what you want to say, and how you’re going to organize it.

Get to the point. — Your readers won’t follow you down a garden path.

To keep things clear and readable, state the main point befoe you give the reasoning that leads to it.

If you put the main point in the first sentence in each paragraph, people can skim your paper by reading just the first sentences of each paragraph. — Remember, your goal is to help them.

Always use the simplest language that will do the job. — Never try to sound sophisticated.

Revising

It is a never-ending process!

The goal is to make your writing clearer and easier to read. — This is mainly done by finding better ways to put your ideas into words.

When revising, pretend to be your worst enemy: Change anything and everything that can be misunderstood.

Whenever possible, shorten your sentences by removing needless words.

Cut the length in half.

Editing

Editing is where you fix up the grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation help express meaning.

Formatting

Keep it simple.
Keep it standard.
Avoid meaningless variation.

Keep It Simple

Use familiar typfaces, no more than two or three in a document; each with a clearly-defined purpose.

Keep formatting simple too:

A serif type for text
A monotype for computer programs.
And maybe a sans-serif type for headings.
- Sans-serif is also good for labels and presentations.

Never draw the reader’s eye to anything that’s not the main point.

Keep It Standard

Look at other well-produced material and make sure you’re following accepted practices.
Be consistent in your page numbers, margins, header, footer, etc.

Avoid Meaningless Variation

The reader will expect every change to mean something.

If you make a stylistic change, there had better be a reason for it. Or the reader will waste a lot of time looking for one.

Think More Clearly

Learning is a prerequisite of thinking.
To learn:
- Have goals and adjust them often.
- Use the learning strategies that fit you best (some are visual learners, some learn by experimenting, some learn by reading, some do a mixture of both… find what suits you the most)
- Insist on clearly understanding everything.
- Organize the knowledge “for yourself”.
- Be proactive; don’t wait passively for a video or a textbook to take you on a ride; be curious, question everything, research for related material.

Because you don’t start out knowing exactly what you are going to learn, you must constantly update your goals.

Changing your goals is okay; not having goals is not!

Don’t memorize what should be deduced.
Don’t deduce what should be memorized.
Don’t skip essential foundation and background material.
Don’t demand background if there isn’t one.

Learning is a neural activity, and a neural network is a holographic system. The best way to utilize this system is to:

Familiarize with lots of things.
Try to connect what you learn to the broader picture: Follow the trends; relate what you know with what you’ve learned.
There is no starting point — you can start anywhere. [*]
Being subjective and being judgmental is okay as long as you reason carefully.
Experimenting out with what you’ve learned, applying and using them will help you retain the knowledge better.

[*] Of course certain topics might require a stricter learning order.

Clearly Understand

Insist on clear understanding: Being confused is not okay. If something is not clear, don’t wait for it to clear up later. Invest in adequate time to clarify it.

If you guess anything, validate your guess immediately: Not just whether it might be true, but also whether it might be false.

Our educational system, unfortunately, encourages unclear understanding.

If you are accustomed to incomplete learning, you will get terribly lost (especially if the material requires some rigor).

Organize the Knowledge for Yourself

Organize the knowledge for yourself; don’t expect the book to be tailor-made to your brain.
Make your own notes.
Pretend as if you are writing the book that you are reading.
Constantly check your understanding in as many ways as you possibly can.
- Try things on the computer.
- Cross-check and cross-validate what you’ve learned with other reference material.
- Try teaching the material to others.

Learning is a lot like writing a book: The goal is to buidl a structure in your own mind. The goal, per contra, is not to absorb some amorphous body of knowledge that somebody dumps into your grain. — So take your time!

Your knowledge is your own creative product.

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