Do That After This – Terence Eden’s Blog
Good advice for documentation—always document steps in the order that they’ll be taken. Seems obvious, but it really matters at the sentence level.
Link tags: clarity
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Your Website’s URLs Can and Should Be Beautiful - Opus
The key to making a beautiful URL is finding a balance between brevity and clarity. In other words, a good URL is short but not so short as to obscure what it’s pointing to. Put another way, a good URL contains enough information about its related resource to be useful, but not so much information that it drags on and becomes unwieldy.
What it’s like working with an editor
This piece by Giles is a spot-on description of what I do in my role as content buddy at Clearleft. Especially this bit:
Your editor will explain why things need changing
As a writer, it’s really helpful to understand the why of each edit. It’s easier to re-write if you know precisely what the problem is. And often, it’s less bruising to the ego. It’s not that you’re a bad writer, but just that one particular thing could be expressed more simply, or more clearly, than your first effort.
Sans Bullshit Sans — Leveraging the synergy of ligatures
As part of my content buddying process, I am henceforth going to typeset all drafts in this font. I just tested it with this sentence:
We can leverage the synergy of a rich immersive user paradigm shift.
How to be clear – gilest.org
Good advice for writing:
- Think about what your readers might already know
- Write shorter sentences, with simpler words
- Constantly think about audiences
- Communicate with purpose
- Clear communication helps teams solve problems
Guide to Internal Communication, the Basecamp Way
Writing solidifies, chat dissolves. Substantial decisions start and end with an exchange of complete thoughts, not one-line-at-a-time jousts. If it’s important, critical, or fundamental, write it up, don’t chat it down.
This one feels like it should be Somebody’s Law:
If your words can be perceived in different ways, they’ll be understood in the way which does the most harm.
Frank Chimero · Redesign: On This Design
Most experienced designers want concision—clear, robust, consistent, elegant systems that avoid redundancy. Concise designs are smoother to implement, faster to render, quicker to understand, and easier to hand-off and maintain. Achieving a simplicity with clarity means that you’re engaging with the fundamentals of the problem (and of your craft) at the correct fidelity. You’ve cut through complexity with insight, understanding, and committed decision-making. That third one is critical. A lot of complexity comes from an unwillingness to commit to the things that insight and understanding surface.
Nicole Fenton | Words as Material
If we want design to communicate, we need to communicate in the design process.
I might get that framed.
Clarity and Style · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer
Styling something is easy. Making something crystal clear is hard.
Humanizing Your Documentation - Full Talk - Speaker Deck
The slides from Carolyn’s talk at Beyond Tellerrand. The presentation is ostensibly about writing documentation, but I think it’s packed with good advice for writing in general.
Getting help from your worst enemy
Onboarding. Reaching out. In terms of. Synergy. Bandwidth. Headcount. Forward planning. Multichannel. Going forward. We are constantly bombarded and polluted with nonsense speak. These words and phrases snag and attach themselves to our vocabulary like sticky weeds.
Words become walls.
I love this post from Ben on the value of plain language!
We’re not dumbing things down by using simple terms. We’re being smarter.
Read on for the story of the one exception that Ben makes—it’s a good one.
Use the words normal people use
When you’re struggling to write something that sounds clear and sounds human (two of the essential basics of a good blog post, I’d argue), just use the words normal people would use.
John Spencer: “There’s no bullshit like design bullshit” - Design Week
If we use jargon, we reveal our insecurity. If we use pretentious language, we expose our arrogance. But if we use language that anyone can understand, people are much more likely to value what we do.
Write As You Learn, Not Once You Know It – Matthew Cassinelli
It’s really heartwarming to see this idea resonating.
Coding with Clarity · An A List Apart Article
Good advice on writing code that is understandable to your fellow humans (and your future self).
Code clarity - Anthony Ricaud
Breaking down programming tasks into smaller chunks …and naming things.
I’ll take a piece of paper and write the function names I’m going to implement. Or I’ll do it directly in my code editor, with real functions or comments.
It allows you to focus on one problem at a time. When you’re writing those function names, you are thinking about what the code should be doing. When you’re implementing the functions, you are thinking about how the code should do it.
Clarity 2016 Wrapup by Chris Coyier on CodePen
As well as compèring the event, Chris took the time to make notes at the Clarity conference, dedicated to all things patterny.
Clarity Conf: Brad Frost
I wish I could’ve made it to the Clarity conference—I had a Salter Cane gig to play—but luckily for me, Brad took lots of notes.
Use the words normal people use
When you’re struggling to write something that sounds clear and sounds human (two of the essential basics of a good blog post, I’d argue), just use the words normal people would use. The best way to find out what those words are is to try talking the thing through to someone who doesn’t know anything about it. Remember what you just said, then write that.
Hemingway
A useful text editor that analyses your writing for excess verbiage and sloppy construction. It helps you process your words, as it were.