10 Tips to Identify and Fix Your Writing as a Software Engineer
Hello friends! 👋
Last week, we discussed some tips on how to excel at remote work. If I had to pick only one thing from this list, it would be getting better at writing. It pays dividends during your entire career.
Why it Matters?
As a non-native English speaker, my writing was terrible in the beginning.
I spent a ton of time editing my messages, and even then, people didn’t get what I wanted to say. I often spent too much time rephrasing the same thing or just jumping into a call with them.
The worst thing is that I thought my writing was OK, and it must be that I’m not a native speaker. Well, news flash: great writing is not the privilege of native speakers. You can learn and apply it!
In this newsletter, I’m sharing tips on how to identify issues with your writing and how to fix them.
5 Signs Your Writing Might Suck
Lack of clarity: If your readers are confused or have to reread sentences multiple times, your writing might be unclear. Hopefully, you’re not standing behind your readers, so one way to identify if your writing is hard to understand is that it takes longer to respond to whatever you wrote.
Lack of simplicity: Great writing is simple. Here’s a quote attributed to Blaise Pascal found in a collection of letters he wrote in 1657: “I have made this (the letter) longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” Simple and short writing beats everything because:
it’s more difficult to make it unclear
less room for grammatical or structural errors
less likely to remain unanswered or overlooked
Poor structure: Disorganized writing is hard to follow and can frustrate readers. Think of mile-long paragraphs, code snippets without code blocks, not a single bullet list or new line in a message that covers your entire screen. It’s also challenging to respond to a message that looks like this.
Too many errors: Grammatical mistakes, typos, and punctuation errors can make your writing appear unprofessional. But this is easy to fix, especially with the rise of AI tools. You can give any text to Gemini or ChatGPT and ask to fix or improve it in any way. It’s also a good exercise to see what you could have written differently.
No impact: If your writing doesn’t achieve its intended purpose, it’s ineffective. If this happens too often, you probably tick the boxes for lack of clarity, poor structure, and many errors.
5 Tips to Improve Your Writing
Read widely and critically: Expose yourself to different writing styles and analyze what works and what doesn’t. Getting better at writing begins with reading more. Bookmark or save blog posts, newsletters, and copies where you feel you must read on. Don’t be afraid to imitate the style that you liked reading.
Write consistently: Make writing a regular habit. It can be journaling, writing a newsletter, or a blog. If you’re new to writing or returning after a long break, check out my completely free 7-day, self-paced email course on blogging. People are enjoying it, and many got back to writing regularly after taking it:
Seek feedback: Share your writing with others and be open to constructive criticism. Getting people to read your stuff is already tricky, and getting them to read your drafts is more complicated. However, there’s another way to seek feedback: publishing. Write something, post it somewhere, and see if it resonates with people. But don’t get caught up in metrics. It’s not always the best writing that gets the most engagement!
Edit ruthlessly: Cut unnecessary words and refine sentences for clarity and impact. This is what Pascal would have done if he had more time. That extra sentence you’re wondering if you need it–delete it already!
Learn the rules, then break them: Understand grammar and style guidelines, but don’t be afraid to experiment. Imagine if everyone were using ChatGPT to craft their writing. It would be pretty boring to delve into all those comprehensive newsletters discussing the intricacies of x and y. Yeah, these are some of ChatGPT’s most overused words.
There’s no one way to improve writing for non-native English speakers. You’ll likely have to experiment until you figure out what works best for you and your readers.
But if I had to pick one from each group of tips, those would be looking for a lack of simplicity and ruthlessness in editing.
What are your tips for getting better at writing? Share them in the comments!
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Being a non-native English speaker may be an advantage. You tend to use simpler and less complicated vocabulary when English is not your mother tongue, making it easier for a wider audience to understand.
Great article, Akos! & Thank you for the shoutout for the Leading Developers' article.
I definitely agree with this phrase 'One way to identify if your writing is hard to understand is that it takes longer to respond to whatever you wrote.' I wish I found this write-up a year back, it would have saved me from the hassle that I went through while writing ERDs and proposal docs.
Great work Akos, thanks for this !