Posted: 10/26/2011
Something that I admire about the Pragmatic Works employees that I read on here - you all seem to have very concise writing styles. Are you hired already having strong written communication skills? Do you have additional training for that? Do you "just" pick it up by being around "regular authors / presenters"?
As I've started getting involved in the forums here and doing some blogging, I have found I enjoy writing. However, I would say that "editing it down" is not a strong point for me yet. I do tend to be a bit verbose, so I thought I'd ask what your experiences and thoughts were.
I look forward to your insights,
Keith
PS While I addressed this the folks at Pragmatic Works - if you're an author or regular blogger, I would welcome your insights too!!
I think in my case I just kind of picked it up by reading the blogs and articles of other authors. I don't want to sound like I'm tooting my own horn, but I think before I started at PW I was already a pretty decent writer since taking a decent amount of writing and journalism type classes in college. But I think my writing style kind of fine tuned itself by reading the work of others and kind of adapting my style based on what I've learned from others.
I will say that I think I write similar to how I talk. I don't really do a whole lot of editting of my blogs and articles outside of fixing typos and any grammar errors that I spot. What you read on my blog isn't completely different than my thought stream, editted of course to be family-friendly ;). I'd say when you write, just be yourself. Nobody wants to read an instruction manual. If you write how you think and talk, I believe your personality will show itself a bit more, which is nice when you're reading a technical style article. Just my .02 .