• Decide what you’re actually saying
• Repeat yourself (within reason)
• Simplify
• Eliminate passive voice
• Don’t use adverbs
• Don’t assume knowledge
• Be aware of your tone
• Avoid jargon and cliches
• Make use of whitespace

In other words, while it seems like there’s never a good time to write about something, the truth is that there’s never a bad time to write about something.

The author arguments in favor of writing. Each arguments against writing is thwarted.

“After all”, they said, “the world doesn’t need yet another opinion.”

True. The answer is simple: don't publish for the world.

To be honest, I am only here because it's a habit, and I like playing around with my website. It's fine to write about your life and other such interests. My favourite blogs to follow do exactly that, but it's absolutely understandable if you don't want to do that.

If regular traveling has taught me anything, it’s that you can never depend on circumstance. You can only depend on yourself. And if there’s one writing skill that’s overlooked, then it’s the ability to just write as and when you choose, regardless of where you are, the time of day, or how comfortable you feel (and I mean that in a physical and symbolic sense).

Doctorow states in his own words:
“I learned to write crammed into coach seats with my laptop keyboard practically vertical, my wrists bent back at an agonizing angle. Between flights, I’d write crouched on the floor under the water fountain between the toilets in the departure lounge, nailing the only outlet and plugging in my travel power strip to share with others. […] I have written so much in so many places that the desk and the comfy chair and the big monitor are largely aspirational for me — the kind of place I’d like to be writing in, but rarely the place where I end up writing.”

TL;DR? Write how and where you want to write. And if you can’t, write anyway.

Write 5 times more because it helps thinking, practice makes you better, humans are worse than computers at storing knowledge and it frees the brain.
Then shorten it because the shorter it is, the more people will read it. Also, 80% of the value is in 20% of the length.

• Just sit in silence
• Apply constraints. Shorten the goals if it is hard to write.
• What did I learned today?
• Find a previous post you disagree or want to enrich. Write about why. Use an old post and update wit h your current experience
• Take a quote you love, or hate, and write about the why's. Backup the reasoning with evidence.
• You probably answer questions from email, IMs, DMs, work, etc... Post the most common answers.
• Write about your mistake
• Make a link post, and explain why
• Help others

Funny that this blog uses Bear as software to power the posts

Make an OSS version of it for the web: why not building on the web for the web?

Note of Tim Berners-Lee

Quitte à stresser, autant stresser précisément!

À la fin de chaque session d’écriture, mettez à jour ce décompte [de mots à écrire], et gardez éventuellement une trace de son évolution.

Plus sérieusement, "j’avoue d’ailleurs l’avoir testé comme une blague au début. Mais en pratique, c’est bien cette info (complétée par la moyenne glissante) qui m’a permis d’organiser sereinement ma rédaction et notamment mes temps de repos, en levant mes doutes sur mon avancée au quotidien.

#idea #project make it real:

1. D’abord, l’objectif : le nombre de mots total visé pour le mémoire. Ensuite, le décompte : le nombre total de mots contenus dans le mémoire à la fin de chaque jour. Et enfin, le délai : le nombre de jours d’écriture dont je disposais avant de devoir remettre le mémoire à l’école doctorale.

2. Le problème de cette information, c’est qu’elle peut donner trop de visibilité à la progression quotidienne : il ne faut pas seulement savoir si on est dans un « bon jour » ou un « mauvais jour », il faut replacer tout cela dans un intervalle de temps plus long. J’ai donc aussi créé un graphique de la progression en nombre de mots par jour sur lequel j’ai ajouté la moyenne glissante sur 7 jours.

1. Having an "inbox" notes to capture ideas in form of napkin, receipt, voice recorder
2. Literature notes: When you consume content, take notes of what you don’t want to forget or what you want to use in your own writing. It is recommended to make them atomic. Make sure to include the bibliographic details, author & source at the very least, so you know where you got the idea from.
3. Permanent notes: every day, you should go through the inbox and seek to refine the fleeting & literature notes. Making connections and turning them into permanent notes.

One idea = One note
One note = One idea

4. Navigation: an index allows you to navigate in the zettelkasten; keyword notes can also be used as link.

KISS and dirty. Simple to use.

These tips are related to academic papers, but it can be applied to every writings that should have an effective communication.

Some that can affect me:

• avoid passive tense
• use strong vers instead of lots of nouns: "make assumption" → assume, "had difference" → differed, "is an illustration" → illustrates
• if you find yourself saying "In other words," it means you didn't say it clearly enough the first time. Rewrite it.
• Avoid filler words, e.g., by converting sentences into simple actor-action-object phrasing.
• Each sentence in a paragraph must have some logical connection to the previous one. A new thought should get its own paragraph, but still clearly needs some logical connection to the paragraphs that preceded it.
• avoid scare quotes
• Numbers ten or less are spelled out: "It consists of three fields", not "3 fields".
• avoid in-line enumeration
• avoid itemization (bullets) as it takes extra space. Bullets can be used to emphasize key points
• name the author with its reference [1] instead of "[1] shows" only. Add "et al." if more authors exist. Cite in depth the section for example to accord the verb.
• more than two footnotes per page or a handful per paper is a bad sign.
• A part before a colon (":") must be a complete sentence.
• Avoid slash constructs: time/money, expand them such as "time and money".
• Avoid cliches like "recent advances in ..."
• Avoid symbols as they are only acceptable on slides.
• Uses uppercased words for acronyms only. Avoid it for technical terms.
• Expand all acronyms on first use, except acronyms that every reader is expected to know. For example, TCP in a research paper is not needed, but Yet Another Compiler Compiler (YACC) is.
• Divide powers of a 1 000 for readability. It can be adjusted by the locale used.
• Use "kb/s" or "Mb/s," not "kbps" or "Mbps" - the latter are not scientific units. Distinguish MB and Mb too.
• It is always kHz.
• It's Wi-Fi, not WiFi or wifi that are trademarks.
• Avoid "etc.", prefers "for example", "such as", "among others" or provide a complete list.
• "for example" or "like" and "etc." are in different phrases. It already indicate that there are more such items.
• Remember that "i.e." and "e.g." are always followed by a comma.
• Do not use ampersands (&) or slash-abbreviations (such as s/w or h/w) in formal writing; they are acceptable for slides.
• "Respectively" is preceded by a comma, as in "The light bulbs lasted 10 and 100 days, respectively."
• Therefore, however, hence and thus are usually followed by a comma, as in "Therefore, our idea should not be implemented."
• Use "in Figure 1" instead of "following figure" since figures may get moved during the publication or typesetting process.
• Figures show, depict, indicate, illustrate. Avoid "(refer to Fig. 17)".
• Often, it is enough to simply put the figure reference in parenthesis "Packetg droppers (Fig. 17) have a pipe to the bit bucket, ..."
• If you quote something literally, enclose it in quotation marks or show it indented and in smaller type ("block quote"). A mere citation is not sufficient as it does not tell the reader whether you simply derived your material from the cited source or copied it verbatim.
• Acknowledge your funding support.
• Integrate PostScript instead of GIF for images [in papers].
• Section titles are not followed by a period.

Over the years, I've come to understand that consistency in writing is not only essential for improving my craft, but also for cultivating the strange and capricious creature known as inspiration.

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

A way to set explicitly how a company is running. Here an example about an IT one.

Un dictionnaire proposant des mots plus inclusifs 👍

Summarize any content on the web - from articles to books - in a jiffy!

Generates hand-written style texts