The ability to quickly and efficiently understand and mentally absorb large amounts of the written word, and the ability to write clearly, simply and coherently about subjects both simple and complicated.
Being good at reading is a force multiplier in everything academic I have ever done, and continues to be a huge advantage in both learning and simply doing my job, and in so much of life in general. So much information about how everything works, physical devices and procedures and interacting with governments and organisations, is provided as the written word. If you can do it quickly and correctly, you're ahead of the game.
Being good at writing helps me transmit knowledge and instructions across time and space to other people, helping them understand faster and better. It also saves me time; I work with people who genuinely struggle to express precise technical information through the written word, spending large amounts of time producing text that really isn't adequate. Often they write as if they're speaking, which just doesn't work.
A lot of people go through life with just functional literacy; being good at reading and writing is a force multiplier across so many activities in life, right from early education all the way through such a huge range of jobs and careers. The return on investment spent on being good at reading and writing is huge.
Strunk & White is held in too high regard because of its status as the definitive writing style guide in education. Much of it is outdated, or based on the opinions and pet peeves of the writers. Some of it is outright wrong and promotes bad writing in favor of made up grammar rules such as split infinitives.
Without devolving into a discussion of S&W having the word "style" on the front, with "grammar" nowhere to be seen, S&W 4th edition (the one I happen to have to hand) specifically advises that breaking the rule about not splitting infinitives can be good.
> Being good at writing helps me transmit knowledge and instructions across time and space to other people, helping them understand faster and better. It also saves me time; I work with people who genuinely struggle to express precise technical information through the written word, spending large amounts of time producing text that really isn't adequate. Often they write as if they're speaking, which just doesn't work.
I'm very familiar with this situation. Since an ever increasing amount of important communication is handled in written form, via mail, slack, in todo lists and project management tools, I noticed how many smart people reduce their writing to several loose thoughts, if not barely connected nouns, that hardly count as sentences, resemble spoken language and almost always require additional discussion and questions to understand the actual meaning.
I think to many people it just feels too cumbersome to write and explain in detail. However the time saved during writing is, of course, lost when the almost inevitable clarifying discussion afterwards is due.
Writing and reading is critical. Take your time to do it well.
I generally find that people are no more precise in their verbal language than their written, if you actively listen and don't just let the word-salad wash over you. Very few people can achieve much information density, in any medium, but at least when written down the information is persistent.
Harsh, brutal critique from other people (ideally the target audience), prompted by deliberate questions from us about how easy it is to read and understand, and questions from us to test that understanding.
Writing happens entirely inside one's own mind; it can be so hard to see that what we're writing isn't clear, isn't well structured, doesn't guide the reader deftly through understanding and enlightenment. I wonder if it's even possible to properly critique our own explanatory pieces on technical issues, given that we cannot read it without having that knowledge already in our heads, as the target audience will have to.
It can be quite a shock to learn how badly written some of our own work is; as with code reviews, ego has to step aside.
The ability to quickly and efficiently understand and mentally absorb large amounts of the written word, and the ability to write clearly, simply and coherently about subjects both simple and complicated.
Being good at reading is a force multiplier in everything academic I have ever done, and continues to be a huge advantage in both learning and simply doing my job, and in so much of life in general. So much information about how everything works, physical devices and procedures and interacting with governments and organisations, is provided as the written word. If you can do it quickly and correctly, you're ahead of the game.
Being good at writing helps me transmit knowledge and instructions across time and space to other people, helping them understand faster and better. It also saves me time; I work with people who genuinely struggle to express precise technical information through the written word, spending large amounts of time producing text that really isn't adequate. Often they write as if they're speaking, which just doesn't work.
A lot of people go through life with just functional literacy; being good at reading and writing is a force multiplier across so many activities in life, right from early education all the way through such a huge range of jobs and careers. The return on investment spent on being good at reading and writing is huge.