[dasil003]

> Want to be a better writer? Find out what your passion is and write about that. No book and no order of semicolons is going to make you "better" unless what you write about is what lights the fire underneath your feet.

That's fine if your goal is to become a Writer. However if writing is just the means to the end of communicating an idea or persuading an audience, then it may not be possible to align your passion. That doesn't make improving your technique any less important or achievable though.

[skilled]

Yes, and that what's I'm arguing. There should be a distinction whenever a title such as "read this to become better" is presented, especially for writing.

There's no consideration for the absolute basic level of entry to writing, and it imposes on the person an unrealistic perspective which may lead that person on a meaningless journey on "becoming" something that they are inherently not able to become.

Hence me mentioning higher education. I'm well aware of people who are absolute artists with words, but that same story can be said/explained in practical ways.

Perhaps I should have made that clearer.

[GavinMcG]

It seems like you're using a different definition of "better" than the article author or most of the people responding to your comment. You seem to treat things as a binary – as though the headline is only justified if it can take a non-writer and turn them into a writer. And in that light, your criticism makes sense: reading an article isn't going to do the job without passion and a certain latent capability.

But I'd suggest that others mean "better" in the relative sense of "greater than" or "more" and mean it to refer to skill or dexterity of a sort. If someone has a certain degree of skill or dexterity – the degree that makes them a member of the article's target audience – then, the author is claiming, they can increase their skill by engaging with the recommended material. And I'm curious whether you disagree with that position.

If you agree with it, this might just be a case where people are talking past each other based on different definitions, despite agreeing about the substance of the article.