[sloak]

The first bullet point reads "Learn all the important elementary to advanced rules and errors."

How many of you had to re-read it at least once, or rescan mid-sentence, to understand?

I won't even discuss the second bullet point: "Write skilfully, and write powerful and eloquent blog posts, books, and more."

It's quite disturbing to see this language in a guide that is all about grammar, writing, and the importance of being well-understood.

Or am I just a grump old man?

[seanmcdirmid]

You aren't grumpy, this is just grammatically correct but with extremely poor rhythm. A technically correct writer is not a good or great writer by any means, and it is always useful to know when rules should be broken.

Maybe the authors are going for irony?

[Curmudgel]

> It's quite disturbing to see this language in a guide that is all about grammar, writing, and the importance of being well-understood.

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White is hated by grammarians for the same reason.

[sgdesign]

I agree the first sentence is a bit awkward (I would suggest something like "Learn all the important rules and errors, from elementary to advanced"), but what's wrong with the second example?

[icambron]

It's pretty bad, IMO.

> Write skilfully, and write powerful and eloquent blog posts, books, and more.

* The repetition of "write" is annoying.

* The use of multiple adjectives to describe a list of things is awkward and wordy.

* "Blog posts" shouldn't be the first item, because it's easy to read "blog" as modifying "books" too.

* "And" is a weird conjunction here. Is writing powerfully and eloquently separate from writing skillfully?

I'd have two separate bullets:

* Write skilfully.

* Create eloquent books, blog posts, and more.

I'd also make the other bullet points start with a verb ("Receive two books in one" etc). I don't think I'd ever be that picky about the writing if it weren't the marketing copy for a book full of writing advice.

As an aside, the "skilfully" spelling is pretty jarring for Americans (or at least for me), but it's apparently correct in the rest of the English-speaking world. TIL.

[seanmcdirmid]

The rhythm is all messed up. Not eloquent at all.

[janderson77]

Perhaps we should take a moment and remember that Grammar can be fun (or so they tried to convince us between Saturday morning cartoons) (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NkuuZEey_bs)

[seanmcdirmid]

Writing can be fun, grammar is just one constraint we leverage during writing, and easily bent to meet primeval rhythm requirements. Writing is like composing music, it is written conversation that flows as if you were talking through the paper, with additional constraints to match the medium.

The best way to become good at writing is to do it a lot and receive lots of critique. Style and grammar guides aren't very useful.

[hkmurakami]

The best example of this that we're all likely to know is "Think Different" vs "Think Differently".

> The best way to become good at writing is to do it a lot and receive lots of critique.

Don't forget to read a lot! (and from a diverse set of writers too!)

[seanmcdirmid]

If we are talking about technical blog style writing, only a few people write well at all, even out of those that have actual readers; in academic writing, it is even more depressing. Better to develop a critical eye that can recognize good and bad writing.

[mturmon]

I was bothered by that too.

I also noticed that the adverb form indicating skill is spelled two different ways on this page.

There is also a lack of parallelism in the bullet lists.

[Pitarou]

The writing is optimized for skim reading. The idea is that, whether you choose to read just two words, twenty words, or the whole thing, they'll still get their message across.