At least once a week when I’m reading, or editing, copy related to work I’ll skim over something and realize that what I just read makes no sense. Sure, the words are used properly. The paragraph is composed of sentences that seem grammatically correct. But if you stop to think about what the copy is saying, it’s just three sentences in a trench coat pretending to be a coherent thought....
Infrastructure and code aren’t the only things in your organization that incur technical debt. Content marketing on blogs is a major offender. Here’s just three things to cut down on technical debt in your content marketing on blogs. Content marketing practice to avoid: Bare URLs/URIs in content Be kind to your readers and to yourself: Stop putting bare URIs / URLs in your content. Bare URLs - that is, something like www....
The reMarkable 2 is a nifty piece of engineering. It’s about the size of a thin college (U.S.) notebook, responsive and feels as close to writing on paper as a tablet is likely to get. The tools, on the other hand, leave a lot to be desired. reMarkable 2 and cloud services The reMarkable 2 is not the device to invest in if you’re avoiding cloud services. The reMarkable offers a desktop app and mobile app....
There’s a running gag in the show Silicon Valley about a character obsessed with being in the “three comma” club. Being a billionaire, in other words. When he loses enough money to drop from $1.2 billion to “merely” $900 million, he’s “financially ruined” and despondent. Judging by the way some folks write sentences, they’re just as afraid to lose a comma. Me? I don’t want any billionaire sentences in my copy1....
People often try to fluff up the importance of an event or person by saying it “changed history,” “changed the course of history,” or “changed history forever.” (Or something along those lines, you get the idea.) There’s just one problem with that type of phrase: it’s completely, 100% wrong. History is stuff that has already happened, or the study of stuff that’s already happened. No matter what you do today – no matter how important or how much it upsets the expectations one might have for events to come – unless you’ve invented time travel and actually gone back in time and changed the past you have not changed history at all....
“ This reporter” – Just use the first person. It might have worked for Edward R. Murrow, but with tech journalism – particularly blogs – it sounds like a ridiculous affectation. If you wouldn’t say it out loud when retelling a story, don’t write it. (And if you would say this out loud when telling a story, seek professional help.) “ The company told Acme Publication” – Bullshit. The publication is an abstract entity....
Too many ledes in tech publications and blogs suck. I’ve been doing more editing and more content curation lately. The upshot of that is noticing a lot of really boring, fluffy, slow-to-the-point ledes that utterly fail at drawing the reader in. It’s not hard to do a decent lede as long as you remember a few guidelines and take the time to revise. Assume you have less than 150 words to make your case....
It’s time for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and other free software supporters to stop being the Party of Gno, and start thinking of positive ways to push for software freedom. The negative campaigns and telling users what not to use aren’t working. It’s time for change. Let me start off by saying, I agree with the FSF’s basic mission and philosophy. I want to see free software, not just open source, succeed....
I’d like to see more bad English on mailing lists, and fewer apologies from non-native speakers about their poor English skills. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in trying to communicate in a second, third, or fourth language and not being an expert. And it’d be a shame if non-native speakers let fear or embarrassment hold them back from making a vital contribution or asking a question that could help them succeed in contributing or using FLOSS tools....
Here’s another writing pet peeve — when folks confuse peak (or peek), and pique. Here’s an example of proper usage: I live in Denver, Colorado, so I have a lovely view of the mountain peaks when I look to the West, but my interest is piqued when I find a good book about world history. Instead, what I see most commonly is “this really peaked my interest,” or “I thought this would peek your interest....