Writing is (still) one of the important skills for anybody engaged in IT. I wrote about it more than one year ago when I had to go over a bunch of CVs. I haven’t changed my mind since and it’s still a problem for me and a good part of non-native English speakers.
Yes, the problem is worse if English isn’t your first language. And not even the second. For me it’s fighting with French for third place. But it’s the ‘default’ in IT industry. So, you may like it or not but in order to enjoy some interesting career opportunities you have to know how to use it properly.
One of the goals why I started this blog was to practice writing in English. It worked well. It worked so nice that now I’m thinking to start one in French. I remember writing first posts, every one took hours to write and rewrite. Now it’s much more easy, if you have something to say you just put it down. It just flows. This gave me an amazing opportunity to easily engage in discussions here and there in the Web and profit enormously from this experience.
But I still think my English is not good enough and I’ve been sad because of lack of the time to improve it.
Enter The Writer’s Handbook. God bless the (forgotten) place where I’ve spotted this site. It’s a book composed from small chapters on how to improve your Writing. The format and style (small, to the point, no clutter) makes it possible to read it whenever you have few minutes: in the morning, warming-up before going hunt that bug, enjoying a cup of tea in the evening. And that’s what I’m doing.
Update:
Ruslan Rusu (@ruslanrusu) shared a link to a chapter from Getting Real by 37signals, here is a fragment:
Hire good writers
If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more.
That’s because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.