You can always change this.

There are very few very talented non-native individuals that were gifted to write excellent texts once they left the womb. I made an observation that they also get published easily. The rest (of us, sorry to take you with me :) is not that kind, unfortunately. However, chances are that the sooner one realizes this, the sooner the lack-of-skill can be dealt with.

Here is a list of things I did or I do in order to improve my writing. This is in no way a definite and complete list. There is a host of authoritative articles about how to improve writing elsewhere, and I do not consider myself in a position to tell others what to do. I am posting this with hopes to 1) get feedback about what do you do for this matter, 2) help those who are struggling. So, here we go:

1) Read actively – you can read anything, but by active I mean read so that you are after every word and sentence sure what the author meant. Mark down your favorite constructs and try to put them into your active cartridge. Review papers of your peers. Translate your favorite songs so you get the meaning of the lyrics.

2) Write – practice writing, maybe set up a blog, or contribute somewhere else. Set your mind to the foreign language while writing. Advanced: make writing a passion, write with passion. Advanced 2: Make the improving of the writing a passion.

3) Take a (scientific) writing course, or even better two or three – this is in my opinion a must. You then do not need to read this post anymore, most of what I’ve learned about writing was in the courses. I put it simply: those who haven’t, write crap till today, those who took, improved significantly. Thank you Joann.

4) Use spell checking every time when possible – I find it disturbing that in the era of spell checking and automatic correctors in most of the tools of daily use (there is a spellchecker in the latest Firefox!) there are still individuals who seem to knowingly send me ‘htis’. I can take it, but reviewers often cave in. Although there are downsides, I learned a lot from the spellcheckers.

5) Think about reader – with everything you write, consider your audience. Do you deliver the message? Was this sentence too halting that even you need to re-read?

6) Outline – outlining is a strategy that helps me too. You can fill in the details later, but let’s have a logical structure first. Then the ideas, in your own words, and then the details. Consider different variants of the structure. Does it make sense? Organize!

7) Use a variety of tools - these include dictionaries, thesauruses, typesetting software. It’s not a shame to copy your text from latex and paste it into Word to check for spelling and, even more importantly at the beginning, for grammar suggestions. If for nothing else, Word’s grammar suggestions are correct (read: make the text readable) at most of the times. For writing anything larger than 5 pages and 10 references, I prefer latex (and do compile very often). If you are on the Windows, Texniccenter together with Miktex works very well, on OSX I use TeXShop.

8) Co-author – one of the best strategies to improve writing is to write a paper with somebody else. With less skillful writers I tend to improve my reading skills, and improve writing with the lucky ones :) For scientific writing, it is extremely useful to learn about co-authorship issues.

9) Write regularly – this one deserves a separate item in this list, because it refers to the whole of managing the writing, to the morale, attitude, and self-discipline. Set days and hours for writing and try to write in that time. Set the alarms to not to disturb, set ICQ to DND mode or turn it off. And write, two sentences. Make writing a habit.

10) Re-write – this is a tough one. It is normal one falls in love with own text. And it is difficult to give up and start again from the beginning. However, it shall be the reader for whom you are writing, not for yourself (at least in the scientific text). A good strategy to somehow deal with one’s reluctance to re-write is to write several versions of the same text and then select the best one.

Thanks for reading up to here, I hope there is something you have to tell about writing.

After reading this article about how cool it is even for non-technical people to come to an Apple store, I started to think why not to have something like that for a CS department.

I can imagine an open space shop that helps people with their computer related problems. Folks can come and play with something cool, have a chat over their problems (not necessarily only those of technical character). And we, IT researchers can help them and in turn can learn about their genuine needs.