Refactoring English
Effective Writing for Software Developers
Many software developers think they’re naturally poor writers, but there’s no such thing.
Most software developers are weak writers because they don’t try.
You can improve your writing skills the same way you learned to become a better programmer: by learning best practices and understanding how to apply them.
Refactoring English will improve your writing in areas that matter most to developers, including:
- Design documents
- Tutorials
- Blog posts
- Emails
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Book Contents
Refactoring English teaches everything I’ve learned over the years about applying effective writing techniques to the domain of software.
- Why Improve Your Writing?
- Get to the Point
- Make Your Writing Sound Natural
- Help the Reader Reach Their Goal
- Meet the Reader Where They Are
- Verbs Drive the Sentence
- Stay Positive: How Negative Phrasing Reduces Readability
- Passive Voice Considered Harmful
- Minimize Cognitive Load for the Reader
- Delete Aggressively
- Accomodate Skimmers
- Eliminate Ambiguity and Confusion
- Maintain Motivation
- Improve Your Grammar Incrementally
- Improve Your Writing with AI
- Rules for Writing Software Tutorials
- Write Blog Posts that Developers Read
- Find Customers Through Blogging
- Write Effective Design Documents
- Write Useful Commit Messages
- Write Emails with Less Noise and Better Results
- Write Compelling Software Release Announcements
Book cover design by Mohanvenkat Patta
Supporters
Thanks so much to readers who financially supported the book early on!
Contact
Do you have questions about the book? Want to tell me about things you’re hoping to learn?
Get in touch! I’d love to hear from you.