#JusticeForSuchir
https://t.co/xqH15hdVO5
We are the parents of happy, smart and brave young man Suchir, found dead in his aparment on 11/26/2024. We are seeking to know complete truth, we need more answers. Suchir just went on vacation with his friends between 11/16/2024 and 11/22/2024. He was very happy when he spoke to family on 11/22/2024 at 7.15 pm and was excited about his trip. His time of death is few hours after his last call with family. We dont understand within few hours what happened does not align with his happy mood and return from vacation.@suchirbalaji@elonmusk@GavinNewsom@VivekGRamaswamy@DrSJaishankar@meaindia1
Yes, @AnthonyGaenzle. I’ve been building @Lessonpal, an online marketplace that enables about 4,000 tutors to provide affordable lessons in over 1,000 subjects. We like to think of it as an Airbnb for knowledge sharing.
I’m also working on an AI-powered companion to help people write long form content effortlessly!
Do you use any AI-based tools for writing?
@AnthonyGaenzle No, we reached over 2 million users, but we pivoted since ad-supported models were hard to sustain unless you have tens of millions of users.
There are already a huge number of books written by (or for) people who are ambitious for fame but have nothing original to say. AI is going to multiply this number shockingly. ChatGPT is these people's dream.
7 Rules for Writing.
You might want to bookmark this because there's some nuance here to come back to (guru fanbois are gonna hate it).
1. Simplify
The overarching principle of writing, especially online: Writing should be as simple as it can be.
But those last four words trip people up. As it can be. Sometimes you need complexity. Sometimes you need to take the time to nuance things and add details. Hence this whole big-ass tweet instead of a listicle.
But if you agree and you want to see more nuance you're going to have to engage with this one...
2. Avoid jargon
Simple, really. Your "professional audience" will understand plain English, but the random Twitter guy reading it will be lost by jargon. So default to plain English.
But if we want to nuance it a little, use enough jargon that the pro knows you understand what you're talking about, while being plain enough that anyone could follow.
3. Reduce adverbs
Reduce, do not eliminate. I posted a subscriber-only post a few weeks ago that broke down this in detail, but there are different types of adverbs. Some should be eliminated, some used sparingly, and others embraced.
4. Write every day
Do I need to expand this? You'll never get better without putting in the reps.
5. Read poetry and fiction daily
Nonfiction sucks. You never learn anything from all those business books, and the writing is bad and bland, so you pick up bad habits.
Read the greats instead. Dostoevsky, Dumas, Herbert, Tolkien, Pratchett, Lewis, Milton and Tennyson.
You'll be a better writer for it.
6. Avoid negative modifiers like "not"
Simple reason: Human brains are lazy. They skip across the sentences, picking up words and pattern matching.
So a sentence like "He did not touch the button", your brain reads the key words first:
He did not touch the button
Then it notices the "not" in the middle and has to reverse the imagined image. It wastes brainpower and is counter persuasive.
7. Vary your sentence structure
I'm not going to post the gary provost picture yet again, you've seen it. Steady sentence structure is dull. Same number of words and structure. It puts you to sleep fast. See?
Instead, you mix it up. You use commas (sorry @GrammarHippy). You dance around, feel the music of the words. Short sentences break it up. Long ones let it breathe, let it flow, but the variation? That makes music.
8. Break the rules
Every single one of these rules is made to be broken once you understand it. Use them as a place to start improving your writing but do not treat them as ironclad rules.
My teasing of George aside, he knows this. Learn the rules. Then break them.
Writing is not about rules and templates.
Write with flair.
James
P.s. I'd appreciate it if you could hit retweet on this one, and let me know what you think below. I can do more of these longer tweets if it's something useful.
And if you want more, there's a link to my email list in my bio, go sign up for weekly breakdowns of writing concepts, updates on my writing, and a whole lot more.