What makes writing more readable?
These tips were centered around simplification, and they are good tips. For documentation and technical writing in particular, I picked up a few mannerisms that I now use every time I write.The biggest impact has been to have a goal of limiting a paragraph to 2-3 sentences. From this goal my other writing traits came naturally.When starting a paragraph, start off with a blunt statement that summarizes the paragraph. Following sentences can back up the summary sentence.Use a short single-sentence paragraph to make an emphatic point.Do word qualifiers add to your content? Many times not. Humans add qualifiers and adjectives more than what's necessary to understand a concept.Readers get bored with monotony. If there's a wall of text, that's boring. If there's a wall of images, that's boring too. I try to break up a document into different types of formatting. Lists, headings, quotes, and image/content sections to make things visually appealing.These are only goals! Sometimes a big honkin' paragraph is just what the doctor ordered.Fun language or a well-timed joke keeps things interesting. They can give the reader a well-deserved break. Like the big honkin' paragraph usage above.Lastly, the presentation of the content is important. Medium got their content width, font size, and colors down well. GitHub did a great job, too.I learned to do this when a publisher took red ink to a tutorial I wrote. They gave me the goal of shortening all paragraphs to 2-3 sentences. It was tough at first but now I'm a fan. It's a fun writing exercise :-)