On Writing Well
March 27, 2005
My biggest complaint about the Yale education is that my level of writing has actually deteriorated over the past two and a half years. During spring break, I picked up a book from my freshman year writing class, called On Writing Well. After reading it, I realized that a lot of junk has crept back into my writing.
Sometimes I believe that I am doing negative learning by writing papers for some of my classes. The writing that is most important to me is short essays, articles, and speeches. But when I write for my classes I fall into an academic writing style that is opposed to much of what I have learned about good writing. I don't think is just me - the papers of others that I read show a similar excessive wordiness.
I was hoping that this blog would give me an opportunity to do some writing the way I wanted to. Unfortunately, between trying not to fail classes and working on all my software projects, there simply hasn't been the time. I have about ten saved drafts of posts that I was not able to work on enough to publish. But that's ok. For now, programming is what I want to do. I will return to writing later in life.

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