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LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively

UChicago Social Sciences

172K subscribers • 2 videos on Hallway

Recommended by 15 people: 15 on Hacker News.
A classic. People kept recommending it from 2019 to 2026.
Presented by Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

9.2M views12 years ago15 recommendations

Tools and practice Code review and teamwork Developer productivity

Larry McEnerney explains how to write effectively by focusing on creating value for the reader rather than explaining the writer's thinking process.

Do you worry about the effectiveness of your writing style? As emerging scholars, perfecting the craft of writing is an essential component of developing as graduate students, and yet resources for honing these skills are largely under utilized. Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, led this session in an effort to communicate helpful rules, skills, and resources that are available to graduate students interested in further developing their writing style.

Why it's here

15 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended by engineers as a transformative resource for rethinking communication and learning how to write clear, reader-centric technical papers and documentation.

miguelrocheforton Hacker News • 6 years agoRecommends

On “Not delivering end-user value”

…dogma. My colleague's design decisions looked like ugly hacks. I preferred something to be well-done than to be useful. According to my MBTI type, I was a perfectionist of idea, not a perfectionist of action/result. I was trying to build a cathedral, not a bazaar. I can attribute my ongoing transformation to a single video about effective writing: link to this video The main takeaway is that text is meant to be read, not written. Providing value to the reader is the only thing that matters. How well you write, how smart you sound, how much knowledge you deliver, doesn't matter as long as the reader gets value from the text. It sounds obvious, but it truly changed my perspective. I recommend this video…

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will_pseudonymon Hacker News • 5 years agoRecommends

On “Writing well”

The resource that has spurred me into thinking differently about effective writing was shared on HN, from UChicago Social Sciences' Leadership Lab - The Craft of Writing Effectively. link to this video

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verdvermon Hacker News • 4 years agoRecommends

On “Ask HN: Advice on Writing Papers”

Great video that will definitely help you rethink your approach link to this video It challenges the bad advice you've received up to now

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learningerrdayon Hacker News • 2 years agoRecommends

On “To write a great essay, think and care deeply (2015)”

Larry Mcenerney's lectures on how to write effectively are gold for getting better at writing. There's a lot packed in his lectures, but a big core idea is that you should use writing to help you do your thinking. With complex subject matter, writing is thinking. The thing that we've been taught is writing is more akin to publishing (i.e. the editing you do to share your thoughts with other people after you've finished writing and thinking for yourself). Link to snippets of his talk if you're short on time: link If you've got more time, you should watch the whole thing, it's a masterclass in understanding what writing actually is, and what it does for you: link to this video

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nazkaon Hacker News • 1 year agoRecommends

On “My PhD advisor rewrote himself in bash (2010)”

If anybody likes this article and wants to know more about the process of writing effective PhD papers they should watch 1. In fact, anybody who desires to improve their communication skills should watch it. It is so good that I would have paid to have access to this video! 1 link to this video

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modrianoon Hacker News • 7 months agoRecommends

On “Don't Let AI Write for You”

…would have been very hard to struggle through translating ideas from my head into words and words (back) into ideas in my head if I knew there was an "Easy button" I could hit to get something cogent-sounding. I hope a large enough proportion of kids today will still put in the work and won't just end up with a stunted ability to write/think. 0 link to this video…

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luggon Hacker News • 7 years agoRecommends

On “The TypeScript Tax”

Not AP, But I'm curious, can you Tldr the tax for typescript? I skimmed half the article but I couldnt actually find what the tax was? In similar vein to the above above poster, you might find this lecture useful: link to this video Your writing has a very nice cadence to it I'm just not sure you grasp the reason I might want to read it!

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7373737373on Hacker News • 7 years agoRecommends

On “The Good Employee, a story about how you can explain companies with graph theory”

I agree with this. The beginning of the post describes how rereading a previous post has been insightful for the author, then it delves into details, without explaining why, or how this could be useful for the reader . Too much rambling/offtopic content and breaking through the fourth wall. I, as a reader need to know why this could be useful for me first, then I would decide to read it. Recommended: link to this video

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lerxst00on Hacker News • 7 years agoRecommends

On “BLUF: A military standard to make writing more powerful”

A good video on writing that talks about similar ideas is link to this video This video is geared more towards academic writing, but, I've found it helpful even outside of that space.

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alextheparroton Hacker News • 6 years agoRecommends

On “It's Time to Start Writing (2019)”

…nces in a current mental model. That’s a key distinction, it means you need to make people care or understand why their mental model is broken when writing to informs reader. When we write for our own thinking, we usually understand the general problem already and are just traversing the problem space to better understand different components. 0 link to this video…

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teddyhon Hacker News • 5 years agoRecommends

On “On academic writing: a personal note (2016)”

I have found this video very helpful: link to this video LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively Do you worry about the effectiveness of your writing style? As emerging scholars, perfecting the craft of writing is an essential component of developing as graduate students, and yet resources for honing these skills are largely under utilized. Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, led this session in an effort to communicate helpful rules, skills, and resources that are available to graduate students interested in further developing their writing style.

View on Hacker News

gnuvinceon Hacker News • 4 years agoRecommends

On “Writing like a pro with Vale and Neovim”

A post about writing means that I need to plug a couple talks by Larry McEnerney. 1,2 The tool described in this blog post is all about text-based rules: what the _text_ ought to look like. To improve your own writing (a) learn who your readers are, (b) know what they value, and (c) write so that as readers, they find your work valuable to them. 1 link to this video 2 link

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bradbeamon Hacker News • 4 years agoRecommends

On “Don’t think to write, write to think”

First time I heard of using writing to think was in this talk, "The craft of writing effectively"1. It's definitely been a motivation to try to write more. 1 link to this video

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andrenotgianton Hacker News • 3 years agoRecommends

On “Cut out everything that's not surprising”

Write for an audience, read the other work that audience reads, that will help you get a sense of whether something is going to be surprising to them. Here is a longer lecture on a similar idea from U Chicago Writing Program link to this video

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brudgerson Hacker News • 1 year agoRecommends

On “Ask HN: How do you improve your writing?”

Mostly I write HN comments. In part because HN comments are a place to get feedback on my writing craft. Mostly because I frequently feel compelled to write. Anyway maybe you will find this perspective helpful: link to this video Good luck.

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clubdorotheon Hacker News • 5 years agoMentions

On “Writing well”

By watching the UChicago class1 on " Writing Effectively ", this is exactly what happens to some HN readers: 1- You slow down - and read again 2- You don't understand 3- you get angry 4- You're done 5 - (optional) You write about it on HN because 3 and 4 1 link to this video

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