LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN users repeatedly say it changed how they think about writing, calling it a masterclass useful far beyond academia.
What it is
Larry McEnerney of the University of Chicago Writing Program gives a graduate-student session on writing effectively. His core idea is that readers care about value to them, not the writer's thinking process.
Recommended by 15 HN commenters across 14 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec miguelrochefort · 2020-03 · on “Not delivering end-user value”
This is something I'm just starting to understand after being an idealist/perfectionist for most of my life. YAGNI seemed like a shortsighted 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: [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,
Strong rec will_pseudonym · 2020-11 · 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. [this video]
Strong rec verdverm · 2022-04 · on “Ask HN: Advice on Writing Papers”
Great video that will definitely help you rethink your approach [this video] It challenges the bad advice you've received up to now
Strong rec learningerrday · 2024-03 · 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: [this video]
Strong rec nazka · 2024-12 · 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] [this video]
Strong rec modriano · 2026-03 · on “Don't Let AI Write for You”
This reminds me of a talk I attended many years ago given by the director of UChicago's writing program (and found a recording of the talk [0]), and his thesis was that writing IS the process of thinking. That talk changed the way I write and made writing a primary tool I reach for when I want to learn something new. Words / language are the great technology we've made for representing ideas, and representing those ideas in the written word enables us to evaluate, edit, and compose those smaller ideas into bigger ideas. Kind of like how teachers would ask for an explanation in my own words, writing down my understanding of something I'd heard or read forced me to really evaluate the idea, fo
Recommends lugg · 2019-01 · 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: [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!
Recommends 7373737373 · 2019-07 · 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: [this video]