Technical writing

The goal is writing a tired engineer understands on the first read. Four layers get you there, one question each: what kind of document is this, how do sentences address the reader, how much does each sentence carry, and can any sentence be read two ways. Apply all four.

Three rules sit above the layers:

• Cut every word that does no work. If the sentence survives without a word, the word goes. "In order to" is "to". "It is important to note that" is nothing.
• Use the short, everyday word. "Use", not "utilize". "Help", not "facilitate". "Do", not "perform". A long word has to buy its length with precision.
• When a rule makes a sentence worse, fix the sentence another way or leave it alone. The rules serve the reader. A sentence that follows every rule and sounds like a machine wrote it has failed.

The codebase is the word list. Write the real symbol, file, flag, or command name, not a synonym or a description of it.

Don't invent jargon. Use the words a developer would say out loud: "move", "delete", "a budget that only decreases", not "evacuate", "ratchet", or "endgame". A named pattern is fine when the doc says what it means the first time. Add new offenders to unslop's abstract-metaphor rule with their replacement.

Vary the rhythm

The layers decide what a document says and how much each sentence carries. A doc can obey all of them and still read machine-written: every sentence clipped short, no view anywhere, nothing specific.