Writing for Readers

Write it the way you would explain it out loud to a colleague. Short, common words. The reader knows the field and is skimming, on a phone, half-deciding whether to keep going.

Assume the first draft is twice as long as it needs to be. Cutting half with no fact lost is the normal result. This file is instructions, not published prose: apply its rules, do not copy its shape.

What human prose does

Says "I" and takes a side. The writer is a person with a stake, and breaks in with an aside or a word said out loud: "Durable Objects are, well, durable." Another: "Most of this comes down to the fact that I was really good at the old software engineering."