Avoid value judgments! We crush offers. Throw out the unnecessary. We don't pour water.
Data. Numbers. And no emotion.
"Information" style, slick and smooth, covered the technical portals with his head.
Hello postmodern, now our author is dead. Already really.
For those who don't know. Informational style is a series of editing techniques when a strong text should be obtained from any text. Easy to read, without water, without lyrical digressions, without value judgments. More precisely, the reader is invited to place the marks himself. In fact, this is a squeeze of facts, prepared for easy perception.
He is good at news (including technical), press releases, and product descriptions.
Here it is dry, to the point and without emotion, it goes with a bang.
Once upon a time, I myself became interested in them. It seemed to me that this was correct. Why does the reader need to know my emotions, my thoughts, my problems? I write about city lighting, about metering devices, about wireless technologies. What are the emotions here? Who cares how I look and how I feel?
Over the past year, I have completely changed my mind.
Throughout 2019, I was haunted by the feeling that half of the Habr authors got to the book βWrite, Reduceβ and are now actively applying the techniques from there.
The texts became impersonal, unemotional, licked and calm. descriptive.
Quietly and measuredly, an invisible author describes to me the pros and cons of another technology. And I find myself not seeing this author.
Who is he? Quiet nerd, lively geek or boring administrator? Any of these characters has the right to life, and I read the articles of such people with pleasure.
However, when behind the text I do not see the personality of the author at all, I feel uncomfortable.
Why is it so important?
Because faith in such a text falls at times.
Maybe it was actually written by some dummy copywriter who simply reprinted what he found on the Web. And half of his facts are true, and half are nonsense.
Example: LoRaWAN in Russia usually uses 125 kHz channels. Yep, so far so good. The range exceeds 10 km in the city. Teek. Clearly, again someone is reprinting the advertising booklet.
It's okay if I read what I understand. What if I read just to understand? How can I find the place where our invisible copywriter is already blowing a blizzard?
The easiest answer for me is not to read this. And to find a normal article. Where a quiet nerd, a lively geek or a bore, the administrator does not hide his identity in the text, but uses the same tricks and turns as in life. He writes and does NOT cut.
Yes, it's hard to read in places. Yes, there can be a lot of water, digressions, lengthy reasoning, and so on. Yes, the author can also carry a blizzard and make mistakes.
But there is the main thing. The experience of a living person. The rake he stepped on. His impressions of technology. His feelings about work. And his opinion. All this shows that a person did something himself before sitting down to write an article. Even his mistakes I can interpret correctly, it would be a good description.
Actually, these are the things I have always been looking for and are looking for on HabrΓ©. Personal experience.
And I can only find it in articles with living authors. I hope that this resource will not die out. I ask and urge the authors not to lose their personality and not to get involved in editing. Let's leave the informational style to the news.
PS The article is inspired by the feelings of the author and is his personal opinion. Which, for sure, will not coincide with someone else's personal opinion. It's ok π
Source: habr.com