6 Aug 2026•3 min read
Interface Copy Is Design Work, and It Should Be Reviewed Like It
Users read your buttons more carefully than your illustrations. Yet copy is usually written last, by whoever is available, and reviewed by nobody.
Tag
Writing
Every essay tagged Writing, newest first. Tags are added by the writer, so this is what our authors themselves considered writing — not an automatic match on the word.
29 Jul 2026•3 min read
Async by Default Only Works If You Write Things Down
Distributed teams that struggle usually do not have a time-zone problem. They have a documentation problem that time zones made visible.
23 Jul 2026•3 min read
Notes Are Only Useful If You Can Find Them Later
Most personal knowledge systems optimise for capture and neglect retrieval, producing an archive that is technically complete and practically useless.
20 Jul 2026•3 min read
Writing With AI Without Sounding Like Everyone Else
Readers have developed an ear for generated prose. The way through is not avoiding the tools but refusing to let them supply the part that makes writing worth reading.
19 Jul 2026•2 min read
The First Draft Is Not Supposed to Be Good
Most writing blocks are editing happening at the wrong time. Separating drafting from revising is the single change that unblocks the largest number of writers.
17 Jul 2026•3 min read
Publishing Consistently Beats Publishing Brilliantly
Audience growth is a function of frequency and reliability far more than of individual piece quality, which is uncomfortable and repeatedly demonstrated.
16 Jul 2026•2 min read
Own the Distribution or Rent the Audience
Every writer eventually learns the same lesson about platform dependency, usually the week an algorithm changes. Email remains the least fragile channel available.
14 Jul 2026•2 min read
Editing Is Deciding What to Delete
Line-level polish gets called editing, but the real work is structural subtraction. Most drafts improve most from removing a quarter of their words.
13 Jul 2026•2 min read
Titles Are the Only Part Most People Read
A good title is a promise specific enough to be broken. Most titles fail by being accurate, dull, and indistinguishable from the surrounding noise.
12 Jul 2026•2 min read
Write in Public Before You Feel Qualified
The waiting-until-expert strategy has a flaw: expertise makes you forget what was confusing, which is exactly the thing beginners need explained.
10 Jul 2026•2 min read
Structure Beats Style in Technical Writing
Developers do not read documentation, they search it under time pressure. Writing for that behaviour means organising for retrieval rather than for narrative.
29 Jun 2026•2 min read
The Quiet Return of the Personal Website
After a decade of consolidation into a few platforms, people are building their own sites again. The motivations are less nostalgic than they look.