Editing Tips for Developers: Less Noise, Better Docs
Developer-specific editing advice: eliminate passive voice, remove hedge words, fix run-on sentences, and tighten code examples in documentation.
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Tags: text, writing, developer-tools
Editing Tips for Developers: Improve Your README and Docs Developers are often excellent at writing code and terrible at writing documentation. This is not because developers cannot write — it is because writing code and writing prose use different skills, and most developers have spent far more time practicing one than the other. The result is READMEs that skip the first step, documentation that assumes knowledge the reader does not have, and release notes that say "fixed bugs." This guide targets the most common writing mistakes developers make and shows concrete before-and-after improvements. --- Mistake 1: Passive Voice Everywhere Developers writing documentation often use passive voice as a habit from academic or formal writing: Active voice: Puts the reader as the actor ("you do X")…
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