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Comment by cachvico | Hacker News Reader

There's an amusing number of simple grammatical mistakes in this article.. ("english", "It is unnecessary words that don’t add meaning but complex sentence constructions.", "Write about “grass” except when (my insert) it has another color than green", "Avoid semicolons except when (my insert) you want the reader to make a pause", ...)

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The author says he's not a native speaker. This is petty.

In all but one of those examples you're calling out technical errors that don't have much impact on communication.

It seems most HN threads about writing advice have a post nit-picking the article for grammar. I don't see how this is interesting if you don't want to actually make the case that it hurts the author's credibility. Do you?

I found it somewhat amusing, and whilst it did not have a significant effect on my understanding of the article it did break 'the flow' and made the piece much less compelling.

Does this hurt the authors credibility? Yes.

The piece is a summarisation of a book literally called "On Writing Well" yet the text itself shows the author has not fully digested the information they are regurgitating. This is ironic.

That said, it is very well written for a non-native speaker. I would feel much more comfortable having this author communicate on my behalf than many native English speakers that I am close to. With some practice (probably including spoken word and works of fiction) there is no reason they could not exceed the skills of the majority.

The non-native mistakes unwittingly reinforce the point of the article. I found it more readable than many articles having near-perfect grammar and style.

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