He also needs to be skilled in his native language. Programmers who would not dream of using a GoTo, compose unreadable manuals and error messages. As William Strunk says, Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
Passive voice is the primary cause of boring manuals.
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