You can see exactly the same with other authors. Asimov and J. K. Rowling, to pi... | Hacker News

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		rleigh on June 26, 2022 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Ask HN: How to level up your technical writing? You can see exactly the same with other authors. Asimov and J. K. Rowling, to pick two obvious candidates. Compare "Foundation" with "Foundation and Earth" or "Foundation's Edge". Or "The Philosopher's Stone" with "The Order of the Phoenix". The former were well-edited and succinct. The latter were overly long, in some cases sorely repetitive with large amounts of padding, and a good editor could have cut them down by at least half without losing much. And let's not even get into Robert Jordan... Even the best authors need an editor.

warrenm on June 27, 2022 [–]

>Even the best authors need an editor.

I've worked as a reviewer/editor (with "compensation" in the form of the acknowledgment page) on a handful of technical books

Overall, of the ~7 authors I've reviewed/edited, I can confidently assert only one was wrong, but ALL wrote in nearly-unfollowable ways

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