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My PhD advisor rewrote himself in bash (2010)


urces There are four books at arm's length in my office: - Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is still a good, if not perfect, reference on style. Young writers should calibrate their reading of Elements in light of criticism from linguistic experts.

After reading this post, my colleague Zachary Tatlock recommended Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace as a better reference than Strunk and White. My Ph.D. advisor, Olin Shivers, taught me that technical writing is a balancing act between precision, clarity and marketing. [1] For example, my colleague John Regehr, suggested simple scripts to catch students' use of superfluous phrases like, "Note that," and "Notice that."

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