How to Write

The most recent Die Zeit (a great German weekly newspaper that I rarely have time to read) had a superb supplement called "How to write". In addition to one-pagers on why various German classical authors have written "classics" (including a lot of my favorites, such as Thomas Mann and even Nietzsche), there were 20 lessons ranging from using commas to structuring a text. This may sound boring, but I felt like recommending it to anyone who writes - anything. The main message was: write so that people understand what you are saying (I'm a huge fan of so-called easy-speak!), and so that they are not bored. On the latter, I was guilty of several errors, according to the lessons, ranging from always using the same sentence structure to "writing without thinking or editing" (bloggers are the most evil of all, according to the 87-year old author of the guide). I therefore sincerely apologise for my unedited, even un-spell-checked and un-paragraphed texts (these two functions do not work on the iPad). I do not, however, apologise for being boring. If you are bored by these texts, you are not reading them anyway...