Make Better Documents

While not strictly technical, I really enjoyed this article titled Make Better Documents. The central theme is simplicity. Many people aim to sound sophisticated or include unnecessary visual flair, but the most effective documents tend to be as simple as possible to convey the message clearly.

Another great point:

You almost always want to start by clearly and simply stating your conclusion, or declaring your request or question. Very often, people feel a lot of anxiety about the need to preface their big dramatic point with lots of build-up. But you almost never want to be building dramatic tension in a professional context.

This is a common pitfall. While dramatic buildup works well for storytelling, leading with mystery in a professional context often means fighting a sea of questions before you ever get to your point.

The article also references Darkhorse Analytics’ classic post on clearing off tables, which is a wonderful demonstration of how stripping away visual clutter and extraneous lines makes data far more readable.