Xavier Qin - xqin.org

On Writing Well

Xavier Qin — Sat, 03 Sep 2022 19:16:55 +0200

On Writing Well by William Zinsser is a classic guide for non-fiction authors. However, it caters to a broader audience, including professionals who need to write for communication purposes, such as crafting reports and emails.

Writing for Ourselves and in the First Person#

According to William Zinsser, authors should write for themselves. Targeting a specific audience is considered a mistake, as there is no uniform audience, and trends are unpredictable due to our constant quest for novelty. Writing for ourselves is the best bet. Nevertheless, our responsibility to the reader is to produce a well-crafted work while maintaining authenticity.

Positioning

Xavier Qin — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 12:00:02 +0100

Positioning is a book first published in 1981 by marketing experts Al Ries and Jack Trout. This book popularized the key concept of positioning used in strategic marketing, alongside market segmentation and targeting. It’s one of the few books in the dynamic field of communication and marketing that remains relevant today.

The authors observed that we live in a society of over-communication. This is even truer today than in the 1980s, with the omnipresence of the Internet and social media in our daily lives. In response to the over-communication society, people filter most information and adopt oversimplified interpretation models. The right marketing approach then is to communicate with oversimplified messages.

Behave

Xavier Qin — Sun, 27 Sep 2020 17:02:19 +0100

Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology and neuroscience at Stanford, elucidates in his book Behave the intricacies of how our brain, hormones, genes, and the laws of evolution operate. Biological and neuroscience knowledge is employed to illuminate our behaviors, encompassing the darkest, such as xenophobia, and the noblest, like compassion.

Robert Sapolsky by L.A. Cicero

Behave is a refreshing read that offers a scientific perspective, steering clear of psychological or political biases in understanding some of the most characteristic and debated human behaviors.