Content Guidelines

A Definitive Guide to Writing for Zyxware: A Preface

Sebin A. Jacob | | 2 min read

While speaking about writing, playwright Ferenc Molnár remarked:

“First, I did it for my own pleasure. Then I did it for the pleasure of my friends. And now—I do it for money.”1

Keep the banalities of life aside. Apart from his impropriety in using a questionable simile before he ventured to explain it, he had brought forward a point. As far as writing is concerned, there is always a reader in the picture: the authors themselves, their friends, and others. After a certain period, they write for these distant others.

At Zyxware, our work involves much writing. It includes coding, reporting, explaining, describing, and else. However, all writing should firmly anchor on the reader.

Whatever we write as part of our job is writing for money. Devote one hour of workweek narrating the work. Do it to the satisfaction of the distant other. Invest in desirability. Make it a routine. A content writer with us should be conspicuously promiscuous in choosing subjects. Use proper attire - the words.

Here is a guideline or a stylebook of sorts to approach writing. Follow it to frame sentences and paragraphs. Use it as a ready reckoner while preparing reports, emails, or even financial statements. Blog posts, news stories, web content, invoices—use it everywhere.

Before we get into the precept, reflect on the core activity at Zyxware — coding. Coding will be complete only with documentation. While working with Zyxware, cultivate a habit of chronicling everything as part of the vocation. It will have great value over time. Remember, history is the record of the present looked back from the future. What we do today will be our shared history tomorrow.

  1. Sentence and Paragraph Structure
  2. The Tone and the Do’s and Dont’s
  3. Salutation, Proper Nouns, and Numbers and Symbols
  4. How to Cite a Source
  5. Spelling Conventions to the Golden Hammer
 

 

References

  • 1'Goodreads' attributes the quote to Adeline Virginia Woolf. Nevertheless, there is no direct reference to her speaking it out. Instead, the blog, ‘Quote Investigator’, says that in his 1932 book, “The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan”, drama critic Nathan, G. J., attributes these words to Hungarian playwright, poet, and novelist Ferenc Molnár. They were conversing with Dr Rudolf Kommer, a Romanian journalist, in the little garden of a coffee-house in the Austrian Tyrol. Link accessed on September 2021)

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