Writing and designing, it's all the same

A few hours ago, Christina Wodtke published an awesome article on how Strunk and White applies to design over on Boxes and Arrows.

And now Matt Linderman at 37signals wrote a post comparing rewriting of prose to rewriting of software.

The key here is that both writing and software/interface/web design is primarily about communication, which means two things:

1. You gotta have something to say
2. You gotta say it well.

I like how Matt talks about not just the rewriting, but also the larger concept of editing. It’s one of the philosophies underlining Christina’s and my upcoming product PublicSquare:

Writing is a collaborative effort.

It’s something that’s frequently lost in all the enthusiasm over blogging, but some forms of writing really benefits from a good editor. Like Matt says, small things you just bang out, but whenever it involves more thought and more explaining, your editor is your friend (or your friend is your editor).