As someone entirely new to the world of finance (apart from the theory of course), I get a lot of beginner tasks to do. One of these, I found, has had a dramatic effect on my writing (in the positive sense), and basically consists of transcribing a 40-page legal document from (tree-)paper to Word.

This simple repetitive action of typing I don’t know how many words per minute for several hours a day, along with the entire (for lack of a better word) boringness of the subject-matter, means that, pretty soon, your fingers-muscles become as strong as Arnie in his hay day (picture), allowing you to write up your thoughts that much faster. I imagine a similar effect arises from coding and would think that the coders on this blog would find more time to write.. but hey.

The greater point to all of this is that there are no short-cuts to getting better in any craft, apart from more and more and more practice. There are plenty of books on grammar and how to write a novel, which are probably useful to read in regards to the structure of sentences and longer texts. But in the end, the most pleasurable thing of it all is to not have to spend too much time thinking about where the keys are located on your keyboard and instead be able to focus on the greater point of your writing: what you are trying to say!

Vincent

P.S. One negative thing to add: I don’t particularly think that typing all day is very good for the fingers. Can anyone suggest an RSI-preventative keyboard or is any extensive physical finger-labour bound to end up in walking around with the claw all day?