Question 2

Question 2: Provide an example of action or character in something you’ve read or something you’ve written recently, and how that might improve according to Williams.

Recent examples of something I have read that definitely can be improved according to Williams are available to me on a daily basis. I just have to look at tasks assigned to me to figure out in the software context, what was broken, what has been fixed and how the fix can be validated. I am purposefully using generic high level terms in these examples as they may have proprietary information or offend author in general. For example, here is one:

“Some Route reports have the wrong timestamp”

Not really much information in this example. What exactly are or is “some”
What is wrong with the timestamp? What is the correct time stamp? Do we even need a timestamp? For the most part, there is not much to work with in the statement. Generally, providing more action and descriptive information in reporting of technical issues is better for the reader. Simple identifying the reports in question would go a long way to improving this sentence. According to Williams, the statement is devoid of characters. The term “some” is also vague and passive in nature. What does it imply? A few? A majority? A small number? It is hard to determine from this statement.


For the most part, the initial example can be corrected by providing additional information and expanding the sentence. On the other end of the spectrum, a recent example that is more difficult to understand is:

debugBinding method in JdbcPersistentClass.java throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundException while loading PosiImpl.java. Posmpl.xml references to MutablePositImpl object which loads a big subset of database columns. Hence the columnIndex variable loaded form PositImppl.xml in debugBinding method is lesser than fieldIndex that represents the actual fields in PositImpl.java.
Accessing tableMapping[columnIndex - 1] in debugBinding method throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundException.


This one is along the lines of the example discussed about governmental intervention. What is the subject, the verb, the characters? It will take the reader a great deal of time just to figure out the parts. Additionally, in presenting technical information, using descriptive words like “big” may not be the best choice. All in all these two examples and at different ends of the spectrum, but both could benefit from an analysis and improvement based on William’s Style chapters on Action and Characters.