My Post Titles Are Usually Sentences. Thanks, Jim.

Task titles matter to me. So do blogpost titles.

I'm more likely to do a task (and remember what it was) if it's a full sentence.  Not "git repository," but "Create git repository": subject and predicate.

Ditto for blog-post titles. I learned this from Jim Watson's little paperback, Molecular Biology of the Gene, one of the language's great books: content plus style, in spades.  Like E. O. Wilson, Paul Samuelson, and Kernighan & Ritchie, Watson didn't just build his field by doing, he also did it by writing about it.

He opened it for guys like me.

Years after I read the book, I noticed that his section heads were often sentences.  Not "Enthalpy" but "Enthalpy Is the Total Energy of the System." I wonder whether he just listed the points he planned to make on a piece of paper, then filled in explanations.

His is the first book I ever remember seeing do this. For all I know, everything does now. Even if no one else does, I still try to.

The book's blimped out over the years and taken on lots of other authors. For all I know, if you want a good overview of the field, it's still great book. Still, to get the punch of Watson, writing it right, you have to go to the original, from 1965. Even the second edition seemed watered down.  Unfortunately, it looks like that's easier said than done. I just found one on eBay that was snapped up at $80. Another, from Albris books, is in "Very Good" condition, for $850. Yow. 

It is not coincidental that when Watson wrote the story of his discovery of the structure of DNA, The Double Helix, it was a best seller. He can flat-out write.

Not I, but I do know to steal a good idea when it smacks me in the face.