Damore's writing prowess is maybe not the issue exactly, other than it is a symptom of the lack of clarity of his ideas. Unclear ideas, unclear writing. It's certainly reasonable to conclude from Damore's memo that what he believes is that "women choose (and succeed at) tech jobs at a lower rate than men because on average they have biological characteristics that mean they tend to be more suitable for other kinds of work" ... preference, biology, culture, expectations, it's all one big interconnected system. He's not at all clear about what, given the biology, he thinks the "natural" rate is... unless he thinks it's already about right? So it's not clear what he means, or even if he knows what he means. Taplin could certainly have been more precise in the NYT, but Damore did nothing to control interpretation of his words (nothing, at least, that succeeded).

To me this is like trying to optimize software in the wrong place. Biology is surely a factor somewhere in the chain, but many other things are causing more problems, and in ways that are easier to fix, so we probably shouldn't spend time on the biology thing just yet, because it won't cause much impact overall.

He mentions aptitude in the essay:

"I'm simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."

He also fumbles over his description of this in one of his interviews [1].

> People, maybe fairly, have been criticizing Damore for his writing prowess.

Yeah, words matter, particularly when you're claiming your essay is representative of current science, and that you were a PhD student.

[1] https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro?t=30m13s

> The same people should have a higher standard for a professional writer published in the NYT.

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper:

Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

"I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."

I did feel the person who responded to me was still correct to have high expectations of linguistic precision for a professional author being published by a national organization.