Why your writing doesn't work

Your audience.

Yes, you're guilty -- I'm sure of it. I know, because I'm guilty too, and I do this for a living.

The source of bad writing is your assumption that your reader knows as much as you do. Thus sayeth Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and  chairman of the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. He writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Call it the Curse of Knowledge: a difficulty in imagining what it is like for someone else not to know something that you know. The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose. It simply doesn't occur to the writer that her readers don't know what she knows—that they haven't mastered the argot of her guild, can't divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualize a scene that to her is as clear as day. And so the writer doesn't bother to explain the jargon, or spell out the logic, or supply the necessary detail.

Pinker offers three ways to avoid this trap.

How can we lift the curse of knowledge? The traditional advice—always remember the reader over Just trying harder to put yourself in someone else's shoes doesn't make you much more accurate in figuring out what that person knows. But it's a start.

A better way to exorcise the curse of knowledge is to close the loop, as the engineers say, and get a feedback signal from the world of readers—that is, show a draft to some people who are similar to your intended audience and find out whether they can follow it.

Another  way to escape the curse of knowledge is to show a draft to yourself, ideally after enough time has passed that the text is no longer familiar. If you are like me you will find yourself thinking, "What did I mean by that?" or "How does this follow?" or, all too often, "Who wrote this crap?"

But don't go overboard. The curse of knowledge, after all, is job security for us editors.

How your audience reads your words

Your future reader.

This isn't good news for those who write sentences and paragraphs about serious ideas.

Screens have changed our reading patterns from the linear, left-to-right sequence of years past to a wild skimming and skipping pattern as we hunt for important words and information, Jean Whalen writes.

One 2006 study of the eye movements of 232 people looking at Web pages found they read in an "F" pattern, scanning all the way across the top line of text but only halfway across the next few lines, eventually sliding their eyes down the left side of the page in a vertical movement toward the bottom.

None of this is good for our ability to comprehend deeply, scientists say. Reading text punctuated with links leads to weaker comprehension than reading plain text, several studies have shown. A 2007 study involving 100 people found that a multimedia presentation mixing words, sounds and moving pictures resulted in lower comprehension than reading plain text did.

Ferris Jabr elaborates in Scientific American:

Evidence from laboratory experiments, polls and consumer reports indicates that modern screens and e-readers fail to adequately recreate certain tactile experiences of reading on paper that many people miss and, more importantly, prevent people from navigating long texts in an intuitive and satisfying way. In turn, such navigational difficulties may subtly inhibit reading comprehension.

My experience with the instructions business website editors give to writers is that they desire short and punchy copy with copious subheads and lists. It's as though they know their readers don't have much patience for reading.

Do we who dwell in the land of serious, thoughtful business writing yield to this? I think not. However, we might anticipate the divergence of our audience into those who are comfortable with the slow, orderly development of ideas and those who are need listy sound bites. Then plan to please both.

Before you write one word

What are they thinking?

If your task is to write an article or give a speech, start by asking questions about your audience. It's the only way.

Who are they? What do they think about me? About my topic? What interests them?

Even: what language do they speak? I have spoken before groups of people from many countries and languages all in one room together. Although they all spoke English, I couldn't rely on their understanding of Americanisms. Or even their agility with English -- were they translating into their own language, and how taxing is that?

We like to think about our topic. It's what we know and what interests us. But we don't write or speak in a vacuum. We have to meet our readers or listeners where they are, and then lead them to where we want them. If they've never heard of 3D printing, and that's our topic, we've got some work to do. If they're not a techie audience, more work.

Here are three questions to ask about your audience. They are from Kathleen Kelley Reardon, professor of management at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Her primary areas of scholarly interest have included leadership communication, persuasion, and interpersonal communication. Public Opinion Quarterly called her first book, Persuasion in Practice, ”a landmark contribution to the field.”

What I've just used is an appeal to authority to impress you. Reardon is nothing if not authoritative.

The three questions she proposes ask what appeals to our audience. They are a shortcut for developing positions that are likely to resonate with those we wish to influence.

Appropriateness appeals, based on social norms, address whether a way of thinking, speaking or acting is right or wrong in a particular group, organization or culture (e.g., “That’s not how things are done here” or “Everyone does this. You should too”).

Consistency appeals, derived from desire for balance or consistency across behaviors, address whether a way of thinking, speaking or acting fits with prior ones or one’s self-perception (e.g., “You’ve never done that before” or “This is so much like you”).

Effectiveness appeals, useful because human action is often goal-driven, address whether a way of thinking, speaking or acting is likely to work given the goals at hand (e.g., “That will never get you what you want” or “You’ll certainly have my attention”).

If we understand our audience in these three ways, we are way ahead of the game.

Skill in assessing what matters most among the three ACE Method persuasion categories, at a particular point in time for a person or persons, is critical in making good use of it. Sometimes this requires observing others over time or, when that’s not possible, asking questions that assess priorities. 

Here is one example of this in practice:

Marketers often use appropriateness, consistency and effectiveness considerations in developing advertisements. Auto ads focus on what others would think of us were we to purchase a particular model, consistency with self-image or desired self-image, and/or effectiveness of purchase, perhaps in terms of handling, gas mileage, or cost.

Reardon calls this The ACE Method. There are other questions, of course, but this is a good start. Use it and you'll ace your next presentation.