Steven Pinker on Why Your Professional Writing Sucks (And What to Do)
Ever wondered why your professional writing doesn't hit the mark? Steven Pinker, a renowned cognitive scientist, has some insights. He delves into common pitfalls and offers actionable solutions to elevate your writing prowess. Prepare to transform your professional communication.
When we know a lot about a topic, it can be difficult to write about it in a way that makes sense to the layperson
In order to write better about your professional specialty, you need to avoid using jargon and abstractions, put yourself in the place of the reader, and try asking someone from the intended audience to read it
Please No More “Ese”
The Curse of Knowledge – the inability to put ourselves in the shoes of a less informed reader
- Over-abbreviation
- Chunking
- Packaging groups of concepts into ever further abstraction to save space in our brain
- Don’t assume the reader knows all of your jargon
- Avoid overuse of technical terms which the reader may or may not have encountered before
- Fix this by adding a few words of expository the first time you use them
Solutions
Get rid of abstractions and use concrete nouns and refer to concrete things
- Who did what to whom?
- When in doubt, assume the reader knows a fair bit less than you about your topic.
- Clarity is not condescension. You don’t need to prove how smart you are. The key is to assume that your readers are as intelligent and sophisticated as you are, but that they happen not know something you know.
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