How researchers can write clearly for the general public | Research on Gamification, User Experience (UX), Digital Signage Canadian Companies Can Use

Back when Douglas Hofstadter was a young graduate student, he sat down to write a straight-thinking, down-to-earth book brimming with analogies, stories and even humour, for a general audience. Surely this was academic and professional suicide.

“Hardly! In fact, it had the completely opposite effect,” he was recently reported to say. “I got tenure very rapidly, and then I was free to follow any intellectual pathways that I felt intensely pulled by.”

The book? Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. Hofstadter is now a distinguished professor of cognitive science and comparative literature at Indiana University.

Knowledge: pass it on

While not everyone will go on to write a Pulitzer Prize-winner with mass appeal, there are many reasons academics should “cross to the other side” and write for a lay readership.

For starters, many funding agencies require it, says Nick Manning, director of media relations and issues management for the University of Waterloo. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) is one. The Canadian Research Chair Program also requires that professors engage in what’s known as knowledge transfer or knowledge mobilization. In other words, research findings are no longer expected to remain sequestered in ivory towers, but batted around and passed along to the masses in a way they can understand.

“There’s always a tremendous amount of interest from the general public in what researchers are doing. So it’s a really exciting thing to be engaged in translating deep thinking and knowledge gain,” says Manning. “Being skillful at that can be really rewarding.”

Simple versus simplistic

Even so, many researchers struggle with writing for that audience. It’s no small thing to move away from “academese” to write clear, concise and compelling prose that eradicates wordy clutter, particularly if it has been years since a last attempt.

Then there’s the worry that writing for the general public will mean dumbing down ideas. But that’s not an accurate assumption. A successful writer takes complexities and finds a way to explain them so, “a very bright 10-year-old can understand them,” says Manning. It’s not about dumbing down. It’s about talking straight. There’s a world of difference.

Sometimes clear writing is simply a matter of using informal or colloquial words. Write “heart attack,” not “myocardial infarction,” or “salt” instead of “sodium chloride,” for instance.

Or use analogies that connect with the reader’s world and they can picture in their minds. When describing something tiny, say it’s the width of a pin, if that’s accurate. Or something large weighs the equivalent of six elephants, or is as long as three football fields.

Clear thinking

William Zinsser, author of the seminal writer’s manual, On Writing Well, has gone so far to say that people who write convoluted prose full of jargon are actually revealing how little they know about the subject. “Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other,” he writes.

Clear writing, without embellishment to hide behind, actually forces researchers to understand their work so well they can explain it to anyone.

Another upside: readers tend to share a good, clear story through social media. Articles tend to go viral when they ask an intriguing question or make a slightly contentious point that speaks directly to the reader. A blog called “Computerization and its impact on intelligence,” will probably go nowhere. But, “Your computer is making you stupid and here’s why,” is likely to pick up new readers.

Knowledge transfer complete.

Top 10 words to avoid when writing for the general public