Analytical Writing for Science and Technology
Copyright © 1996 by T. M. Georges.
Lesson 3
How to Overcome Writing Handicaps |
instead of in plain English:
| Here are the photographs you asked for.... |
What is your reaction to these two versions of the same message?
How would you say it?
What about this longer passage in "standard" format for the beginning of a report?
| The purpose of this report on procedures for analyzing the statistical properties of certain population samples is to outline methods for analyzing the data and to show by examples how these techniques might be applied to situations commonly met in demographic analysis. |
Look familiar? Do you see anything wrong with this way of beginning a report? What questions does it raise?
If this opening paragraph seems OK to you, you've been conditioned by "the system" to accept writing that conforms but contains little useful information. What's missing here are the specifics that let the reader know whether the rest of this report will be useful to him or whether he would be wasting his time reading it. This kind of stilted, institutionalized writing has become an accepted standard in large organizations, governments and publications, who resist change because "That's the way we've always done it here."
Some questions about the way things are done in your organization
By asking you these questions, I'm not encouraging rebellion. I just want you to think about the subtle influences your working environment has on your writing.
1. Have you ever questioned any of your organization's policies or rules about the way things should be written, because they don't make any sense to you? If so, write down some of those policies here:
2. Do you automatically write your memos, papers or reports in the same format and using the same style as those that have gone before you?
3. Do you take it for granted that those formats and styles are the best ones for the job?
4. What happens in your organization when someone tries to deviate from established procedures?
5. Does your organization have (at least unwritten) rules against being personal in company writing -- for example, using "I" -- so that it's hard to find out who's responsible?
Most organizational policies just limit your flexibility and give you fewer options than someone with a full range of choices.
A good example of an institutional taboo is the widespread rule against using "I" in formal publications and even in some internal memos. Such rules not only lead to convoluted writing but also make it hard to find out who is actually responsible for the views being expressed.
Does writing have to be formal to be informative?
A related myth is that writing has to be formal to be informative. In large organizations and especially in the government, written communications are formalized for uniformity and to create the image of a smoothly running and impersonal machine. Unfortunately, it is so easy for people to hide behind formal procedures that form often takes precedence over substance, false modesty and false courtesy rank above informing efficiently, and bureaucratic jargon overrules common sense. In its advanced stages, this crippling disease is responsible for gems like this:
| The purpose of this Administrative Order is to prevent reoccurrences of recent incidents in which damage to computer equipment was sustained as a result of spilled beverages. Therefore, effective immediately, it shall be laboratory policy to prohibit the presence or consumption of any food or beverages in the computing facility. |
Is it clear how the formal tone of this memo wastes time and inhibits understanding, when what the sender obviously meant was:
| Don't bring food or drinks into the computer room any more -- they can damage the machines. |
False modesty, false courtesy and the need for business and technical writing to remain impersonal and "objective" are institutional inventions designed to let people avoid taking a stand or saying anything controversial. Unfortunately, they also keep people from being understood.
Don't blindly accept any local customs, policies or rules about business or technical writing, including the ones in this course, if they simply violate common sense, or if they result in writing that obscures instead of clarifying.
MYTH NO. 4: FORM IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN CONTENT
Because most of our formal training in English emphasized grammar, spelling, punctuation and "style," it is easy to believe that these are the important things to know about writing. Actually, these are just the "rules of the game". You can't play the game unless you know the rules, but knowing the rules in no way guarantees that you play well. What's the difference between knowing all the rules of football and being a great quarterback?
 Writing for the Web -- Form or Substance? |
| The World Wide Web is the publishing medium of the future. Unfortunately, it's easy to fall into the media trap of substituting glitzy graphics for substantial information content. All of the principles given in this course apply to web publishing in spades. Web surfers have shorter attention spans than a CEO and are impatient with information that fails to get to the point or is not efficiently organized. Hypertext provides a new, efficient way to stick to the point while making the details available to those who want them. |
You'll be happy to know that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on those rules here; that's beyond the scope and intent of this course. If you do decide you need to brush up on your basic English, I want to recommend an excellent and enjoyable way to do so. Get a copy of Practically Painless English by Sally Wallace (a Prentice-Hall paperback, 1980). Would you believe that learning grammar can be fun? Buy this book and find out.
For now, it won't hurt if you go with what you have, even if English is not your native tongue. Many of the organizations you work for have a staff of editors who will go over your writing for you and fix up your spelling, grammar and elementary construction errors. So you don't really need to worry very much about grammar, because that's something someone else can fix for you.
Don't get me wrong. Ungrammatical writing and spelling errors can make you look like a jerk, if you let it get out. So if that's a weak area for you, you'll have to fix it up sooner or later. In the meantime, if you can get someone to proofread you copy for grammatical and spelling blunders, you can focus your attention on those things that only you can do.
The kinds of things we will concentrate on here are the things you have to do yourself -- making a point unambiguously, presenting ideas clearly and logically, astutely handling details, and sorting the essential from the irrelevant. No one else can read your memo and rearrange it so it seems more coherent or decide which details are important and which are not; you have to do that yourself.
MYTH NO. 5: COMPLEX SUBJECT MATTER DEMANDS COMPLEX LANGUAGE
How often have you been snowed by technical gibberish from supposedly competent people, and then assumed that there must be something wrong with you because you didn't understand it, and because the one who said it is obviously very intelligent?
Many of us are so intimidated by the language of science and technology that we think we can't possibly understand their seemingly complex ideas. Then popularizers like Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan come along and show us that complex ideas can in fact be expressed in clear and understandable language without leaving out anything essential.
Why, then, is most of the literature of science and technology cluttered with articles that can be understood only by a few specialists? Probably because most technical writers make no effort to be understood outside of their specialty. Some worry excessively about oversimplifying, whereas others even feel the need to deliberately make their craft appear difficult and complex.
Many of us can talk and write coherently as long as we think we are in a conversational mode. But what happens to us when we have to write professionally? Something inside shifts gears and turns ordinary language into gibberish.
There are many examples that show how highly respected scientists and technologists use simple, down-to-earth language to express technical concepts that might otherwise seem incomprehensible. By imitating their style, you can make your reports and papers more informative, no matter how complex their subject matter.
Here's a passage written more than a hundred years ago by the scientist Thomas Henry Huxley:
|
All sorts of limestones are composed of more or less
pure carbonate of lime. The crust which is often
deposited by waters which have drained through
limestone rocks, in the form of what are called
stalactites and stalacmites, is carbonate of lime. Or,
to take the more familiar example, the fur on the
inside of a tea-kettle is carbonate of lime; and for
anything that chemistry might tell us to the contrary,
the chalk might be a kind of gigantic fur upon the
bottom of the earth-kettle, which is kept pretty hot
below. Let us try another method of making the chalk tell us its own history. To the unassisted eye chalk looks simply like a vey loose and open kind of stone. But it is possible to grind a slice of chalk down so thin that you can see through it -- until it is thin enough, in fact, to be examined with any magnifying power that might be thought desirable. A thin slice of the fur of a kettle might be made in the same way. If it were examined microscopically, it would show itself to be a more or less dictinctly laminated mineral substance, and nothing more. |
No matter how complex your message, you can always benefit by making it understandable to the widest possible audience. This example shows how to use familiar imagery to make the reader comfortable with complex ideas that would otherwise be hard to visualize. If you can't explain your work at a cocktail party, you don't know what you're doing.
MYTH NO. 6: GOOD, CLEAR WRITING EVENTUALLY COMES EFFORTLESSLY
Many writers feel that they've done something wrong if their drafts need repeated editing. They think that, with practice, they should be able to turn out finished drafts the first time around.
 Clear writing requires clear thinking. |
| Clear writing means more than paying attention to some arbitrary rules. Poor writing demonstrates sloppy thinking. You can't write clearly unless you can think clearly. This course can't teach you clear thinking, but if you'd like to learn more about clear, logical thinking in science and technology, try these books:
Weinberg, G. M., An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1975. Sagan, Carl, The Demon-Haunted World, Random House, 1996. I hope you'll find, as most do, that there's a two-way connection between clear thinking and clear writing. As you exercise more precision and care in your writing, your thinking will get clearer as well. |
Unless you write constantly, like a newspaper reporter or a novelist, that isn't likely to happen. Good writing will always demand clear, organized thinking and plain hard work. You'll always write and rewrite, revise and shuffle ideas and words.
Clear writing, like a fine sculpture, grows and evolves out of the crude raw materials you first put down on paper. The difference you can expect after taking this course and doing the exercises is that your revisions and shuffling will become more systematic and purposeful, guided not by what feels right, but by the specific principles you will learn in the following lessons. Another difference you can expect is that you will no longer feel discouraged or overwhelmed by writing tasks. Instead, you'll be able to summon systematic, step-by-step procedures for getting the job done.
It's easy to underestimate the time and effort required to report results of your projects. When you plan your projects, how often do you allow enough time and resources to do a decent job reporting the project's results? Do you treat the writing parts of your project as afterthoughts, neglecting to give them the amount of attention that their visibility deserves? An old saying is relevant here: There's never enough time to do a job right but always time to do it over.
Another myth is perpetuated by books, articles and courses designed to teach you quickly how to write better. You often hear about simple mechanical rules for helping you improve your writing without having to think much about what you're doing. It's easy to be misled by devices like "Keep your sentences short," and "Don't use long words," and to substitute them for thinking. Quick fixes seduce the TV generation that is used to seeing the most complex problems solved in an hour. At the other end of the spectrum are those who insist there is no quick fix, no royal road to good writing, and that there is no substitute for a lifetime of disciplined learning and practice.
The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. There are indeed some simple strategies that you can learn from those who write well. They can improve your writing a lot with just a little practice. I've tried to collect some of those strategies here.
So far we have examined myths that you have been exposed to during your education and career.
Now let's face some internal messages you may tell yourself when you sit down to begin a
writing task. Perhaps your immediate reaction is fear or even the panic that some people call a
writing "block". Or else you suddenly become very creative in finding ways to avoid the task. If any of these questions strikes a nerve, that may be where you need to examine your feelings
and beliefs more carefully.
In this lesson, I've focused on some harmful attitudes and hangups that can make your writing
harder than it has to be -- myths that come from your early training in writing (and lack thereof)
as well as from the environment you work in. I'm not trying to discourage you, but rather to
pinpoint the specific reasons you may be having difficulty communicating in writing. Equipped with this
knowledge, you will find it easier to overcome and change these limitations. The rest of this course will show you how to make those changes. I'll begin in the next lesson by
outlining an overall strategy for approaching your writing in a systematic and purposeful way.
These proven methods have been borrowed from the structure of scientific investigations.
SOME MYTHS YOU MIGHT BE TELLING YOURSELF
The best way to expose the myths you tell yourself is to examine as specifically as you can the
feelings you get when you first become aware that there is a writing task to be undertaken. To
help you understand these feelings better, find something you have written lately and ask yourself the
following questions. Make a check before each one that may apply to you:
LESSON SUMMARY AND WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so." -Will Rogers
-- End of Lesson 3 --
