Take five minutes to watch this video by Helen Sword, author of Stylish Academic Writing.
Readable writing is clear writing. What, exactly, is that?
"Good writing is effortless reading that makes you want to read more. It is clear and concise, uses short sentences and simple words. It keeps to the facts and is easy to read and to understand. It is so clear, the reader can take in the writer's exact message in one reading."
—PlainLanguage.gov
When you teach, you present facts, concepts and new information to students. Here are some simple guidelines to remember as you prepare your online content:
Readers will naturally divide their energy to reading either:
words and sentences
or
ideas.
Concentrate on the ideas so that students don't get bogged down in lofty language.
Source: Put It In Writing by Albert M. Joseph, 1986.
Easy, right? Actually, no.
Let's look at your audience.
Who are they?
What should they already know? And what will be completely new and unfamiliar?
"Most experts are so familiar with their topic that they forget what it is like to be a novice... Even if they remember, they can become bored with having to repeat the fundamentals over and over again... They seemed to forget that the information was brand new to us..."
—John Medina, Brain Rules, Pear Press 2014 (p 119).
Academia sometimes encourages writing styles that are intended to impress, rather than to teach. That might not be a good idea if you want your students to understand and remember the important ideas and concepts. Steven Pinker* calls this the "The Curse of Knowledge".
Write to meet your learners where they are at any given moment. Seniors and grad students will be much more familiar with the terminology of your discipline than freshmen or AP high school students will. Don't make them feel dumb by showing off how smart you are. They know that already — you wouldn't be teaching the course otherwise.
I asked Dr. Jay Malarcher of the Division of Theatre and Dance to decipher a "curse of knowledge" example from Steven Pinker's book* (p35). Dr. Jay is an expert on the subject of film and happily agreed to the challenge. Here's the quote from the book:
"The visual is essentially pornographic, which is to say that it has its end in rapt, mindless fascination; thinking about its attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if it is unwilling to betray its object; while the most austere films necessarily draw their energy from the attempt to repress their own excess (rather than from the thankless effort to discipline the viewer)."
Here's Dr. Jay's rephrasing:
"Visuals are just fun to look at, and if you can't figure out the meaning, you talk about the attributes of the image. Austere films become less fun to look at, (rather than communicating more)."
So, it is possible for experts to write in more understandable terms without anyone questioning their credentials.
The language of your academic discipline is likely to be new and unfamiliar to your students.
When presenting new — and probably difficult — vocabulary or unfamiliar concepts, use smaller, more familiar words.
Never use a large word when a small one will do.
Which of the following is clearer? more concise?
Solicit the employee's assistance in achieving a resolution of the problem.
- or -
Ask the employee's help in solving the problem.
Source: Put It In Writing by Albert M. Joseph, 1998.
Even when you know what the complex words and phrases mean, it's just so much clearer when you use simple word.
| Don't use... | When you could say... | |
|---|---|---|
| aforementioned | these | |
| attributable | due | |
| by means of | by | |
| consequently | so | |
| considerable | much | |
| correspondence | email, letter, IM | |
| facilitate | help, ease | |
| foregoing | this, these | |
| inasmuch as | because | |
| indicate | show | |
| in order to | to | |
| in the event that | if | |
| transmit | send | |
| utilize | use | |
| visualize | see | |
| whether or not | whether | |
| with regard to | about |
For a more comprehensive, alphabetized list of complex-to-simple words see http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/wordsuggestions/simplewords.cfm.
* Pinker is the author of The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, Penguin Random House, 2015.