Highly educated writers with multiple degrees at the graduate level have almost instant credibility with their audiences before they even write or speak. Communicating the fact that they are the go-to guys and girls in their fields isn’t difficult. The challenge is in communicating the content.
If you’re a genius of sorts, you have a major hurdle to overcome when you write for the general public–communication. Transferring the high-level information in your brain to the person on the street or in the pew is a challenge. After editing books and articles for academic, scientific, and technical writers for years, I’ve discovered some common mistakes when scholars write for the general public. Here are some things to keep in mind if you’re an expert writing for general audiences:
1. Experts often don’t know their audience. They forget that they aren’t turning in a paper to a university professor or attempting to convince the academic naysayers who hold a different perspective. Some may even be writing for themselves–to demonstrate their expertise in a public forum. If you’re writing to garner kudos from your peers, send it in a private email or an organizational newsletter. But if you’re writing for a publication with a general audience, follow their submission and style guidelines. Know your audience and write for them.
2. They write at the college level or above, rather than aiming for seventh- to ninth-grade level, the level most publications shoot for. At the same time, don’t dumb-down the content–just say it in words that the reader is familiar with. The whole point of writing is to communicate information–to make your information understandable. Speak your audience’s language.
3. Passive language. Nobody does anything. “Observations are made.” “Discoveries are found to be true.” “Indications of the results come from observable data.” Like the Big Bang happened out of nowhere and because of no one, the observations just magically appear because it was found to be so in journals around the world.
4. Long words and long sentences. Too many technical terms can stall the pace of the article. If the reading is too hard, the reader will put it down and not pick it back up again. And you’ve lost your audience, maybe for forever. The best way to introduce technical terms is to limit new terms to only two or three for a 600-word article, and define them at the first mention. Most sentences should be broken up into two or even three sentences. Vary the sentence length.
5. Sentences that begin with “there are.” Sentences with this introduction sound like they come from textbooks rather than dynamic articles. “It is” can be just as boring.
6. Thinking that the article is inaccurate if it isn’t exhaustive. Unless you’re writing an encyclopedia, you don’t need to tell your reader everything you know in this article. And if you’re doing an encyclopedia, you still have to limit the amount of information. Provide the main points in simple language and point the reader to other good resources for more information.
7. Forgetting the value of the take-away. Give your reader one main take-away from your article or book. Of course there will be more than one piece of helpful information, but focus on one main takeaway for your overall theme.
8. Not knowing that titles, front covers, and back covers are marketing tools. Cramming every bit of expertise into those spaces of real estate reduces the impact you could have with the cover and the bottom line—it’ll show in the sluggish sales numbers. Use rich images and unique phrases. Post endorsements and memorable quotes. This isn’t the place to show off your knowledge–covers are for demonstrating your marketing savvy.
9. Confusing charts and graphs for high-impact illustrations. Some charts and graphs are necessary to make your points, but illustrations that impact your reader are those they can understand and connect with. A picture can communicate what lengthy words or complicated charts cannot. Choose images that engage the readers’ emotions as well as their intellect.
10. Underestimating the power of white space. Sometimes less is much, much more.
