Of Mice and Morons

[Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Tom Murrell wrote:
> 
> > 
> > This is the best time ever to be a tech writer, because there is
> > so much complex crap out there that morons need to understand.
> 
> My concern with the above sentence is that if any writer thinks that way
> about her or his audience, that thinking is bound to come through to the
> reader of the work.  If I were working with a new writer who expressed this
> sentiment, I would try to correct that writer's thinking about the audience.
> If I were working with an experienced writer who thought that way, one of us
> would have to go.  If I were interviewing a prospective writer--no matter
> how good his or her qualifications--if he or she thought of the audience as
> morons, I would not hire that writer.

Oh, Jeez. We all love it when our "thinking is corrected". 

EVERYBODY is a moron in some way. It is just flaky nonsense to assume everybody
deserves respect. Most people don't. They deserve to be whacked in the head
with a dead fish for their intense stupidity. You do not get respect because
you walk in the door or have genitals. Respect is EARNED through talent,
accomplishment, and commitment - and some other stuff on a Successories poster.

(Which reminds me, everybody should check out
http://www.despair.com/demotivators.html for exceptional demotivational
products.)

At any given moment we are all guilty of tremendously moronic acts. 

Case in point. I had another writer in my office just hand over some edits for
a help file I wrote. There were at least 100 edits. Some of them were so stupid
it is amazing I can still write my name and wipe my butt.  

Like every person who ever lived I do dumb things and I miss details. I'm a
moron! Fortunately for me, there are other morons who can catch my moronic
acts. We morons have to stick together you know. 

Furthermore, as a writer it is our job to explain to morons how things work.
Honestly, seeing your audience as morons is very helpful because it forces you
to dumb down your text. 

Most readers have no interest in reading your documents. They want to eat
pizza, drink beer, have sex, or just about ANYTHING other than read some drab,
dull technical manual.  So why kid yourself or the reader. Just give the morons
what they want and move along. With all the intense debate on this board about
how we have to tailor our text to the audience, it would do everybody some good
to see their audience as some drooling moron who needs an education. 

Your job as a writer is to transform readers from a drooling morons to
semi-educated people. The utmost respect you can give your reader is to write
them text that even a moron could understand. 

> 
> And I damn sure would not work for a boss who felt that way.  Nor do I think
> such an attitude can be passed off as a joke.  Part of having a professional
> attitude in technical writing is to think of your audience with respect.
> "Moron" is not a term of respect.

Would you feel better if I called them "individuals who are temporarily on the
downside of intellectual economics?" 


> This is NOT a personal attack on the author of this remark, but I hope it is
> a clear attack on the idea that it is somehow acceptable to think of ones
> audience as morons because the writer knows something the audience does not.
> Is that not why we have a job?

Yes it is a personal attack, just thinly disguised inside a semantic argument. 

You've attacked me on three separate occasions about my use of the word moron.
Honestly, I think you have no point other than to pick a semantic argument with
me - which really isn't any better than telling me my grammur er me spellin' ez
wong.

Now, before Eric whacks me in the head with a dead fish, I am going to go back
to churning out docs for the morons. Morons need love to, you know. 

Andrew Plato 
President / Principal Moron
Moron Consulting, Inc.


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