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Um, I don't think I'd take that teaching to heart...
The surest way to lose your audience is to treat them like idiots.
Well, OK, maybe passive voice is surest, but treating them like idiots is
a close second. It's entirely possible to have a specialized audience
regardless of their education level.
If you "talk down" to your audience, it's likely that you'll lose
them because they'll make the fairly logical leap that, if you don't know
who you're talking *to,* you also don't know what you're talking *about.*
I ran into this revising a manual for a water utility. The readers
were HS grads or equiv--with probably an avg of 10+ yrs in the water
treatment business. The contractor (engineering firm) who I was hired to
clean up after let it be known that they were writing at an 8th grade
level--guess how many people read *that* manual!
IMO, there is no substitute for audience anaysis up front. While
there are better and worse ways of doing that analysis, assuming they're
idiots isn't on the list at all.
Mary Durlak Erie Documentation Inc.
East Aurora, New York (near Buffalo)
durl -at- buffnet -dot- net
On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, Damien Braniff wrote:
> I was taught when I first started that you should (unless you know
> different - PhD students, experienced engineers etc) treat your readers as
> total idiots! If they are then they'll (hopefully!!) understand what
> you've written. If they're not, they may think it a little noddy but will
> "skim" it and get the information they need. If it's the other way around
> however (aimed at engineers and they're not) then it won't get read.
>
> Damien Braniff
> Technical Author
> PAC International
>
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>
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