BFTP: Writing FOR understanding

As the pandemic keeps me inside this spring, I've been finding myself with more time to write, but less inspiration and ideas for new topics. So I have been going back over old posts and doing a bit of a refresh on them and reposting as BFTP (Blast From The Past) entries, allowing me to reflect on my "writing life." This old post sums up the "why I write" professionally. _____________________________________________

The most popular explanation is that opaque prose is a deliberate choice. Bureaucrats insist on gibberish to cover their anatomy. Plaid-clad tech writers get their revenge on the jocks who kicked sand in their faces and the girls who turned them down for dates. Pseudo-intellectuals spout obscure verbiage to hide the fact that they have nothing to say, hoping to bamboozle their audiences with highfalutin gobbledygook.

But the bamboozlement theory makes it too easy to demonize other people while letting ourselves off the hook. In explaining any human shortcoming, the first tool I reach for is Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The kind of stupidity I have in mind has nothing to do with ignorance or low IQ; in fact, it's often the brightest and best informed who suffer the most from it. Steven Pinker, The Source of Bad Writing, Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2014

I read Pinker's essay with great interest. He explains "The Curse of Knowledge":

The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose. It simply doesn't occur to the writer that her readers don't know what she knows—that they haven't mastered the argot of her guild, can't divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualize a scene that to her is as clear as day. And so the writer doesn't bother to explain the jargon, or spell out the logic, or supply the necessary detail.

Much of the professional writing I did was explanatory, not visionary, in nature. I tried to translate tech terms and systems into prose that administrators, librarians, and teachers could understand - in the hope they would find it important and useful. My Head for the Edge columns in Library Media Connection and Power Up! columns in ASCD's Educational Leadership required this ability to explain technology in relevant and understandable ways to people for whom technology is not their first love - or their hundredth. 

My practice, I hoped, was the opposite of Pinker's (and Calvin's) explanation of bad writing practices.

I found that my own mediocre intelligence aided me in this effort. If I could find the analogies, the simple words, the vivid examples that helped me understand a complex topic, I could then use the same to help others who had the intellect but perhaps not the patience to understand it. (I've investigated this a bit before: Shallow wit vs deep intellect.)

Too many technical people suffer from what I call the alpha wolf syndrome: I am the baddest animal in the pack if I know more technical terms than anyone else. If I discover the latest app or educational theory. If I can embarrass someone else by discovering a gap in his/her knowledge. I somehow think this tendency goes beyond Pinker's guess that it revenge on jocks by nerds. But it does smell like a power trip.

For me, perhaps, the best path to clear writing is to reflect on the reason one does it in the first place. Is it an ego boost? Is it stun the world? Is it to gain fame and fortune? Is it to show just how much I know (and you don't)?

Or is it explore one's field, to help others, and perhaps improve the world in some small way? And to have a little fun in the process.

Original post 3/12/15