Monday, April 06, 2009

Writing and word limits

I'm working on an article for nonspecialists about a nano topic, and all I can say is, writing concisely for nonexperts is much more difficult than writing concisely for experts.

5 comments:

Malaysia Student said...

When we can read this article sir
tq

Anonymous said...

But, isn't this the natural state of affairs??

Don Monroe said...

Very true. Much of the art is knowing what could be said, but does not have to be.

Douglas Natelson said...

I am reminded of the old Simpsons episode where Lisa enters an essay contest run by a thinly veiled Reader's Digest (for non-Americans, Reader's Digest is famous for abridging longer written works). Their motto: "Brevity...wit."

Tom said...

Writing/explaining for nonexperts is harder because you can't assume some baseline of knowledge. However, if you do have that baseline, it becomes somewhat easier, since you know how many layers of explanation you need