The illusion of clarity - Writer vs. reader, a matter of attitude - The reading toolkit

Scientific writing 3.0: A reader and writer's guide - Jean-Luc Lebrun, Justin Lebrun 2021

The illusion of clarity
Writer vs. reader, a matter of attitude
The reading toolkit

If you’re an expert on your topic, writing should be easy, shouldn’t it? After all, you have the knowledge, so all you need to do is “write what you think”.

Image

But is it really that simple? Read the following paragraph, inspired from an abstract1:

Changes in the gut microbiota have been known to have modulatory effects on host metabolisms. These changes have been demonstrated in GEMM, but never in wild type. The current study aims to investigate whether non-congenic strains reflect similar findings to initial studies.

Was that paragraph clear to you? Your answer could be “yes” or “no”. It depends on you, the reader, and your level of familiarity with the field and its vocabulary. While the passage is likely clear to most biologists, it may be less clear to other scholars, for example those studying hydraulics. The word “clear” is ambiguous. It is an adjective, and like most adjectives, it is subjective. What is clear to you may not be clear to me, and vice-versa.

Image

Do not assume that your writing will be clear to the reader simply because it is clear to you.

In fact, with the passage of time, authors can even be unclear to themselves!

It’s Friday evening and you have just finished writing a rather challenging technical paragraph. You think to yourself, “It took some work, but I’m glad I finally managed to express my ideas clearly!” But when you return to your desk on Monday and re-read that “clear” paragraph, you find it to be extremely difficult to understand. What happened?

Since the text itself did not change over the weekend, the change must have occurred in you. On Friday evening, you read as a writer: any required knowledge or background needed to understand the text remained fresh in your mind, filling in the gaps in understanding. But the passage of time and disengagement with the content emptied that buffer over the next few days, so that on Monday morning, you read as a reader.

Thinking reader2 when you write makes your writing clearer and more accessible — two qualities reviewers and editors greatly value. Thinking reader is not as selfless as one might think. By helping the reader understand your paper, you save the reader’s time, avoid reader frustration, and increase reader satisfaction, all of which increase the probability that the reader uses, shares, and cites your work.