On 29 May 2012 05:41, Ms. Anne Frazer frazera@bigpond.com wrote:
However, when I read your words, the essence of your comments is clear in that part of your message is couched in attacking good prose because it is too difficult to read and understand. I remind myself that you don't mean to engage in a call for the dumbing down of articles in the 'Wikipedia Encyclopedia' when you suggest that they are too difficult to comprehend by 'the man in the street', (my phrase, and a commonly used one) by which I mean the 'ordinary citizen', the 'ordinary person'; it is a much used phrase I sardonically use in tandem with an apology to women. But here I have strayed from the clear and concise message I would like to be able to convey to you; so back on track...
No, I think it's incorrect to assume "readable" is a euphemism for "dumbed down". Frankly, many academics are terrible writers. Because most people are terrible writers. Being in the Internet era helps (because everyone writes all the time), but a lot of academics are in fact much less comprehensible than they think they are. Popular science writing is *hard*.
Steven - one idea that occurs to me is to give them a target audience: e.g. an extremely smart twelve-year-old. "A kid who is very smart and who is really interested, but knows *nothing*. Can you inform them? Use all the wikilink cross-references they would need." This will be easy to visualise because smart adults tend to previously have been smart kids.
- d.