Follow up ramble

Yesterday I wrote that the essentials of writing--for non-fiction in particular--were clarity and accuracy. I wrote that in the context of a rant against cryptic, pretentious writing (and speaking). Today I come in peace; I got the rant out of my system, but I have more to say about clarity and accuracy. Mainly that these two principles often conflict with one another.

Let's back up a step and restate that principle I hope I hammered home in yesterday's post: when you're writing non-fiction, your foremost goal is convey information in a way that minimizes confusion and exertion on the part of the reader. This principle applies whether you're writing instructions for putting together a bookcase or a dissertation on the history of green tea. Whatever the nature of the information you are trying to convey, your job is to convey it as directly as possible. And in some cases it's not as possible as in others.

I'm painfully aware of how hard it can be to write well when you have complex information to convey, because that's what I do at work. The reality is that some highly technical information, whether the source of the complexity is scientific, economic, or bureaucratic, is never going to sound pretty; all you can do is minimize the ugly--which becomes all the more important. That's when you have to pay extra attention to ensure, for example, that all the parts of a statement correspond as they should.

To help us craft our highly complex statements with utmost clarity, we work with editors. I, personally, love working with editors. They'll offer up a quick fix when you're stuck, and they'll let you know when what you've written makes no sense to anyone who's not an expert in the topic. They'll also let you know when what you've written makes no sense, period. But here's the other thing about editors: they focus on clarity and flow, sometimes at the expense of accuracy. They'll say, "how about this?" and you say, "I see how much better that reads, but that's not what we need to say; it's not technically correct. Unfortunately, what's technically correct cannot be stated so simply." Thankfully, the editors I work with are very responsive such protests, and we continue together to work out the best tradeoff between flow and technical accuracy. For us, inaccuracy is not an option. But either is confusion.

Here's a common example: "Indonesia has the highest population of any Muslim-majority country." One may be tempted to re-write that as "Indonesia has the highest population of Muslims in the world," etc., but that's a very different statement, and not an accurate one. India has the highest population of Muslims in the world (but it is not a Muslim-majority country). When looking for the simplest way to state something, take care that you're still saying what you mean. That may cut away from your clarity (i.e., the reader may have to do a little more work), but that kind of work is included in the reader contract. It's when writers throw in 'extras' that add no value, either in content or form, that the reader has to go into unnecessary overtime.