I have worked on a couple of projects where my clients and I shared detailed conversations about the work, and I wrote a detailed brief. When I delivered the final case study / white paper / whatever else, it was not what they expected. I’ve been thinking about why this happens.
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Geeks: how to write for a non-technical audience
Two peoples divided by a common language.
George Bernard Shaw said this about the British and the Americans, but the same can be said of anoraks and suits. The ability to write for a non-technical audience is a skill often lost on the geeks among us, but I’m happy to provide a cheat-sheet.
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How to write like a hacker
The world of the computer hacker can seem as alien as Sanskrit or quantum physics. But it’s worth trying to understand the geniuses behind the internet as well as the mindset of the minority of hackers who turn bad. Who knows, perhaps you’ll discover your inner geek?
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The wrong word: widely misunderstood scientific terms
People have a horrible tendency to use the wrong word in press releases, especially when using scientific terms they don’t understand. Hype words and frankenquotes make them almost unreadable. For example, people often use words like science loanwords ‘quantum leap’ wrongly.
Check out my advice on this blog if you want to write like a hacker.
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Motherfoucault! How to write better academic papers
“Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right.”
— Donald Norman
The worst academic papers is notorious for using complicated words, impenetrable theories and name dropping. It makes academia feel like it’s a closed shop or religious cult where you can’t get on unless you know the secret handshake and use the right jargon.
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