As a senior PhD student, the advice I give my younger peers and master students regarding academic posters: you should be able to read it from across the room, or printing in A4 and held at arms' length. Most posters are horribly over-cramed.
I see the same things in academic papers. The length is limited, but many people find a way around by including tons for mathematic, which is much denser. When I take the pain to go through it, I usually find all this math to be unnecessary (but it does give the paper the halo of serious research).
1) The appropriate metric for 'well written' is that you can read the whole thing aloud and understand the findings in the time it takes a person to eat a sandwich, a bag of chips, and drink a medium coffee. About 75 minutes. Anything more may be 'read' but not understood and anything less means you should have done more work.
2) Everyone loves jargon. The more obscure words the better. The more complicated and obfuscated, the better. I find that I want to grok the research. Most of my compatriots do not want to do that. However, we all think the same thing about everyone else. More complicated papers result in a 'treasure hunt' mentality that many researchers actually enjoy, it seems. The journal club evolved into a 'tennis game' of sorts where the submitter would lord over the others about their knowledge of the paper. i don't want to generalize too much, but I think this behavior of 'one-up-man-ship' and 'I-know-more-than-yoooou-dooo' is core to academia.
> It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules.
Is there any field for which this is not true?
Just ask Louis Slotin. Oh wait. You can't.
Some personalities like long explanations, some do not.
Beware that your personality will often miss important details that would be in the verbiage.
Those or like reading often waste too much time reading unnecessary details.
There are pros and cons of both.
(I hope I wrote that in the style you would like to read)
When doing a presentation there are other considerations/rules.
Those rules do not apply to the more generic discussion.
Posters are wonderful.
Papers aren't Posters.
But when you are communicating, it is common sense to make sure the important points come across, then only dive into the details. Unfortunately that is not always something you are incentivized to do in academic research, where fumigation is the norm.
I'd also point out that one can be terse and uninformative as well - point in case: most public Git repositories out there.
I enjoy reading, and will often read long pieces -- albeit I would wish they were terser, because often they could be, with no loss of precision.
I have also never met anyone that, even though they like to read like I do, would take pleasure in reading something that drones unnecessarily. When communicating, that is -- plenty of people enjoy the mini-novels put out by Slate, the New Yorker, ... (and me too, sometimes).
I have taken to the habit to summarizing the things I read on my blog. These summaries are of course less informative than the source, but the signal-to-noise ratio is much higher.
This is for entertainment or marketing purposes, though.
(and they missed out parts (b) and (c) of the question, plus they didn't read the linked web pages supporting my assertions)
Yes, I really need to cut back on how much I type there, but I have trouble communicating in person so text is just so much more comfortable for me. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
End the email with the question in the subject asked again.
EDIT: If you find that you need to have a conversation, either walk over to their desk or pick up the phone.
I also try to eliminate parentheticals. Branching lines of thought are very difficult for most people.
This is something that I hadn't thought about but now that you mention it, it does seem to match what I've experienced.
Nice catch.
I haven't watched it, so this question might not be relevant - but how do you explain the popularity of shows like "Game of Thrones"?
From what I gather, it has several various plot lines woven over and around multiple episodes and seasons.
People also don't seem to have any problems deciphering the various "plot lines" within their own circles of family and friends (in my experience with people who seem to have waaaay too much drama in their lives).
Is there something about "video" that makes it easier to parse in this fashion than text? Does emotional attachment to characters in such dramas (or personal involvement) make it easier to understand intertwined plot lines?
Just musing on things here...hmm.
If your question has multiple parts, break them into separate, sequential questions.
Lastly if the question is so complex that this doesn't work, and for whatever reason you can't talk to them in person, present them with what you believe the answer is and let them critique it. This won't always work for every scenario but it might be worth trying.
Once that's done, you can ask if they have the time to answer another question, and continue with the interaction.
Where are the rest of them then?
1. Place most important piece at the top. Answer the following question to your audience: What is the purpose of this email and how does it apply to me?
2. Bulleted or numbered lists are ideal for multiple questions/points. It visually divides, gives you ability to order most to least important and also allows someone an easy way to respond inline to each question.
3. Iterate on your first revision with goal of reducing length and maintaining intention. This takes practice and forces you to ask do I really need this line of text.
4. If you distribute to a large list, identify at the top the scope so those it doesn't apply to can discard.
5. If you are emailing a group and you need replies or action items for different people call this out. You can do this by calling each name out: @Joe - Can you help identify x? @Jane - Can you follow up with so and so? etc. This way their name is attached to it.
Some people will understand what you mean with very little. Others likely won't understand regardless of how much explanation you provide.
Make everything that is critical super obvious. Bulleted questions is a great suggestion.
Super true
- Make each bullet point actionable/respondable
- Condense the bullet points/trim the fat
- Use sub-bullets as an aside or to provide narrative/opinion/background
Now people have essentially been informed up front that you expect X number of things for them to respond to and they’ll be less likely to miss the stuff in the middle.
You’ll also find that you’ll get the same information and intent across with your TL;DR bulletpoint summary, but in a way that doesn’t cause the reader to bail out.
It’ll also make it easier for them to respond because you’ve essentially given them references names for each point they’d respond to.
Yeah, that really depends on the content of the conversation, but I have seen that tactic used in so many situations (including non-email) that I assume it as the default reason. So I limit myself to one question per email.
I've since started tagging people in the body for specific items I need from them. Varying levels of success, if people are on the email and see themselves tagged in a specific part of the email, they know where to read carefully and what response I expect from them.
2. Read The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E. B. White (< 100 pages).
3. Read the first several chapters of On Writing Well, by William Zinnser (< 100 pages).
(Don't like reading? Oh :)
The contemporary interpretation/translation of this quote is usually "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."
[1] - "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
I think it’s for the same reason elevator pitches are short. Shorter usually equates to better written, more relevant and the the point. I guess concise is a concise way of putting it. The writer has decided what’s relevant or not, so the reader doesn’t have to.
There’s a tendency for people describing themselves (or their company, etc.) with too many loose end details. We also do this and could do that. ..not wanting to limit themselves or leave anything outside the frame.
Imagine describing your diet. You could do it in 20 words, 200, or 2000. I’m trying to sort people into diet piles. I can do it with 20 words. If you use 200, that probably means I have to trim your 200 to 20, and sort from there.
I recommend all e-mails to Director and above be written as if your audience is a hyperactive teenager. Go with simple statements (they don't understand nuance) and bullet points.
Also, take a look at your resume and take off all acronyms unless they are well-known (eg: HTML) and reword any overly technical statement into simple words "Utilized X to lower the Y by leveraging Z technology which resulted in a 25% speed increase". Nah, do this: "Increased speed of [project] by 25% by leveraging [technology you mentioned on your resume]"
I dislike all resumes that are overly technical and I can't imagine how recruiters feel about seeing borderline non-sense.
1) emphasize the most important verb by putting it first, and favor more-active and more-specific verbs over very general or passive ones, as in putting "increased" ahead of "utilized" and "leveraged", and
2) favor simple language ("leverage" or "utilize" can often just be "use", for example) because, counterintuitively for middling or poor writers, simpler language usually comes off as more forceful, confident, and authoritative than fancier fluff.[1] It's also easier to read, and you're less likely to make small blunders that will bother some readers.
improves most writing significantly.
[1] Incidentally, I think high school and university paper length requirements that reward such flabby writing without without sufficiently punishing weak style choices are part of why people write that way, especially when they're trying to write "formally".