‘Effective communicators’ there’s the rub!


‘Effective communicators’ there’s the rub; how does one communicate with an unseen audience that can be anybody in the world. In face-to-face communication there is so much information about the audience at hand that does not exist on the Internet.

Does one use language for the 12 year old, or the 18 year old, or the 25 year old, the educated, the non-educated? How to speak coherently to the 12 year old while not infuriating the 18 year old and how to mold an essay for the 30 year old without losing the 18 year old.

People who write books have editors to act as a third party who understands the material and understands the anticipated audience.

How do I, who have been studying the matter at hand for months and even years, know what words to provide a parenthetical definition that some may need but others may consider to be condescending?

Anti-intellectualism (opposing or hostile to intellectuals or to an intellectual view or approach) is so prevailing in the United States that almost every reader has a strong anti-intellectual bias that they are completely unconscious of. This anti-intellectual bias constantly inhibits their effort to read anything that smacks of being ‘intellectual’.

People might pay me money to lecture them on the proper way to swing a golf club but to lecture anyone on matters intellectual is pompous (excessively elevated or ornate—having or exhibiting self-importance).

Even on the internet one can do a certain amount of targeting. Every web site has a demographic; some are frequented primarily by men, others by women, students, teachers, young children, the elderly, and on and on and on. If you know what kinds of people usually visit the web site your material is posted on you can tailor it to them.

If there's people under 25, you use a lot of icons like this:

Then, if everyone else gets annoyed, you smash them with your logic. If that fails, you deviously make them mad by feigning ignorance, then coming back and smashing them with your logic. Right?

I'm just being funny, ignore me.

Another thought: if you want your material to appeal to a very broad audience, you could try to make it do so by supplying different layers of information. For example, you could use technical or scholarly terms freely but supply pop-up definitions that would appear if one of your readers moused over the difficult words. You could write brief overviews or simplified descriptions in your main text, and provide links to more detailed information.

Saavik

Good advice but like all good things it is advice that is difficult to follow. Thanks