Easier said than done
How to Be Clear
41–50 of 58 posts
Re: How to Be Clear
#42This is a great opportunity to talk about the worst-written sign I have ever seen.
The "slippery when wet" signs at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport read:
** Caution Please be careful while using the restroom. For your safety, we remind you that flooring can be very slippery when wet.
Your safety is our concern. **
These make me so irrationally frustrated. Why do they use such flowery language? What purpose does that serve? There's no call to action, how does it improve the user experience?
Re: How to Be Clear
#43Dislike authors writing style.
Here’s an excerpt with bad grammar:
— If you’re struggling to picture what clear writing looks like, buy a copy of the Financial Times or The Economist. Pay attention to the way articles their are written, to the word choices and sentence structures. —-
Ironic
Re: How to Be Clear
#44Dislike authors writing style. Here’s an excerpt with bad grammar: — If you’re struggling to picture what clear writing looks like, buy a copy of the Financial Times or The Economist. Pay attention to the way articles their are written, to the word choices and sentence structures. —- Ironic
What's wrong with that excerpt? How would you improve it?
Re: How to Be Clear
#45This is a great opportunity to talk about the worst-written sign I have ever seen. The "slippery when wet" signs at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport read: ** Caution Please be careful while using the restroom. For your safety, we remind you that flooring can be very slippery when wet. Your safety is our concern. ** https://imgur.com/Uh9DrLh These make me so irrationally frustrated. Why do they use suc…
There is no purpose to these signs aside from limiting liability in the eyes of the court system when you slip and fall and sue them. It's similar to the signs that say no trespassing.
Re: How to Be Clear
#46This is a great opportunity to talk about the worst-written sign I have ever seen. The "slippery when wet" signs at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport read: ** Caution Please be careful while using the restroom. For your safety, we remind you that flooring can be very slippery when wet. Your safety is our concern. ** https://imgur.com/Uh9DrLh These make me so irrationally frustrated. Why do they use suc…
Ya, it should just read "slippery when wet". Maybe add an exclamation mark to show urgency and that you care.
So how we would describe the sign is usually what it should say. Like, "STOP".
Re: How to Be Clear
#47Dislike authors writing style. Here’s an excerpt with bad grammar: — If you’re struggling to picture what clear writing looks like, buy a copy of the Financial Times or The Economist. Pay attention to the way articles their are written, to the word choices and sentence structures. —- Ironic
What's wrong with that excerpt? How would you improve it?
> If you’re struggling to picture what clear writing looks like, buy a copy of the Financial Times or The Economist. Pay attention to the way articles their are written, to the word choices and sentence structures.
Try the Financial Times or the Economist for strong, clear writing. In particular, pay attention to their word choice and sentence structure.
Re: How to Be Clear
#48Advance apologies for coming across strong, but for an article advocating clarity, it is utterly devoid of an examples of how to actually achieve it. If your title starts with "How to..." you should SHOW, not TELL, and the article was a whole lot of telling. And the one example that was accidentally there - the image at the top - did not clarify if it was a good one or not (see discussion here, for example).
Others have found issue with the grammar and sentence structure of the article, I found it totally opaque.
Show me an example of a mental model (or the absence of one). Pull an excerpt from the Times or the economist and contrast it with another publication that is not clear. Wouldnt this help us "understand, know and" eventually "do"?
And given that the advice is to think about your audiences and communicate with purpose, please do ask yourself: What is the purpose of this article? If it's to tell us to strive for clarity, please show us how, don't just tell us to do so.
Re: How to Be Clear
#49Clarity and brevity are good, but when everyone is focused, no one is talking. Silence is the sound of everyone working. Talking can be a symptom of mismanagement.
Also, better English won't help when the goal is to dodge work or responsibility, which is often what's behind miscommunicating team members. A well spoken excuse is still a poor excuse.
Re: How to Be Clear
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much science outreach and popular media prioritizes "engagement" and "interest", above understand/know/do. I recently wondered if one might get more "understand", by authoring content with an added objective of setting up the reader/viewer to "do" bite-sized storytelling - with friends, family, water cooler - thus perhaps both broadening impact, and adding motivation towards understanding. Fun frame.
So... Viral content?
Viral storytelling? Hmm, there's a thought. So one challenge with designing a story to be told, is how to make it stable. Else it becomes a source of misconceptions, rather than of understanding. If the story is then passed on further, that becomes the telephone game, and stability... becomes even harder. Status quo disinclination to pass on (pervasively flawed) understanding does have benefits. So what if it were paired with a bit of traditional viral content, to provide a stable reference? How might one get the two, oral storytelling and viral content, to propagate together? Perhaps if the setup for storytelling was itself the viral content? Somehow search keyed so someone in receipt of only the oral, could recover the viral? Or if the viral had additional value, perhaps compelling video, so there was incentive to present both? Hmm. Fun morning brainstorming - thanks!