On 29 May 2012 05:41, Ms. Anne Frazer <[email protected]> wrote: > However, when I read your words, the essence of your comments is clear in > that part of your message is couched in attacking good prose because it is > too difficult to read and understand. I remind myself that you don't mean to > engage in a call for the dumbing down of articles in the 'Wikipedia > Encyclopedia' when you suggest that they are too difficult to comprehend by > 'the man in the street', (my phrase, and a commonly used one) by which I > mean the 'ordinary citizen', the 'ordinary person'; it is a much used phrase > I sardonically use in tandem with an apology to women. But here I have > strayed from the clear and concise message I would like to be able to convey > to you; so back on track...
No, I think it's incorrect to assume "readable" is a euphemism for "dumbed down". Frankly, many academics are terrible writers. Because most people are terrible writers. Being in the Internet era helps (because everyone writes all the time), but a lot of academics are in fact much less comprehensible than they think they are. Popular science writing is *hard*. Steven - one idea that occurs to me is to give them a target audience: e.g. an extremely smart twelve-year-old. "A kid who is very smart and who is really interested, but knows *nothing*. Can you inform them? Use all the wikilink cross-references they would need." This will be easy to visualise because smart adults tend to previously have been smart kids. - d. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
