tl;dr

This is a summary of the video lecture on effective writing from professor Larry McEnerney of The University of Chicago. The lecture is more geared toward academic writers but it’s still very relevant to the writings in other context especially in business settings. Here are my key takeaways:

• Writing is not about sharing what I know but about changing the readers’ view by making it valuable to them.
• Always think about the community you’re writing for. The function of writing is to move the conversation of the community forward (vs. preserving it indefinitely for posterity).
• In order to make the readers care, word choices should be carefully made to signify the inconsistency or instability of the problem space, the cost it causes and the benefit if it’s solved by your proposal. (vs. Merely sharing new facts or information that you found in a show-and-tell style)

Highlights

Writing for organizing thoughts vs. communicating with others

A lot of writers start writing as a way to organize their thought. They go ahead to pour down what’s on their mind onto the paper or the word processing software. It’s a mental snapshot of their model of thinking that’d rather be regarded as the first draft. However, many of them just go ahead and publish the writing piece without considering whether the readers would be able to follow the thought process easily. As a result, in many cases the readers have a hard time understanding the author’s point and stop reading it. Make sure revising the writings to ensure its serving as a tool for communication with the readers than for organizing your thoughts.

The common pitfall

A lot of writers (especially in the context of academic writing, like publishing a journal article) is that they think they must share something new, original or important with their peers in order to create an impact. However, people wouldn’t care at all unless it creates something of a value to them. Writing is not about what’s in your head. It’s about what impact it creates on the readers. Ideally it should change the readers’ view on the subject matter. In order for that to happen, readers should deem the writing piece to be valuable to them.

The ultimate goal of purposeful writing

The function of writing is to move the conversation of the community (i.e. You and the readers) forward. Don’t try to write to preserve your writing indefinitely for posterity.

How to signify value to your readers

A deliberate choice of words will help the readers notice your writing points out the problem you identified that causes harm, cost the community a lot of resources or could bring benefits to the community when solved. Here’s a few examples of the “value-signifiers”:

• Basic: nontheless, except, however, but (Evokes reader's attention)
• Intermediate: widely, accepted, reported, although, inconsistent (Signals a sense of community and its norms)
• Advanced: Use the "code" terminology widely used and understood by the community
  (Fun fact: For 4-6 years of PhD study, the first half is spent learning the subject matter and the second half is spent on learning about your readers and the "codes".)

The wrong and the right structure

• Wrong: A typical “Martini glass” structure (i.e. Start with generalized facts > Narrows down the scope > Zooms in on a very specific topic > Broadens up the scope again > End with a generalized facts again)
• Right: The problem (The instability or inconsistency identified in the subject matter the community cares about) and the solution to it

My musings

Sometimes the “ground” is more important than the “figure”

This lecture reminded me a lot of the series of discourse on the constituents of design objects (e.g figure-ground relationship in Gestalt psychology. As much as the idea the writer has in his or her mind is important, the medium via which the idea is communicate is as important, if not more, as the content in order for a change in the status quo to happen. Effective writings will play the role of this metaphorical “ground” that ties the “figures” together, fills up the void and complete the full picture.

The difference between 인(a biological human) and 인간(a social being)

In some Asian languages, there are notably two terms that refer to a human being — 인(Korean)/人(Chinese and Japanese) and 인간(Korean)/人間(Chinese and Japanese).

• 인(Korean)/人(Chinese and Japanese) is used to indicate the biological nature of a human and is rarely used as an independent word. It's rather used as a suffix to indicicate the word being about a biological human (e.g. 한국인: A Korean, 지구인: An Earthling)
• 인간(Korean)/人間(Chinese and Japanese) is used more broadly to refer to people or a person. The second character (간/間) means the "in-between", aptly describing the social nature of people. In order for a human being to truly become a social being, they should also fulfill the second syllable of the word (간/間: in-between) in addition to merely existing as the first syllable of the word (인/人: A biological human).

Content is king, but Context is emperor

Apparently the sentence above isn’t my original (Playing off of the famous aphorism “Content is king” and other variants like “Content is king but Context is God” by Gary Vanerchuk). The context — the in-between, 간/間, the “code” for the community — is an indispensable constituent of what makes communication and the progress of the community possible.

Further resources

The video lecture this note is put together from:

(The embedded video isn’t showing up in Safari for some reason so adding the YouTube link for Safari users)

• Web article: The Power of White Space by Interaction Design Foundation
• Wikipedia article: Signified and Signifier
• Reddit article: This lecture is about academic writing, but I found it insanely helpful and upsetting. (UChicago Leadership Lab: The Craft of Writing Effectively)