Writing, like language, is a form of communication. More accurately, it is the written form of language. Just like different language is appropriate in different contexts is appropriate, writing must be curtailed to suit different needs in situations. You would not use slang in writing a presidential speech, and you probably would not use formal business language when chatting with friends over the Internet. Gong and Dragga in their book “A Writer’s Repertoire” emphasize the point that it is important for professional adults to be able to recognize in which situations certain forms of writing are appropriate and to have a diverse “repertoire” of writing styles (Gong and Dragga). This essay lays out how the form of academic or technical writing could be adapted to a general audience.
Academic writing assumes a certain level of specialty within the audience. If for example a person is writing for an engineering journal, the author would assume that those reading the journal have a basic understanding of the mathematics behind engineering. If the article was about the reason for the bridge collapsing in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2007, they might use complicated word such as load boundaries and support their premises with the mathematics and technical specifications of the bridge and the conditions that led to its collapse.
If this were to be written for, say a newspaper, what is important to keep is not the premises, since these are technical but the conclusion. Not mathematically and structurally why did it happen, but why politically and socially was the bridge allowed to be neglected and ill-maintained to the point of collapse would be the question and the answer would place the blame on a certain social entity, like the government, instead of the physical conditions that led to the collapse.
Technical words would need to be placed with a vocabulary that someone at a high school or even junior high level would be able to easily comprehend. Dense complicated sentences would need to be revised into sentences with a simple subject and predicate. Vocabulary words would need to be words that the general population understands. An example of an engineering vocabulary term is “Anchor Bolts” which are bolts imbedded in a concrete foundation, which can carry a load. If this piece was being adapted for a general audience, one would not be able to say, Anchor Bolts and expect people to know what was meant by that. The sentence, “The anchor bolts were not sufficient to support their load due to lack of maintenance.” What could be said in said is that “the bolts that were supposed to support the load of the bridge had been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair which was no longer able to hold the bridge they were supposed to have the strength to support.”
In conversations what we say is just as important as how it is received. If someone speaks French and we speak to him or her in Spanish, they are not going to understand the meaning being conveyed. In the same way, when writing, it is important to keep the audience in mind and write to them in a way that they understand rather than writing the way that the author could understand it. Part of writing is not just learning how to write well, but to be able to write for the appropriate context.
Reference:
Gong, G., & Dragga, S. (2010). A writer's repertoire. Singapore: Cengage Learning
