Saveurs & Savoirs - 24 September 2007

The first event in STC France's new "Saveurs & Savoirs" series on Monday 24 September drew a crowd of about 25 technical communicators to the FIAP Jean Monnet in Paris. The evening event included a networking cocktail and a presentation by award-winning researcher and educator Karen Schriver entitled "If You're So Smart, Why Does Your Writing Suck?" Whether it was the promise of some good food and wine, or simple curiosity to hear Karen present a talk with such a provocative title, I don't think anyone went home disappointed! It was great to see so many new faces, as well as a few regulars. A big thanks to Monika Duvinage for manning the registration desk!

You can find the slides that accompanied Karen's presentation (PDF - 2.9Mb) on the STC website.

Saveurs & Savoirs - 24 September 2007

After announcing the winning entry in our Name the Newsletter competition ("France Connexion"), Karen was asked to draw a name at random from the list of people who voted. The name of the winner, who gets free entry to the STC France Chapter 2008 Annual Conference on Friday March 14 2008, will be announced in the October issue of "France Connexion."

Karen then got underway with a few carefully rehearsed words of welcome in French, which drew a small ripple of applause from the audience (we found out afterwards that she'd been put up to it by her French niece!). She then continued with a few slides about her home town of Pittsburgh and her family pets. I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the room thinking that this was an unusually personal introduction to a professional presentation, but when Karen explained that she and her husband had been away from home for almost a month, touring round France visiting several universities and colleges, and that seeing pictures of home and her pets enabled her to stay grounded, it all made sense! It was certainly a great way to break the ice!

Karen started by defining what we mean by poor communication, and examining the underlying causes, which she divided into two main categories:

• Inconsiderate content
• Bad process

"Inconsiderate content," she explained, is often shaped by "wrong interests" -- a tendency for experts to pitch the content at their own level of understanding, rather than the user's level of understanding. She showed a short video (WMV - 4Mb) to illustrate her point. Other problems result from "poor thinking", which Karen broke down into two groups: Problems of commission, and problems of omission:

• Problems of commission include bad grammar, incorrect punctuation, poor style, and ineffective layout. Terrible crimes indeed, but nothing that can't be put right with the help of a big red pen, some change bars, and a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style.
• Problems of omission are much harder to resolve. If the information the reader needs simply isn't provided, no amount of grammatical indulgence will help.

"Bad process," continued Karen, creates problems when subject matter experts (SMEs) try to micro-manage a writing project, when a writer isn't given enough time or freedom to gather and organize all the information properly, or when a project is simply poorly managed or poorly focused.

Karen summarized the resulting communication problems into four groups:

• Standard Usage - bad grammar, punctuation, and spelling
• Expression - Inappropriate framing, tone, style, diction
• Organization - Weak structure, paragraphing, coherence
• Content - Incomprehensible, inaccurate, missing, misleading, or unusable content

These problems can have seriously influence readers' perceptions of the writer (and of the organization that they represent.) Hasty, careless, uncaring, uninformed, poorly educated, sarcastic, and pretentious were just some of the answers people gave when asked to describe what they thought about the author of a poorly written piece of prose. In another example, she described an anti-drugs leaflet that was written in such an inappropriate style that it actually drew laughs of derision from the school kids it was aimed at.

Karen went on to describe the tendency for SMEs to indulge in "knowledge telling". The lesson here was that just because you can provide a detailed scientific explanation of something, doesn't mean you should.

Underlying many of these problems is something that has been dubbed "The Knowledge Effect." Research has clearly shown that "the more one knows about a particular subject, the more one has a tendency to over-estimate how much other people know about that same subject." This problem, explained Karen, could be the result of the way that people become experts in the first place. When interacting with other domain specialists, SME's fall into certain domain-specific ways of talking, acting, and seeing the world that can prevent them from communicating the "right stuff" at the "right level" at the "right time."

And yet we can all point to examples of domain experts who are also excellent writers, people who are able to model their reader, who see themselves as clarifying knowledge rather than simplifying, are able to recognize when word choices or rhetorical moves are inappropriate, and are able to shorten lengthy text while still retaining meaning.

While it is clearly important to have an excellent understanding of one's subject matter, it is just as important to be able to communicate that knowledge effectively to the reader. The solution, it would seem, lies in our ability as technical communicators to transmit these skills to our SMEs and in the ability of SMEs to recognize the value of good writing and design. Why not bring your favorite SME along to a future STC France Chapter meeting? If what Karen's research reveals is true, we might all learn how to communicate better as a result!

About Karen Schriver

Karen SchriverDr. Karen Schriver is a researcher, consultant, and educator in information design. Her early work at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) charted new territory in understanding the integration of word and image, audience analysis, and people-centered design. Her book, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers (Wiley & Sons), now in its 9th printing, is regarded as an essential work in the field. Winner of nine awards for research, Karen has made a significant impact on how information designers around the world think about their work.

Karen employs research-based principles to inform the design of everyday communications. She brings together the latest research on how people think and feel as they engage with web sites, instructions, forms, educational materials, and marketing communications. She has taught at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Utrecht (Netherlands), University of Washington (Seattle, Washington), and University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). Her clients include Apple, IBM, Tivoli, Mitsubishi, ATT, Sprint, Lutron, Hoffman-LaRoche, Sony, Fujitsu, and Microsoft.

Karen is a Fellow of STC and a frequent keynote speaker. She is the first recipient of the STC's Ken Rainey Excellence in Research Award for "outstanding research contributions to information design, passion for consumer advocacy, and exceptional service as an international ambassador for research." She is on the board of directors for the Communications Research Institute (Victoria, Australia) and the Center for Plain Language (Washington, DC). Her recent research investigates (1) the nature of expertise in information design, and (2) how people read online text and graphics. When she is not working or racing to catch a plane, she enjoys playing with her two crazy but loveable dogs.

You can reach Karen at:

KSA Communications Design & Research, Inc.
33 Potomac Street, Oakmont, Pennsylvania 15139 USA
Phone: 412.828.8791
E-mail: kschriver@earthlink.net