“In order to make the book as direct and user friendly as possible, I have avoided footnotes, references, and other tools scholars usually employ in their technical writing. … However, for those readers who are curious enough to pursue the scholarly sources on which my conclusions are based, I have included extensive notes at the end of the volume. They are not keyed to specific references, but to the page number in teh text where a given issue is discussed. For example, happiness is mentioend on the very first page. The reader interested in knowing what works I base my assertions on can turn to the notes section beginning on page 241 and, by looking under the reference to page 1, find a lead to Aristotle’s view of happiness as well as to contemporary research on this topic, with the appropriate citations. The notes can be read as a second, highly compressed, and more technical shadow version of the original text.”

It’s the last sentence that really struck me. I’m sure you’ve already done the work of having a more technical shadow version of the text you want to present to the reader. So from that point of view it would just be a question of using material you already have.

I was thinking about the footnote thing… maybe instead of thinking about the footnotes as a boring encumberance/formality, you could think of them like a … treasure hunt for the determined reader. Or like a hyperlink. A little spicy bonus of where to get more info or a tasty tidbit of extra juicyness for the extra-interested. I was reading “Wheels of Life” and I realized I really liked the info in the footnotes for those reasons. Just a thought!!

There was a study … I can’t remember where I read this … where people rated two writing samples. One was clear and concise, the other was full of jargon and obsfucation (sp??). Most people believed that the jargon-laden, “complex” writing sample was “more intelligent.”

But it takes a lot more effort to write something that is clear and easy to understand. I think Malcolm Gladwell does this very successfully.

Considering how much information we have to wade through in our culture, and especially in grad school, you’d think advisory committees would realize that the more clearly written something is, the more likely it is to actually be read.

Oh! I can’t remember where I read this either–but to write like the reader would rather eat dinner, go dancing, watch a movie, whatever. Write in a way that you can imagine them wanting to continue to read what you’ve written even though they have a million other things they thought they’d rather be doing.