Principles of informing

Maximizing communication

• Communication

  • When writing you must consider the reader as only you know what you mean when you originally wrote it

    • maximize overlap of reader and writer

      • The overlap is

        • personal style
        • disciplinary style
        • cognitive style

• Strategies

  • 1. Minimizing memory load

    • Humans can easily memorize in short term memory the 7 +- 2

      • IE sentence structure

  • 2. creating order

    • sort things into groups

      • you have to make things linear

        • turning things from parallel to linear

      • Organizing lists

        • make lists parallel
        • ensure that all the items have something in common
        • don’t make it too big

      • using relational language

      • 4. Organizing Instructions

  • 3. Using conventional forms

    • Different types of writing for different audiences

      • business letters
      • experiments
      • legal
      • Report Genres
        • 1. prefatory pages
          • title page
          • abstract or executive summary
          • table of contents
        • 2. body of document
          • introduction
          • background discussion
          • recommendations
          • conclusions
        • 4 appended pages
          • references

  • 7. KISS

    • Keep it simple stupid