You won't believe the 10 ways that listening to this podcast could change your life!!! This week we discuss writing and whether it is the author's responsibility to engage their audience or the reader's responsibility to buckle down and concentrate.

We look at whether the quality of writing affects the quality of the argument and if it is the case that some subject matter cannot be reduced to simple language. We discuss the idea of irreducible complexity and Flesch–Kincaid readability tests. Peter presents his ‘naive information theory’ and Nick proposes an economic model based on the market of ideas. Finally, we share some of our most loved pieces of text that we still regard as terrible writing.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• Feld et al., ‘Writing Matters’
• Flesch-Kincaid readability tests
• Are Reading and Writing Building on the Same Skills?
• Cognitive Engineering podcast: Simplification

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Jordan Fermanis, Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing is it bad writing or is it bad reading? Nick, you're not particularly good at either. Thanks. I recently read a study just published in March this year by Feld, Lines and Ross which was looking at economics papers which are not famously gripping reads and asking the extent to which the quality of the writing affects people's judgments about the quality of the scholarship. Yes, is the answer to keep going? Right, so what they did was they got 30 PhD papers from various economics PhD people, they gave them to professional editors who were instructed to polish up the language but not to change any of the contents or conclusions. Yes, these kind of sub-editors, yeah. Yeah, I mean whatever, they were called professional, professional editors I think is the term. They then sent these out to a bunch of a hundred or so reviewers who each rated every paper on the quality of the paper, so notice how good it was, how likely they would be to accept it at a conference, how likely they would be to desk reject it which I think means you reject it without further comments, you just the first time you read it you're like no I'm not publishing this in a journal. Yeah, and how likely they thought it would be to get published and the quality of the writing which is obviously touching on the key variable here. And so the point is that the ones that had been edited scored more highly on the quality of the writing and more highly across all the other stuff. Yeah. Right, so apparently if it had been professionally edited about eight percentage points more people thought they were that something would be accepted for a conference for example. Very significant. Well yeah I don't actually know what the baseline is unfortunately, I couldn't work that out from what they published so I don't know if that's eight percent up to sixteen percent or ninety percent up to ninety eight percent but I would imagine it's not going to be insignificant. I would imagine you know what fifty percent papers might be accepted maybe less so it's you know it's going to be a significant chunk of that. They wasted their time doing that study because I knew that immediately. Yeah I mean but yes sometimes you have to test these things like it might have turned out that actually. Sometimes you need this thing called evidence. Yeah science. A little convenient. No you just need to ask me and I'll tell you. Well it might have been the case that the reviewers would have said you know yes the quality of writing is but it's still as good a paper you know like actually the quality of the writing doesn't affect the scholarship really. They might have said yeah okay it's easier. That's what you'd

hope they'd said is you'd hope they'd send it back with comments saying rewrite this. The findings are sound. This is exactly what we want to publish but you need to edit the you need to

fix them. Yeah and this is so this is the question is whether or not it's the job of a scholar say in economics they're not English language students not that's not what they're doing that they're economists. Is it their job to learn to write better or if you're interested in what an economist has to say is it your job to you know make a bit of effort to try and understand the albeit dense language in which those thoughts are expressed. I think both questions are not quite the right question actually but first off just an you know knee-jerk reaction I thought for a moment we were talking about our old friend signaling but I don't think we are. We might be. Because also I think it's about because the person reading it is not necessarily is definitely not consciously thinking ah this person has got great grammar and therefore I can see they're a they're a credible person. Interesting good point. I think it's more I think it's more that just naturally if it's naturally more understandable which is what good grammar and good writing should be then it will naturally the message will come through. Yeah and I think it's probably worth saying that the raters the people are rating the papers I don't think they were told you know these have been rewritten some of these have been rewritten. Yeah. I don't think they were focusing on them. Right. They weren't told to focus on the language particularly other than being asked one question about the quality of the writing. Yeah. So what you say is entirely fair. Yeah. They're not going to be thinking gosh this is well written. Right and it's and so maybe this sort of goes and so therefore that's why I'm not sure if the question is the right question to answer is it should we be better writers should we be better readers it's more well I think it sort of leans to being better writers but it's just it's just natural if something is more clearly communicated people will respond to it better anyway. Fortunately we've got some professional writers here. We've got

one and we've got the person who needs the most help. Right. Yes. True. Who's the one who needs

the most help? Me. Yes. Okay. I can draw good pictures though. Yeah. There we go. Right. So yeah we'll get on to what the purpose of the picture is. Yeah. Right. Let's hear from Jordan. Yeah. We've just described you as a professional writer. Yeah. What do you do Jordan? What's your

because tell us your job what your role is. Oh yeah. Okay. My role is to research and write at Aleph Insights. So yeah I do a fair bit of writing but I think it is I think what you said is correct about it being natural it's sort of natural and it has to come but I think that as a writer you do need the reader needs to be impressed I think I think you need to you know you can't make it difficult for the read for the reader and I think if you make it easy for them there's a more chance that what you're saying will be more convincing your evidence your audit trail is clearer the points you're making can be more concise and straightforward so I think you do the reader a favor by writing clearly you want to make it easy for them exactly yeah it's a nice sort of and it's

part of your job to do that yeah yeah good I mean to me I think good writing should be is transparent you know it's it it just get it the writing is the medium by which the information or the the insights that you're trying to get across happens to be in you don't want the writing to be in the way of that so it's sort of it's not much much impressing the reader it's impressing upon the reader it's giving them the least possible friction to the concepts that you're describing okay so far so

good I think we're all kind of we framed something there and I think we kind of all agree on that

yeah I think that's a good working definition of what good writing it good technical writing is

so that being the case are we saying therefore that it is the job of of an economist or a mathematician or whatever it might be to also be a good writer well I think there are different

types of good like I think we need to try to grab what sort of effective writing is but good writing different questions so technical writing that we do in our reports and things you can't you haven't got time or space to explain absolutely everything from first principles in a language that's suitably accessible to everybody right it just wouldn't work it wouldn't wash it would be it would look it would look out of place it would be too verbose and it would be too long so you need we so we rely on a degree of assumed knowledge so it might be the term so we don't define every term that we we use we kind of assume that the person we're writing it for is familiar with the domain in which we're writing such that we don't need to define everything we've talked about

this before in another podcast and it's about supplying appropriate levels of information

yes so it's appropriate yes I think that's a good way of putting it it's appropriate appropriate level of information but if you gave that document to somebody who was not familiar with that domain they might say that it's bad writing because you're not defining terms and you're not explaining things from first principles so I think goodness is quite relative in in that

respect well it is and it isn't but I mean I let's let's just keep it to academic papers let's just keep it for a moment I don't know if we have to because I just what something that Peter was talking about there reminds me of an interesting fallacy that I know a lot of people have which is you know my my dad used was a journalist and and his you know he would hang around with other journalists so I knew journalists quite well and what people and people often have a talk about tabloid journalists as though they're these slavering morons what they don't realize is it's the same pool of people who write for the times who write for the sun they just moderate the the style right they're perfectly good and writing for the sun is really hard it's no no easier than writing for the times or the telegraph and in some ways it's harder because actually shorter yeah yeah you've got to get you a message over uh in a more concise way so I you know it's simple I suppose what I'm saying is simple writing certainly it doesn't mean easy to write you know it's not easier to communicate simply um it might be harder but the question is I think that's what Peter is saying is well actually is it your job to kind of get the level right and if so how do you go about doing that okay um let's go you have Jordan but I still think there

needs to be a sort of degree of um it can't sort of be like too impenetrable for people like there has to be you have to sort of give the reader a way in even when it's technical writing I still think you need to make it interesting for someone to read you need to engage yeah you need to engage it can't be boring for example even if it's a report it should still sparkle a little bit because all writing is sort of creative in one way or another even if it's technical subject um I mean this

feels a little bit sort of my approach to films you know which is I have to I get made to make a lot of kind of films I don't particularly want to make and lots of people get involved in the it's your job to do that you're not made to do it no I do mean you get paid to do that well but if if I had sort of greater freedom if people bloody listen to me I would make them a good film however lots of people get involved mainly communications people who've got a message that they want to push and you just end up with the most boring video in the world and it's utterly is it clapping in ukulele music and and and a woman dancing through a field of sunflowers no that's a good film that would be good no because that's it's always you know we're making the world a better place oh I see yeah no but yeah right okay but they always then my point is this is that I think the first and foremost doesn't matter what the film is about what you see what you hear that the most important thing where it's 30 seconds or two hours is it must be engaging okay forget about messages forget it if because whatever no matter how good your messages how no matter how worthy it is how well researched if people don't engage if they don't in this case if they don't watch it it's pointless if you lose your audience and isn't this is it not the same is it not the same with writing is are there some things which you cannot make engaging I mean is it if you need to get some information over to someone what if the thought is useful but boring no okay what about a timetable or something could you make a timetable more engaging definitely and the reason why I'll be interested to see what Jordan's thoughts on this because um maybe this is I'll just say it so it's part of your job as as a video producer in my case is is is you you're meant to be creative you are a creative I don't like that term but that's your job is is to sometimes make the most uninteresting thing interesting and do it in a manner in an imaginative way that's the whole point of what you do okay and that's the value that you're adding that's why you do what you do okay um I would disagree that's what you that's the what that's what you're supposed to be doing Fraser

no and your bosses might all say your job is not the end the what you produce is not the end in itself the end is having got the message into people's heads no well a part of that is making engaging

and that's the point that's a means to an end no because and also my proof of that is that I get paid to do this this is my job I get continually paid to do this because I do it well and and so so that's so no I I've got the evidence here you don't right so I know what I'm talking about this

is my job now I know we're not well I know we were talking about writing if your employer was a media company and it's measured its success on just the amount of stuff media produces then yes that would be the no it's not the aim the aim is to alter the behavior of people who are watching that content and you do that through

engagement that is a means to an end of yeah I might be very engaged but not actually going to go out and buy the product okay but you can't it's no no hold on but the question is the question is could I be it's necessary but not sufficient exactly this is like being a boxer for example is I often wonder what's the most difficult sport or no what's the most important thing about being a boxer okay a successful boxer and I think actually the thing that you cannot get away with not having is a certain base level of fitness right right um things like technique aggression um good strong chin punching someone in the face repeatedly is quite a good way to be a boxer but some of those things you can do without right but the thing that you cannot do without is that base level of very high fitness actually well I do want to and I think it's same with so I'm trying to make the same point Nick because is is that simply because we've been sucked into this paradigm of what marketing is is creating a short piece of media that someone consumes and engages with and feels positive about in some way like would it be possible to have purely informational marketing which was not engaging was perhaps substantially shorter and said our product costs 60 pounds and it gets five stars in which and the answer is and it's like okay that's boring but it might be equally likely to make me go and buy it then you know something which was the ukuleles and clapping people yeah I think the answer is no no what I'm wrong I haven't reinvented advertising yeah no and I think there's a reason why you're an analyst not a um but also I mean I guess a different kind of question is similar is is there a crossover is marketing um is it a marketing puff piece the same as a bit of research of weighty research in in that they still both have to engage and by the way so far we've only talked about the producing side we've not really addressed the receiver side it's deeper than I thought this question so we've not talked about the readers yet but let's hear from Jordan

well I think it comes down also to what you consider good versus bad I mean because yeah there is purely informational writing that just gets it gets a point across but I think what this study was trying to show is that there are also there are gradations of of good and bad and we should try to make our work good writing because that will get a higher chance of getting into a conference or being published in a journal or and that these the people that the gatekeepers that that control these things they appreciate good writing yeah yeah so I but

now here's I'm gonna jump into the position of someone I wouldn't normally agree with which is the sort of hardcore subject matter expertise type person okay I thought you were gonna say Fraser anyway go on um I used to uh occasionally like coordinate intelligence assessments from various people put them into a kind of report things like you know looking at strategic risks and that sort of thing um and there was a hard word limit it's like look we need 100 words right maximum on this just summary of that and they would always say uh no it's too complex you can't possibly boil down you know what's going on in Botswana to 100 words it is like it's way more complex now I'm gonna need a whole page and I was like I don't believe you but there probably there must be some level on which the complexity of a thought cannot be further reduced by shaving away bits of we definitely talked about this before didn't we explaining we did explaining how reduce how how far can you reduce a complex oh well there's that so there's the the idea of sort of irreducible complexity we've done but I but I suppose what I'm saying is can we apply it here and in what way um so I know I know it's not you can't really measure good writing right because you can't look at the writing it's got to be something to do with subjective reaction but there is a metric called the Flesch-Kincaid readability score which um effectively is sort of looking at words per sentence and syllables per word and it's a linear formula of those uh and it tells you apparently tells you sort of how complex something is and how old what the reading age of someone would have to be to understand it yeah so for example the cat sat on the mat is about as simple as it gets and that gets that gets a readability of 116 but this other example the Australian platypus is seemingly a hybrid of a mammal and reptilian creature is 37 but which is relatively low but it's got a lot of information uh but you how you can't get that I would be amazed if you can get that thought Australian platypus seemingly a hybrid of a mammal and a reptile get that thought right without any loss of information much higher than that I mean that's a really clear thought yeah so so how do you know when your attempt to improve the writing isn't accidentally shaving off you know the equivalent of a more useful sort of David's fig leaf you know from the sculpture

of the writing yeah a more useful metric would be kind of a measure of information content divided by the readability so you could so you could measure sort of the the density versus the the readability of it because you could get you could expand that sentence and use simpler terms

what captures mammal better than mammal well you could you could use you could say an animal that

that that that nurses it's young with with breast with with milk that's but then longer to me it's

longer but it's simpler right that's but there's but there's no but there's more information because if nothing else there's more words right yeah but there's less but it's less the information is

now less dense yeah yeah right but is that desirable it might be if you if if it pushes up the reading if it pushes up the readability so there are only only if you didn't understand

what a mammal was yeah right if you understood what a mammal was already then it's pointless right and it's just further noise um this is quite complicated um no let's there's two things I want to come on to that we've not really touched yet um and the first thing is I do want to talk you know we have framed this as bad writing versus bad reading yeah I want to have a go at readers yeah exactly but they sort of they're always in for an easy ride um but before we do just one area I want to sort of briefly touch on is obfuscation right because often a lot of I think a lot of bad writing is is because the writer um is unsure of what they're talking about okay and I see this a lot at the moment I'm actually doing an academic course um and I I hope they don't listen to this but I sometimes feel that my peers on the course sometimes talk bollocks any any one of your peers who's listening to this you're not talking about them I'm not talking about yeah I'm not talking about you I'm not yeah it's not you are talking about you all know who it is yeah yeah and I sometimes yeah yeah exactly um I sometimes feel they're quite indirect in their language um partly because because their work is not good enough and so they prefer to talk around it a bit more and add more fluff but also actually it's to do with are they do they describe their work as exploring issues around because that's always like when I could I always a red flag for me with any artwork which is supposed to explore issues around whatever it is this week definitely a lot of that something and I always think just what is it about stop saying it's exploring issues around something and tell me what it's about um well I think the other thing is there is a slightly a cultural thing of it's a very um non-critical environment actually so you can't really say sorry this is bullshit yeah take it away yeah bring me show again yeah give me give me a really clear definition of what this work is supposed to be yeah and so anyway so a lot of the old man in front of a sign all right thank you yeah and so although although some of the work is written like the I mean mainly we discuss you know this is verbal it's oral right and so but I think the same principle applies and so anyway my point is sometimes writers try to obfuscate and because they're just talking around it because they're just not sure what they're saying really when I used to write about interest rates I used to talk like that anyway let's talk about you could because you're a bullshitter you could spot the bullshitter actually interestingly maybe the evidence is that bullshitters find it harder to spot bullshit which is really interesting yeah but um no I think bullshit is a sort of thing on its own um but I mean but you're right I mean I feel like there is a clear thought is expressible well or badly but a bad thought I don't is almost inexpressible clearly by definition in a way like a thought that if somebody isn't really clear what they want to say I don't think that can ever come over in something readable it's always going to come over in

something muddy and that and that that the exercise of writing it was hard though I find it I find when I sit down to write the report or write parts of the report I will do that early during the research of the project I'll start doing parts of the report because the exercise of trying to express explain to somebody else um you know like a one way non non-conversal kind of way uh in writing what I'm trying what I'm thinking about helps me form that thing yeah it's kind of a proving a proofing process in itself it's a verification to myself if the interlocutor is being faithful and honest which yeah yeah so it helps me verify that what I am trying to describe or do in this in the whatever project is is actually coherent if I can get it down on paper in a paragraph it means to me that that concept is consistent and uh and sort of well formed right if I can't then then it tells me oh actually maybe I need to think about this a bit

which shows actually writing is not just as simple as the writer and the reader right it's it's it's about more than that because in this case you've described how it described how it's a sort of a process in itself of of of understanding the issue yourself anyway um do we want to talk about readers yeah we hate those guys yeah horrible such a nuisance that's why I never read yeah um go who Nick you kick off or or George I mean I want I yeah who wants to go let's go with Nick but I want bringing Jordan as well Nick I suppose I want what I want to get off my chest is the idea that if someone doesn't understand something it's your fault I suppose it's something that you know as the writer I think that it uh bugs me I suppose as much as um kind of people who don't think it's their job to write clearly so obviously as a writer you are trying to put a thought down at the thought that well it's a bit beneath me having to turn this into polished prose because the thought itself is so good that you know it's your job to work hard and I'm I suppose what we've been saying is actually there is uh no is your job if you think something to work out a way of expressing it as clearly as it can be expressed even though that might end up still being technical it might end up being a long complex sentence but that might be because the thought is so complex that it can't be reduced any further to you know that's fine but your is your job to get to that stage to get it as polished as it can get but um you know I think readers have a responsibility yeah your job as a writer is not to spoon feed well I mean maybe but your yeah your job as a sometimes things are hard to understand yeah um you know when even when you you know you might have to work hard to understand what a thought is saying um but that doesn't mean it's the that's not the same as bad writing right so that's so like the principle there is for example as a writer you shouldn't necessarily use words that just to pick a figure that maybe only 20 percent of the population understand if that word is really spot on for what you're trying to describe because if if someone comes across this word and I guess you could extend that to a concept is it's not a question of I don't understand that word I give up or this is rubbish or this is stupid it's incumbent upon the reader as a responsible reader to go what the hell does that mean go and look it up in a dictionary online whatever yeah yeah something like that um so I

I early I refer to sort of assumed knowledge I think also maybe there's a sort of assumed effort that you as a writer can assume you're assuming your readers that they are willing to put in a certain amount of effort to understand what you're writing I mean I know it's not the same this is

like it's like school right it's like university studying it's the same isn't it it's the relation

between a teacher and students um yeah um Jordan yeah the reader has to come to the party as well and the reader can but the reader can also yeah is it's incumbent on them to make an effort to understand as much as they can from what they're what they're reading um and also not to misunderstand it as well I think that's the other thing you can have really good writing that is read by a bad

reader that pearls before swine yeah what about I I've come I I sort of have I've have thought about this uh previously yeah it's like the there's a sort of naive I don't know how to describe it but it's something like it's something like a naive information theory that people who they sort of remember the sort of bluff military types would be like oh you need to we need to do an understand on this line up front yeah but those people right you could yeah it's a hundred words too long I need it in ten yeah kind of people it's like well um there's the the irreducibility stuff aside uh there's a sort of assumption in those kinds of people that information sort of leaps off the page and into their heads and you can express everything they need to know in the marks and symbols on on the paper and that is sort of somehow lifted by some magical process lifting of the paper and creates a new module in your head which gives you a new thing that's not how it works that's you you the the the marks and symbols on the page all they do is provide you a nudge to aid your thinking in a certain direction for you to independently form that concept

yourself yes which is an interesting thought I mean you think about the complexity of a sentence that you can uh that is really just a bunch of marks on a page yeah and the fact that someone can suddenly create a thought out of um you know out of just these marks on the page is really extraordinary um I was going to just propose a kind of economic model oh god quick quick one here I've got a quick no this and I think this explains whose job it is make it quick yeah sorry or not I don't know well it's simply about market power right so and we're talking about the marketplace yes of ideas right so if you are the one who has an idea you want other people to pick up so the idea that one should use your brand for example if you're a marketing person yeah it is your job that's your job literally your job and it makes sense that marketing is extremely engageable but if you are a person with an idea that other people want then I think you can take your foot off the good writing gas a little bit I and so I sort of think well actually you know if you are the great nobel prize winning physics guy now as it turns out I mean if you read like the way that Einstein wrote for example it's actually really well written it's incredibly clear what he's on about um but uh he wouldn't have to be like I mean you know he's not his job it's not Einstein's to make these things as comprehensible as possible because his idea is really good and important and it's your job to understand it and so I guess that's that's that's what I would I sort of

actually think that economic kind of model more or less really like this model and that explains why you get friction in big institutions so thinking back to the intelligence world you have these you've got the deep sub-geometric experts who are just sort of a bit old and set in their ways but some of them are very good and do have very solid ideas and solid things they're trying to get across they are at odds because they are not writing in that free market they're writing in an institution where it's their job to write for somebody and make it simple so there's an expectation for it's the fault of the analyst not getting it across well

that's really I'm going to take this one step further because what we're talking about building on that Peter's I think he's describing a situation which is analogous to a quite a famous bargaining theory set up which is the monopoly and monopsony situation which is in the real world might be where there's a mining town with one mine this is so far away from what I thought we'd be talking about but go on see now he's being I'm the one with the valuable idea and you need to do the work to try and understand no you need to do the work to make it more okay monopoly I know what a monopoly is go on keep going keep going so a monopoly and a monopsony right what's a monopsony one seller which in the which in the context of a mining town might be if there's a trade union so you've got a trade union which which all the miners work for and you have a mine which is operated by a different guy and famously actually there is not a there isn't a price point it becomes a bargaining situation there are multiple possible prices and I'm just thinking you know you've got I'm a senior military person I'm a general and so normally I'm the one who people are trying to make listen to their ideas like I'm the buyer I'm the monopoly I should have market power here because I'm I'm I'm the one buying you know these ideas and I can I can choose and you know but then you have your expert he's the only guy in the whole of Britain who knows about that particular kind of chemical weapons and he's used to being the monopoly you know and so you that you've got the same situation where actually as Peter says that's where you get friction so you've got the guy normally people come to me because they expect I can I can sort of you know sell they'll listen anyway because what I'm saying is important military guy normally people come to me because they have to make me listen to them and now you put them together boom I have no idea what I'm talking about atomic writing explosion yeah I have no idea what don't worry Fraser our listeners will good that's the most important switched on when you are yeah um look there's one thing I just briefly want to touch upon and then finish us off okay um or put us out of our misery um so far it feels to me that we've talked about this almost exclusively in terms of of of factual writing actually maybe that's not been in your heads but um but that's how it seems to me we've not talked about creative writing we're not talking about novels for example and I just want to ask the question but not answer it which is is it possible to be a great writer and and and you can't read it right it's not readable famously two words for you James Joyce or Harry Potter yeah it's not like I guess you'd say that's readable but bad yeah no that's kind of the opposite isn't James Joyce is like unreadable but good yeah is the yeah I don't know all about yeah we've got no time to talk about no but that's really interesting I think that's another podcast yeah I mean I've never even I've never even tried to read any James Joyce because everyone says it's so difficult so I thought I was I think I might have a copy of Ulysses at home I don't know but um yeah I just want to throw that out yeah no it's interesting that writing as art feels like it's governed by completely different rules um but I don't think that's probably no different to for example you know um music as art compared to sound as information or something like if you're trying to create an informational uh announcement that's very different to if you're trying to make a pleasing piece of pop music right so yeah but it's interesting that they the rules are so different from what looks actually like a superficially similar activity because in theory even with create something creative that the purpose of of a word sorry of text is to pass on information right um so in theory it should still be about information transfer but maybe we just need to step back and relax a little bit and forget about defining the world in terms of information but in theory that person the author is still trying to say something they're still trying to you know impart some information I think you're right I think we've accidentally opened a can of worms which are now wriggling all over the place let's put them back exactly another podcast let's um so I want to wrap up um let's finish it off with a question I want to ask you um what is the worst piece of writing that you have come across but that you still love okay um yeah take that in whichever direction you like um I think I can I kick off yeah go on so I wonder if it's if what I've just asked is possible because I love the Richard Sharp books uh by uh Bernard Cornwell um which I don't know if you're familiar with um but they're rip-roaring adventures set during the polionic wars of a British rifleman okay um and the reason why I think they're bad writing is they're very formulaic um I often get mixed up with which books I have and haven't read because they're all the bloody same um and it's always the same story but I love them and I think the reason why I love them is because I guess writing is not and I'll be interested to see what Jordan thinks about this writing is not just about crafting a sentence or a paragraph it's about crafting a whole story I would say especially when it comes to um non-fiction and I think Bernard Cornwell is a masterful storyteller um he tells great stories but I just don't think he's that great a writer um and I get excited reading them you know and it's always the same and I guess it goes back to something we talked about many times which is human love of stories even if we know what's happening um so that's my answer I've got an example okay it's a very Peter

example oh god right so I don't know how familiar you are but the the Microsoft um documentation for all of their products right so covers everything it covers windows covers Azure covers all all the products recently went through a big shift it used to all be produced in-house uh and it was always as a result sort of lagging behind out of date and sort of quite badly written um it's it's it's badly written now in a different way right so now now it's um it's sort of editable by the community so you can you can uh if you spot something that's out of date you go to the github page and you can propose a edit to it so there's a lot you've now got millions of contributors rather than just a handful um and they're the people who are motivated to make their documentation right because of the sorts of people who use it um but now it's it's a hodgepodge of slightly different styles there is editorial on it but it is different and it's just incredibly verbose so um and the way the way that Microsoft structures is it all written by Microsoft fans not really it's Microsoft users technical ones and but and it's not helped by the way that Microsoft goes about naming its products so Microsoft goes for a very apart from the sort of top little banner names like Windows Azure they're kind of like they're non-descriptive names they're just like they're like a mini brand but the the names of components within that are all incredibly descriptive so it'll be like they'll call something called you know the the button that makes the window open and that's what the name of the button is but do you like this stuff or not like it well i would you like the old stuff love it and hate it because it's the answer will be in there it will be in there but you've got to trawl through so much crap you've got to work hard as a reader and you've got to work really hard as a reader yeah okay i

like it was a very petery answer uh let's have jordan uh it's sort of similar but it's not one thing but i um i do like reading uh like some brochures of places i go oh really um like well like the stuff you get on the plane or yeah stuff on the plane or when you go to a museum or something and you get one of those leaflets okay just pick it but they're usually really badly written um but i still i like kind of the same because i just like the information that they get across even though i know that they're not there's nothing like a bit of crappy copy in an

in-flight magazine yeah written by someone writing something about tuscany or olive oil from sicily yeah you can tell they've never eaten any olive oil and they've never been to sicily but they've been paid 50 quid to write 100 words on it yeah i love that kind of shit yeah well you like it the moment could you read it every day could you always you know i like it because it fits where you are you know you expect a nice crappy magazine and in a flight but i wouldn't i could never be

an editor of such a magazine um nick well i i guess bad writing maybe not in fact it's probably good writing but it's certainly writing that i should hate which is a certain adverts that you know like adverts you get on the tube there's one that always stands out to me because it's so cynical and annoying which are the jack daniels adverts that they used to have and they're all this like down home hokey old kind of oh mr jack and he used to do it this old way like we still do in tennessee yeah and it's like it's you know it's cooked up by some annoying marketing executive it's just pure bullshit nevertheless i love them i love the idea and uh yeah just looking at one now when it came to music mr jack was one hell of a whiskey maker and it's like oh shut up and the and the thing is though i do i you know it actually is gonna make me buy jack daniels whiskey yeah so that would be it i think i think it's because i find marketing so loathsome that i get a kind of guilty pleasure from enjoying the hideous output so i suppose it's like you know you could kind of imagine a kind of health food campaigner secretly gorging on a big mac it's like that yeah i think one day we should delve further into your loathing of marketing um right but yeah um okay well folks let's wrap up there we don't okay we'll stop there um that was fun uh thank you as always for listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgrew we've been here with jordan fermanis nick hare and peter coghill of aleph insights until next time goodbye