Response to Mary Jennifer Johnston's "Pandering to the Audience".

In her blog entry “Pandering to the Audience”, Mary Jennifer Johnston showcases some of my greatest frustrations with current editorial content. While I feel an author has the unfettered right to editorialized to their heart’s desire, when the message is shrouded in language that automatically excludes anyone with a dissenting opinion, there is little room for common ground. This kind of alienation of the audience doesn’t occur only when the topic is emotionally charged, such as the arena of politics.

When I first started technical writing I realized that any final work product I released must be scrubbed of technical language or jargon that was beyond the base level user.  Jargon includes terminology specialized to a specific industry or technology used to do a job that the ordinary layperson wouldn’t understand with knowing the specialized context.  Encountering terminology that is beyond a reader is the quickest route to boredom and despair. I found most of my readers would rather tinker with a software solution until they figured it out or return it instead of reading a didactic manual with technical speak specific to the software developers and database administrators who created the monster.  Eliminating overly complicated instructions or words that are bound to offend the audience will codify your credibility (ethos) with the audience. Creating the appropriate appeal that does not offend (pathos) will keep them reading.