I think everyone has been through something like this at one point in their lives. You’re listening to a lecture, a webinar, or you’re just asking someone about something. For example, you’d like to know how a nuclear plant works. You get a very simple answer indeed: “In a coolant-filled vessel, fuel rods undergo a controlled nuclear reaction with the use of a moderator that slows down neutrons to create nuclear fission of Uranium U235 isotope, which heats the coolant that goes to the steam generator, where water is heated to create steam, and this in turn…”
What has just happened here?
You’ve experienced the curse of knowledge.
CURSES!
The curse of knowledge usually happens when an expert in a field is to explain the topic to laypeople and spectacularly fails to do so effectively. The expert uses BIG WORDS, complex concepts, and complicated relations, thinking that every Tom, Dick, and Harry and their grandmothers know them. However, the usual case is that Tom, Dick, and Harry as well as Ann, Gwen, and Lily have no background to follow the topic. In a striking majority of cases, the curse of knowledge is not the result of a pernicious display of one’s expertise, a willingness to be high-brow, or an assumption that it’s impossible to explain certain things differently.
No. At a certain level of knowledge, the expert doesn’t realise anymore that they’re using language that isn’t understandable to the general public. The expert’s knowledge is so deep and extensive that when they share it, they don’t see that objects, concepts, and relations between them are complex. It’s like explaining running to a barely-standing toddler.
However, the curse of knowledge is not the domain of experts only. If you’ve ever heard sentences like “But THIS thing is THERE!” or “Do you remember THAT guy who did THIS at THAT party back THEN?”, you’ve also been on the curse’s receiving end.
THE CURSE, MEMORY, AND IMAGINATION
The curse of knowledge happens when someone has forgotten how hard it was to learn a new skill, gain knowledge, or learn fundamental concepts. Such a person finds it difficult to imagine what it’s like to not have these concepts. They can’t pinpoint basic information, convey it, and present relations between its elements. This is also true when experts don’t realise that the scopes of knowledge of different people don’t overlap. Even if their addressee has a similar background, it doesn’t mean they remember everything.
THE TECHNICAL CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE
I like to think that technical writers are like translators: they translate engineerese to userese.
Engineers or Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) often don’t have the time, skill, or knowledge to convey content in a way that is clear to end recipients. This usually causes lack of clarity. A common example in English is noun piles. This is a combination of nouns that describe other nouns, one after another. The author knows what describes what, for instance: a steam feeding control valve sensor. As a recipient, you may guess whether it’s a “sensor of a control valve that feeds steam” or a “valve sensor that controls feeding steam”.
Another example is metaconcepts. These are all frameworks, projects, issues, levels, contexts, layers, schemes, perspectives, standpoints, and other whatnots. Of course, not every use of these words is wrong; it all depends on the context. However, sometimes these words are used to obfuscate (or simply, to make less clear) thoughts, like in this example: “under the supervision panel from the administrator’s panel, the control panel displays permissions for user levels 1, 2, and 3, and the following matters”.
The goal of technical writers is to translate these into a language that is understandable to users. It is a difficult task that requires empathy – to predict what users know and feel – and awareness of one’s own curse of knowledge. Technical writers know the topic very well themselves and they have to take care to avoid explaining unclear things with other unclear things.
THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE AND TRANSLATION
Translators are particularly sensitive to unclear information that follows from the curse of knowledge. In many cases, it can be seen which text was written by an SME, who knows the topic inside-out but can’t convey it clearly. It’s also self-evident when a text was translated by an engineer rather than a technical translator. Very often, such translation has noun piles or mental shortcuts, or even inconsistent terminology, where strictly technical terms are mixed with more colloquial ones. Apart from the curse of knowledge, such texts often include calques and other translation errors and mistakes that make the text even more problematic.
In such cases, I correct what I can, and if a part of the text is unclear, I contact the client. However, it’s not always possible to solve all the problems, many issues are beyond the translator’s scope of decision-making, so some technical documents follow the pattern: garbage input – garbage output. This is worth remembering the next time you read an unclear manual for your fridge.
CONSEQUENCES
The consequences of the curse range from a rather safe shrug (“Fine, I don’t think I get how a nuclear plant works”), to irritation (“Which THIS and which THAT?!”), to material damage (e.g. caused by badly-written technical documentation), to fatalities.
Another common effect of the curse is the notion “I think I get it”. Unfortunately, there is no true understanding here, which may bring more or less devastating results. An effective message is one that makes you think “I get it!”.
When it comes to documentation, the major consequences are financial. When it comes to software, a badly-written interface, help tools, or manuals make users frustrated with the product. As a result, they can lose trust in the software or write negative reviews, which may scare away future users.
Moreover, badly-written documentation brings additional load to support departments. People working there need to handle more issues and this may lead to a false belief that more support staff is required.
Similar problems can plague various types of hardware, whether it’s consumer electronics, home appliances or even industrial machinery. Especially in the case of machinery, badly-written manuals can lead to failures or the operator getting wounded or even killed. In the best-case scenario, the cost will be a warranty service repair, and in the worst case, having to pay high compensation.
HOW TO LIFT THE CURSE?
There are quite a few good ways of lifting the curse of knowledge. The tritest one is “try putting yourself in the shoes of your audience!” but this isn’t clear itself and may not be enough. According to this approach, you need to show some empathy and think if the people who know next to nothing about the topic will be able to understand the text. That’s a good starting point but it needs some tweaking.
It’s a good idea to ask questions about your audience:
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Who are they?
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How much can they know?
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What do they not know in all likelihood?
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What do they struggle with?
Try thinking the way the UX people do: what the personas and the user journey are. Let’s imagine Chris the content writer and Daria the developer who will read your text: what is their background knowledge? How do they travel through the text?
When it comes to technical communication, large companies can conduct user surveys. However, if you write posts or articles, you need to use your imagination to define your audience. It’s safer to assume, though, that the audience knows less rather than more. In the worst-case scenario, the readers will think that the text is addressed to beginners. I believe this approach is better than the opposite scenario where the audience would be discombobulated.
THINKING OF YOUR AUDIENCE IS NOT ENOUGH
It’s not enough to just think about your audience. You’ve got to know what traps can be there, like the noun piles mentioned earlier and metaconcepts, or other expert or abstract terms. This also includes jargon, using abstract nouns instead of verbs (see the image), unexplained abbreviations or lack of examples.
Another thing you can do is pay attention to grammar. It’s easier to understand simple rather than complex sentences. Also, it’s easier to process shorter sentences. In English, we can get inspired by guidelines such as Plain English, Simplified Technical English, or Writing for Machine Translation. These guidelines cover both grammar and vocabulary.
WHAT ELSE CAN BE DONE?
Even if the text is written with simple words and syntax and it’s adapted to the audience, all these don’t ensure success. The curse of knowledge can still lurk between the lines. That’s why it’s recommended to read the text carefully, preferably several times. It’s best to wait a couple of days or even weeks from the moment the text was written. Then, you will forget a little what the author meant, which makes it easier to find mistakes or unclear fragments. After such self-check, it’s always worth handing over the text to another person. In an ideal situation, it would be someone who’s as close as possible to the target audience.
Here again, large companies have the advantage over others as they can gather feedback straight from their audiences and then improve on their texts. In our case, this is not something likely but not impossible. Once, I re-edited my article on LinkedIn in which a very sharp reader noticed missed logical steps.
TOWARDS THE END
Writing is difficult and lucid writing is even more difficult. You’re not doomed to the curse of knowledge, though. You can do much to make understanding easier for the audience.
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Remember the curse of knowledge is there.
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Get to know your audience.
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Think what can go wrong in the text.
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Pay attention to language.
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Check your text.
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Hand the text over to be reviewed by someone else.
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Publish the text.
Paweł
Bibliography
Pinker, S. (2015). Sense of Style. Penguin Books.