Book-Marketing Tip of the Week – September 29, 2014

Excerpted from the September 27, 2014 Wall Street Journal ("When Being Too Smart Ruins Writing," page C3): "The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose. It simply doesn't occur to the writer that her readers don't know what she knows – that they haven't mastered the argot of her guild, can't divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualize a scene that to her is as clear as day. And so the writer doesn't bother to explain the jargon, or spell out the logic or supply the necessary detail."